up earlier

Getting up early could change everything, couldn't it? I don't really notice when the alarm goes off but I get up about 6:30. FFP is running the dishwasher. I decide to set up for his meeting and then go workout. I make decaf coffee and get out stuff like plates and napkins and coffee cups and sugar.

I do a pretty long workout. On the days when I exercise my upper body I do more machines and use some light free weights and this takes longer. While I'm on the exercise bike, eight of the ten steppers and treadmills in front of me are in use. The TVs overhead have Bush on three of them (one, CNBC, with stock quotes below). One has an old episode of M*A*S*H. While I'm doing my arms, I hear two women talking. "Did you sign the permission slip. For that R-rated movie, Joy Luck Club?"

When I get home the meeting is over and a couple of the folks are helping FFP pick up. I wash up some plates and it's done.

Dad comes over while I'm in the shower and starts reading a long e-mail journal from his friend in Germany. I sit with him and read the paper. Before I know it, it's lunch time. We don't have much leftover stuff and I suggest we all go out to eat and FFP agrees. We start for Chili's, FFP's choice but then he decides on Avenue B Grocery and, before we can go there, he decides to go to this little place he's never been to: FoodHeads™. Yep, they've trademarked it, I guess.

We have some great sandwiches and slaw. Mine is lamb curry and it's yummy. The place is a tiny shop in a house on 34th Street. Beside the few tables are shelves with cook books and food magazines. Lots of them. FFP looks through a Martha Stewart hors d'oeuvres book. I make a mental note to come back and copy some recipes out of it after he shows me these cheese straw things in full color that I've been trying to make. Maybe sit here with a cup of joe and just go through the cookbooks. I occasionally can't find something I want on epicurious. com. Not that I cook that much. True enough. I have a cookbook for every meal I cooked in the last five years. Really, really cooked, you know.

I show Dad some pix my niece e-mailed me of her kids at Christmas and he goes home. He was in our neighborhood to get a haircut. (He goes to my barber.) He hung around for lunch. He figures it's time to go although he's nothing special to do.

It's time to get serious! Time to clean and straighten. Arrange. Discard. Get the guest room in some kind of order.