A Measure of Stuff

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 30, 2004 — As I steadily (but, yeah, slowly...it's been two years) clean out the closets my mom stuffed with her hobby stuff and this and that, I've started a measure for the stuff I deal with that puts it in perspective. Cubic feet.

When I fill the 'pay as you throw' container, I figure 'four cubic feet gone.' When I fill the van for the trip to my sister's house there is ten to fifteen cubic feet. You just have to look at the mass of it. I apply this to the stuff I'm disposing of from my house, too. Gradually a lot of my toy collection is going to the thrift store or Freecyling or to my great nephews or other kids.

I guess I enjoyed accumulating this stuff. I guess my mother did. Getting rid of it isn't so bad either.

Electric-Dependent

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 29, 2004 — When the lights blink, you suddenly realize all the things you depend on. You want to flip on the lights, of course, as you enter dark rooms. The TV snaps off. You think of the freezer. As you find your flashlight you notice the laptop still going, on batteries. But you know, it isn't connected to the Internet. The hubs, cable modem, all powered. You are glad some clocks are battery-powered but you dread reseting those that aren't.

How long will we be without the electric life line? People in Florida have been without power for days. I know we have a battery-operated TV and radio somewhere. We have lots of flashlights, some candles, a bunch of batteries in the pantry. It seems like overkill to have this stuff until the lights flicker.

Today, the lights came back after about ten or fifteen minutes. It took a while to reboot on the computers. We turned the TV back on. Can't imagine doing without it all night, much less for days. We are so dependent.

Why Write With Nothing to Say?

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 28, 2004 — Oh, sure, I know the idea of a journal, a relentless every single day one anyway, is to just keep writing, capturing. Until something worthwhile leaks through. If not in the journal, elsewhere.

But for the last few days it has seemed silly to write in here. It has seemed ludicrous to waste pixels on my bad diet, slovenly habits and idiotice ramblings.

But can I stop? No. Apparently not.

Basically Shy

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 27, 2004 — I can do it, you see. Set up an interview, go ring the doorbell, pay attention to the person so I can figure out the story. But socializing with people, especially those I'm not that used to, it takes it out of me.

I long ago accepted this part of my nature. The part that finds dealing with unfamiliar people fun and yet stressful. It's fun to get to know new people, learning new things from all of them. But a part of me just seems to have to work too hard at it. I start wanting to retreat to a lonely corner and regroup. There is something in social interactions that I need, though. Because I seek them out, over and over.

I know that not everyone feels this way. I think Forrest is quite comfortable around people whether he knows them well or not. I think this is why he seeks out engagements with newer friends and I'm going back to the old reliable ones.

It's All Relative

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 26, 2004 — When I was young, before I got out of college, I was really pretty poor. Oh, I managed to get by but you know...sweating the next check to pay some bills, beat-up car, no house. I didn't have many responsibilities either. That was the thing.

After I got a job, I was still not rich. Not by any means. I had to move in with my parents for a while. Gradually I saved some money. Then I wandered away from the working world for five months, went to Europe, goofed off. Then I was back at it. But still...cheap apartments, beat-up car, looking at the checkbooks and saying 'when I get paid I can pay this bill then that bill.' I didn't run up debt. That was good.

When FFP and I started out, well, he had a house. We had two beat-up cars. (His was nicer than mine.) I looked at the checkbook balance and made calculations like 'get paid, pay these bills, yada, yada.' FFP started his business. We watched our money, business and personal. There wasn't much to watch. When we bought this house, I lay awake wondering how to pay the $525/month house payment. (It included taxes and insurance, principal and interest.) Now the various property taxing authorities demand more than that simply to live in the house we own. But I'm pretty confident I can find the $10,000 or so to give them in December or January. It doesn't keep me up at night.

Gradually we got some money, saved some, lost some on bad investments, made some on good investments, got lucky with our work and its rewards here and there. We gave money away, still do. In amounts that astound me especially in comparison with sweating that mortgage payment.

We are lucky. Rich even. In the top xity, xity percent. Whatever. But it's all relative. The friends we go out with tonight are building a house ten times the size of ours. No exaggeration I don't think. They are probably worth 10 times as much as we are. Probably a 100 times if you include the family trusts and foundations and unexercised options, yada yada.

