Sunday

July 22, 2001

a real Sunday

Sunday should be a day of huddling sleepily with coffee and newspapers. Walking around in your underwear or yesterday's clothes. Cleaning up a few things on the computer, getting some edits and scans out of the way. It ought to be a day of reflection and renewal. Every day ought to be that way, of course. It really should.

I did scan the ancestor pictures, the pictures of my dad's grandparents on his mother's side that he gave me yesterday. I'm showing my great-grandfather, James Wesley Sandifer. Born in 1838 and dead in 1907. A man not of the last century. But of the nineteenth century. Solemn. I think my great-grandmother was his second wife. He was eighteen years older than she. Not uncommon at the time. My grandmother on my mother's side was twenty-one years younger than my grandfather and I think it was his first marriage. Don't you wonder what a man of the last century would think about his picture in his great-granddaughter's journal? In only six years, it will be the centenary of his death.

We get a connection log for Mom's dial-up and see that it is staying on all the time. Oops. Better go over there and see why it isn't cutting off and teach her once again to check. Before she uses up all her 200 hours. We decide to have an outing. We go over there, I try to fix the settings so it will cut off automatically after twenty minutes and drill Mom on checking and help her get an e-mail to the right place. I take my Dad's ancestor pix back and take him some books to read. He chooses the novel that is an historical novel set in Austin and Manhattan with William Henry Porter as the protagonist. (O. Henry to you Gift of the Magi fans.) It's called Twist at the End. I haven't read it but FFP did and liked it. He puts the rest away somewhere. He seems pleased. I've given him a variety. Some essays by Bailey White, a book by a couple who rambled the country in an RV, a book about the brain and something in the history or biography realm.

While I was being a slug today, I make a belated birthday card for a friend. We've been friends since about 1971, I think. Her birthday was Saturday and I sort of forgot about it until Saturday and I looked at the date and went, 'Oh.'. I try not to be too tied to the calendar when remembering my friends, however.

We wander around Barnes and Noble after the trip to the parents' house. I am relaxed and able to enjoy it. Just opening up books at random, reading a few paragraphs. Watching what other people were buying, and browsing. I stack up a bunch of Tuscany and Florence guide books and two books about Dreamweaver and go to the coffee shop. I can't find a table so I sit at the counter, pushing aside a stack of books the last person abandoned. (Five books on Pilates, whatever that is, and a book about religion online. Most people buying today seem to be getting Dummies or Idiots books. There is a Pilates for Dummies in the pile.) FFP finds me in the coffee shop and we get a table and look through the books. I decide against everything I am looking at except for a $5.95 little guidebook/map volume called Trip Planner for Florence. . The Dreamweaver books are good but cost $45. FFP picks a Dreamweaver book for manager types that is cheaper and that he says will help him. While he pays, I reshelf the Dreamweaver and travel books. So the next person in the coffee shop won't be commenting on my reading tastes.

We stop at the grocery store. (I know. Me at the grocery stores two days in a row. I'm going to learn where the orange juice is if I'm not careful.) We buy eggs, tomatoes, onions, cheese, chicken and some cokes (on sale, supply for guests or so we say). We go home and make this salad that has chicken and boiled eggs and honey mustard dressing.

We play with our computers some (I'm making backup CDs) and then we get into shorts and go over to Westwood. We don't see any sign of anyone playing. We walked through the pro shop, announcing our intention to take court 5 and do so. The guy from the pro shop stops by to see if we need anything. It has an extra half court netted off for practice. He's locking up. A woman comes with a very small child and they try to hit on the wall, but they spend most of their time going for balls they hit over it. It has a high net catching above the wall so this is, in itself, a feat. We just hit some and FFP practices serving. Then we play an actual set. Then I serve about fifty and hit on the wall while he practices hitting some. The court is all in shade this time of day. But, for the record, it is still hot. Around a quarter of nine, the light is going. But we've been out for an hour and a half. There are no lights on this court, but the lights blaze on several empty courts just in case someone wants to hit a few before the official closing at 10. Have I mentioned that I would have thought I'd died and gone to heaven to belong to this place thirty years ago? Heck, I still feel that way.

Home again, we finish the laundry, watch our taped Sex in the City and Six Feet Under shows and drink iced coffee. Have a little late night snack. And, once again, stay up too late.

James Wesley Sandifer

A favorite journaler (is that a word) of mine, The Old Grey Poet, had a discussion recently of trying to find other, recently updated journals and hitting dead ends (well, broken links and dusty sites). I would have written to John Bailey, the old poet, and commiserated with him (after all I mentioned my own sadness about not finding more working journals recently. Except for two things. One, he might remember a dust up about a picture on his WEB site and one on Late Night Snacks. I felt sort of a part of it as I was one of the people who pointed it out. I wrote a note to the John Bailey at the time I think. That's one reason. I don't know what to think about that incident, the guy never wrote back, he actually took his journal down for a bit. The other reason is that one should be careful corresponding with journal writers who have lots of readers. If, in fact, one is trying to stay in an obscure place. If you draw their attention, they may link to you. If they do, people will be popping up on your page. In fact, I've thought of moving the whole journal and only letting a few people know how to find it. Obscurity, though, seems to have so far been served pretty well by a lack of self-promotion. If there are lurkers learning things they shouldn't, then they are quiet about it and causing no more trouble than the people going through the shreds of my trash looking in vain for credit card numbers.

Who needs reality TV? The WEB has all the reality you could ever want. It justs gets a little harder to find the journals that are updated regularly.