I feel happy that I succeeded enough so that while I'll always have to watch my money I have done some of the things I'd hoped to do and I have most everything I'd hoped to have. And I don't really wake up in the night worrying about money. Not usually. But it's all relative. People may look at me as impossibly rich. But no, that's not me. That's Teresa Heinz, Michael Dell, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, a bunch of Sam Walton heirs. And...some people you probably never heard of who go out to dinner with us.

Communicating With Others People's Thoughts

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 25, 2004 — I used to put in a quote every day. I'd scour quote books and WEB sites for just the right quote. Sometimes I'd quote something from what I was reading. Or, rarely, I'd quote someone I'd overheard (I always fancied myself a new Stan Mack although I can't draw) or some line from a play or movie. For today, I might have taken this quote out of the play Omnium Gatherum I saw tonight. The character who is obviously sending up Martha Stewart says, after her surprise guest, an actual terrorist, turns out to disrupt the party quite a bit, "That wasn't as much fun as I thought it'd be."

Usually, though, these quotes came from those tired volumes of quotes from Shakespeare and the Bible with some selections in French, with or without translation.

Today I was reading my journals and diaries collection. Several entries are really commonplace books, full of quotes from the author's reading or even quotes heard on the street. This started me thinking about how we can't always find the words. In fact, most of the time we can't find the words. To express what we want to say. So we quote.

Authors who have written a perfectly credible, maybe quotable, book with hundreds of pages of good prose will sum it up on a preface page with a quote from someone else.

I no longer quote regularly, daily. I do splash a quote on the journal cover now and then and occasionally quote, as part of an essay or chronilogical entry. a conversation (as verbatim as my poor, tending to paraphrase) memory allows.

I still do, though, linger over a sentence or two in a book and think, wow, yeah, that says it. And when I read old entries where I selected quotes I enjoy reading them. Much more than any random quotes. They are others' words. But selected by me.

Value, Sentimental and Otherwise

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 24, 2004 — Sentimental value is one of the hardest things to quantify. But just plain old value, what you could get someone to pay you for something, what it's worth to you...that is somewhat difficult as well.

Spending time going through Mom's stuff, throwing some stuff in the trash, packing stuff for my sister to go through, sorting out a few things to offer on free cycle, keeping a couple of things for myself one is constantly barraged with the question of value. Among the miniature displays and half-finished miniature projects and such I find a few things of sentimental value. A wire pin shaped with my mother's name 'Dixie' and a similar graduation souvenir 'MHS 1929.' Among the material scraps and dried paints I find some little handwoven pieces. There is a sadness in going through your own old stuff. But there is a gulf in sorting through someone else's possessions. I've been at it for two years. Every time I do it I get closer and closer to having control of the situation. But the sadness the possessions give off, in spite of or because of sentiment, is tiring. I don't get this feeling from old photos or postcards but I do get it from the hobby stuff and her personal possessions, the things that, absent her, speak only of loss.

When You're No Longer Looking

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 23, 2004 — When you are not looking for something you find it. I suppose this phenomena is most touted for things like finding a lover and getting pregnant. But I find it in the more mundane aspects of life. And I also find that was you've settled for something other opportunities present themselves in droves.

When we remodeled and added the large entertainment and media room on the back of the house, we had a writing desk custom-made...metal with a marble top. Naturally there were no drawers for pens or paper or phone books. We thought we'd add decorative boxes for these things. We shopped and shopped. There was a drought of boxes of any kind. Finally came up with a couple of antique things that sort of worked. Once the problem was behind us boxes appeared in every store and catalog, many seemed ideal.

When we remodeled the bedroom and added the custom walk-in closet, I had shelves put in instead of drawers. I envisioned boxes or trays holding various things. I shopped at Container Store and all the Bed and Bath places, online at many sites. Had lots of difficulty deciding. Now I see some stuff in interesting sizes, colors, materials in every other catalog and online enticement.

I now accept this. Once I'm not looking for something, once I've settled on something to use somewhere in the house, then all manner of solutions will appear. If only I could figure out how to fool the acquisition gods and produce this flood of choices without settling for something first. Seems it can't be done.

That's the Life

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 22, 2004 — I have spoken many times (well a few times anyway) in these pages about the 'perfect life' and all that. Before I retired I tried to write this down, imagine it, invent it so I could get to what that would really be for me.

I always included an element that was not unlike my morning. A workout, some tennis, pleasant showers. Then doing something useful. I'm not sure I was useful at this committee meeting at the club, but close enough.

Then I got time to come home and deal with e-mail and planning and writing. Then we went out to a party at a fancy house with some nice food, original music, friends to talk to.

Should be perfect, friends. And if it's not, well, it's my own fault.

Suddenly it's Not Enough

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 21, 2004 — I wrote the retirement report as yesterday's essay. Usually, when I catch up the journal I feel good somehow and accomplished. Usually when I finish a book I get a little surge. Each visit to the gym usually picks me up and gives me the sense of getting something done. Not today. Suddenly it's insignificant. I'm writing my life and only exposing its meanness, showing it for the minute unremarkable speck it is. The mundane usually satisfies me (or didn't you know?) but not today.

When I noticed this letdown I cast around internally and externally for something to change my perspective, pick me up. Something to concentrate on and care about. For some reason I thought of little tiny, insignificant vignettes. I remembered the sun in my eyes at my retirement party. Seeing a yard with sprinklers going made me remember when we pumped water from the creek to a crude sprinkler system and how satisfying it was to see the sprinklers doing their work after hard work to prime and clear the pump, sometimes standing in rubber boots in the creek.

I dug around in my head and thought of the non-journal things I'd considered writing. I tried to visualize myself doing some of the non-fiction stuff and tried to resurrect some of the personalities I wanted to write fiction about.

I hold on to the journal for myriad reasons. Today when I finished a book I picked up an old literary anthology (Antæus) which devoted an issue in 1988 to "journals, notebooks, diaries." I love reading other people's journals and commonplace books. I love conversations and letters. But I guess I'm also looking for some companionship in obsession or maybe a way out.

The journal isn't the problem, of course. It's the light the journal reflects on my failures. I need the journal because it keeps me writing. Well, typing maybe. I need it to be able to resurrect my past self. I need it because sometimes it is the only thing I accomplish and I'm afraid that instead of spending the time it takes on something I value more, I will actually have nothing to show for my time.

In the first article of this volume I'm reading Gail Godwin says "Once the details of being me are safely stored away every night, I can get on with what isn't just me.... I had to keep a diary for many years before I could begin writing fiction." So, I hoped, it would be for me. Would that it were.

Variations on the theme of Travel, Friendship and Such

AUSTIN, Texas and DUBLIN, Ireland, Sept. 7-17, 2004 — I thought of several essays while traveling and recovering from jet lag. I'm going to combine them into one big honking ramble.

Quests
Travel for me becomes a series of quests. The quest to see what you came to see, drink what you came to drink, eat what you came to eat, buy what you came to buy. The quests are constantly piling up, too, to see places related to where you go.

After my friend Mags and I saw the Oscar Wilde statue in Merrion Square, she wanted a postcard and I did, too. We looked and looked. When we found one, of course, they continually popped up after that.

As I learn more about James Joyce, I think I should follow his trail...Trieste, Zurich and all that. Visit his grave in Zurich. Well, it's an excuse to go places. I've been to Dublin which is sort of the source. Now I could follow the river of his life. In reading and in travel. Sort of like my quest to follow the Danube after visiting the source in 1991.

These quests are what keep us returning to places and to themes. I'm on a Christo quest now so we will go to New York in February. I want to go to all the tennis Grand Slam events. I haven't even started to think about how to do that.

Symbols and Signs
We have flags and banners and team colors. Place holders for the things we believe in. The Republicans have the elephant, the Dems the Donkey and everyone waves the Stars and Stripes. The Confederate Flag is controversial. The swastika incites ire and is outlawed in Germany.

So it was surprising to see the Cork hurley tean supporters with American flags wrapped around them or even Confederate ones and with red T-Shirts that said 'The People's Republic of Cork.' Red was there color and any red would do, I guess. Didn't see any Nazi flags, though. Ireland was neutral in that one.

Is Travel Itself Some Kind of Accomplishment?
When I was younger, especially during my 'grand adventure' in Europe in 1972, I would go some place (Munich, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Barcelona) on a whim and then when I found some lodging I felt like I'd accomplished something. Before I saw anything or learned anything if I managed to find a place to lay my head and clean up and sit and read my books at this distant spot on the map, I'd done something, to my mind.

Oh, yeah, I got out and saw the landmarks, the churches, the castles, the museums. I ate the local food and shot pictures and tried to learn something.

But just getting there. That was something. I still feel that way a little when I make it to a lodging I've reserved some place like Dublin, check in, climb the stairs and toss my bag on the bed.

Assessing Strangers
When you are traveling, especially alone, you assess the sea of strangers who surge around you.

There are dead give-aways. That woman in jeans, bright white tennis shoes and a Bud Light T-Shirt at your departure gate for Ireland is an American. I'm thinking the woman in bright-flowered capris with Henna hair could be European. But I can't be sure.

Sometimes a person's life is completely obvious, right there for you to see. When I arrived in Dublin, I got the bus I understood would take me to Trinity College. I'm peering out at each stop, trying to figure out where I am from a small map book. A man boards. He has a cane and is walking very gingerly. He situates himself standing in the exit door well. The driver objects. The objects that it's hard to bend his knee. The driver insists. He takes the seat beside me. In his hand he has an envelope. I notice it's addressed to some government agency for the disabled. I suppose he is going to post it while he is out. He sees me looking at the map and pulls out a free tourist map and offers it to me. It has landmarks clearly marked and he tells me where we are. I see this guy disabled (temporarily? permanently?) and unable to work. Doesn't own a car and would have trouble driving one. He gets out to ply his case for disability or welfare. Just to get out. There are always tourists on his bus because it originates and terminates at the airport. So he scoops up the free tourist maps and distributes them to people. He is nice enough but I know that he likes doing this. I feel there isn't much interaction in his life. He likes having maps to give tourists and always carries them. It's a good map, too, and I use it for the rest of the trip and even find a place with more copies and get another for Mags.

I don't know what to think about people and their behavior toward beggars. Particularly a woman I see on O'Connell bridge who passes up a beggar with a paper cup and then rushes back to put something in it.

Twice I did a double take in Dublin. Once because a guy on the street looked to be trying for an Oscar Wilde look-a-like contest and another time because a guy resembled James Joyce. Accident? Intention? Locals or not?

While I was waiting for my friend to arrive at the college, I sat outside a while and watched people. A man in jacket and tie holding a sheaf of papers? An academic for sure, wouldn't you say? Extra points if the jacket is tweed or corduroy. When I see people wearing badges I know they are at a conference of some sort.

Sometimes people declaim their postion as in the Irish Woman who asked about the train's arrival and then riffed a bit on Ireland and, I gathered, her place in it.

Sometimes people say who they are by their books. In Rembrance Park two women had a guide book in a language I didn't recognize. An old man had an old volume with a tattered cover.

The guy sitting next to me on the plane on the Dublin-Chicago flight was telling me something with his two photos

What Goes Up Must Come Down
It occurs to me that Ireland has had a kind of linear history. Invasions, troubles, famines and finally a little stability still with poverty and finally a boom. The Celtic Tiger.

I heard about the wealth more than once and not just from the slightly dotty woman in the train station. The young man who drove us around mentioned real estate prices going up and up. He cited the tax breaks given companies. He talked about Dell's presence with a confidence you wouldn't find in Dell's home town.

One thing we know in the U.S. and in Texas: what goes up (especially if it goes up and up) will go down. Cycles happen. Bubbles burst. Booms bust.

Our general trend is that things do improve. But there are ups and downs. I bet Ireland finds out that happens to them as well. But, at least maybe they won't have a potato famine while the English are sending wheat back home. (It's no wonder there is bad blood!)

Waiting
When we are waiting to meet someone, especially when they are coming from far away, it is the most dire outcomes that push forward. If the person is late, it is usually merely a late plane or a missed connection. Nothing dire. No illness or accident. Usually things are this way...mundane.

While waiting you evaluate every passing person. You check your watch and imagine where they might be. I'm not great at waiting.

When we were in Normandy, one part of the (eleven people in all) group, a family of three, showed up hours after we'd expected them and the hotel office was closing. We were a bit panicked, putting notes on the doors, going on and checking them in and getting the key. Turned out they had a rent car problem and had to get a different one. They arrived a short time after we retired. I was anxious enough and I didn't even know them and someone else was in charge of the arrangements and rendezvous.

I've waited for people at hotels, on street corners, in the lobby of a hotel where no one was staying. At airports, of course. There's a certain anxiety in waiting. You go over the fall back plan (if you thought to have one); wonder when you will initiate the fallback plan. Usually people turn up. You hug and there it is...you are connected.

Traveling Alone, Traveling with Others

The Irish immigration officer said, "Are you traveling alone?" I didn't want to go into details so I said, "Yes." "Be careful," he said. Seems I'm often traveling alone only not really because I'm meeting up with someone at some point. Sometimes lone travelers excite interest from immigration or security officers, particularly if you were traveling with someone else. I explained too much once, at the airport in Geneva I think it was, and was grilled for an extra ten minutes.

I especially don't mind being alone when I first land on an overseas flight. It is easier being a zombie alone.

I don't mind dining alone, really, except in the top restaurants where companions seem to enhance the meal, not to mention make buying a whole bottle of wine a possibility. (I could talk about traveling with people who don't drink, but that would be another essay. My friend Mags, this trip's companion, is a tee-totaler.)

One beauty of traveling alone is there is no need to look out for, keep up with or worry about the comfort of others. When I was leaving Austin a couple lost their kid briefly in the crowd to board. Yes, the panic in the parents' eyes says it all. Plus you can see what you feel like, no agreements need be struck. Naturally, you have to do the navigation. When you are with others, if you can talk them into navigating then you can go along for the ride. That's fun. Of course, they may take you where they wish to go. There is always the question of who does the planning and who does the navigating. I try to at least draw out my companions about what they'd like to see, ask their opinions about directions. I never hesitate to agree to split up if not everyone is on the same page. On this trip to Dublin I enjoyed going places with my friend. She was great to watch me drink a pint in Davy Byrnes. That wouldn't have been much fun alone. But I was happy to visit the Guinness Storehouse and the Modern Art Museum and the National Gallery alone.

The most frustrating dealing with traveling mates has to be when you are trying to plan and navigate and you have never been to the place but people ask you questions you have no answers for. "How far is it?" "What is that building?" "Is there a post office around here?"

Of course, if you don't have a traveling companion you have to keep your carry-ons with you all the time. That means lugging them to shop for water or a magazine or get something to eat or drink. It means taking them to the restroom. It's a good reason to travel light.

If you get an aisle seat in a two seat arrangement then you may get lucky and have a single seat beside you. This is unlikely now, though in an era of sold out airplanes. If you get one of these two seat arrangements with a companion, you can flip up the arm rest if you wish. You don't feel bad about switching seats, getting your companion to get up and all that.

Traveling Light
I am always threatening to write a treatise on traveling light and yet having things the way you want them on your trip. When I travel, for each and every new trip, I revise the way I do things in pursuit of packing and traveling perfection. Nirvana is never reached. I forget my own rules because I'm always changing them.

Still I think I'm a pretty good traveller. Here are some of my rules:

Leaving Tomorrow is a Funny Feeling

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 6, 2004 — I always feel a little strange about the last day at home before a trip or the last day in a place before leaving. There is the gathering up of your belongings.

When you leave home, you leave behind thousands of things you own, taking just enough to exist on for some small period of time. Clothes, books, pens, pencils, a toothbrush, your passport, tickets, money, a guidebook. It isn't much. But it will sustain you adequately on your travels. When you gather yourself in a foreign location to move on or come home, you pack up the dirty clothes, the souvenirs, books you read and know that when and if you get home, there will be clean clothes...and all your toys and unread books.

It is when packing that we realize that we don't use much stuff on a day-to-day basis really. That we can exist on very little. And yet we are surrounded by the decorative, the potential, the obsolete, the just in case things.

Little Injuries

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 5, 2004 — I avoid the big hurts, generally. Being hit by trucks and falling down flights of stairs. I haven't even been hurt too seriously in car crashes, luckily, since I've been in a few.

But I'm famous for the little things clumsiness brings. The paper cut. Stuff like that.

Yesterday when opening the old antique door to the house we were visiting I somehow caught my little finger and smashed it so that it brushed and even bleed. It was hard to stop bleeding. But it didn't hurt. The homeowner got me antiseptic and a bandaid. I changed the bandaid later and it was still bleeding. Stopped this morning but started when I was lifting weights.

I'm glad that I'm famous for the little scrape, scratch, cut; the tiny aches and pains. Stuff that doesn't lead to much and heals and is forgotten.

Goofing Off

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 4, 2004 — Successful goofing off requires one to relax! You can't goof off if you are worrying about what you are not doing. Doesn't count. Worrying is work.

By these standards, I did a good job today of goofing off. I didn't worry about not working out. When FFP decided to do a chore and tried to suck me into it, I resisted and showered and watched tennis on TV.

While we were at an event, I stuffed my face with food, drank a couple of glasses of wine and didn't worry about being useless. I listened to other people talk about their summers working and dancing and traveling. I chatted with a guy about researching things in the Harry Ransom center. I talked with a retired dancer about exercise programs. I was relaxed, I tell you. I could talk about exercise even though I failed to do it today.

I organized myself a bit for my trip but I didn't worry too much about it all. I'm pretty ready to go. I made notes fromsome guidebooks I probably won't take into a memo to put on my Palm. I didn't get too excited about anything.

I'm not always this good at goofing off. Because it's all about relaxing.

Yeah...goofing off is only successful if you can just ignore the things you aren't doing.

Traveling Light

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 3, 2004 — Whenever I get ready for a trip, I think about the book I want to write: Traveling Light: A Guide to Packing and Life it might be called. Or Traveling Light, Lessons in Packing and Life or Traveling Light, A Guide to Life and Luggage.

I've mused about this ad nauseum before in these pages. (I did a search of the site on 'traveling light' and found all kinds of threats to write this book and all kinds of accounts of packing and lugging stuff. Not to mention all the diatribes on 'stuff' in general.

Is it traveling light if you have 39 pounds of luggage? That's what I asked before a 2000 business trip. It was a short one but business stuff was needed and lots of dress clothes. And it was winter, too. I noted that for our seventeen days in France this summer we took thirty-four pounds a piece. Not bad since sweaters and anoraks were needed in case Normandy was cool and rainy. (Turned out hot and sunny, though.)

For my week in Dublin I'm taking about thirty pounds of luggage. I may still add a couple of magazines and I may throw out a couple of things. I feel like I'm really traveling light. And my bags are not, in and of themselves, heavy. Ah, well.

Aphorisms in My Head

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 2, 2004 — There are these little aphorisms that float up in my head when I'm just going about my business. I'll be doing something I've done before like doing a cretain weight-lifting thing or dealing with something on my computer that I've gotten good at through repeated attempts. I'll remember an aphorism from a book of practice exercises for the clarinet I had when I was a kid. "Repetition makes reputation." Well, it never worked with the clarinet but perhaps because I didn't put in the time.

Then there is "Waste not, want not." I think of that one when I fret over what to do with stuff that I no longer need or want. It comes to mind a lot when cleaning out the refrigerator of ancient condiments or the pantry of misguided purchases of canned goods and marinades and mixes.

Of course, then, there is the one that pops into mind when someone dies. "Dust to dust and ashes to ashes." I suppose that isn't really an aphorism. It's something from something called "The Book of Comman Prayer" and is based on Genesis. ("for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.") Still, it is a nice factual representation of the temporal span of our lives from nothing, not existing, to something for an instant, to a rotting slowly disappearing form (or directly to ashes if you prefer).

A Little Something from Everyone

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 1, 2004 — I'm convinced that each of us has something to learn from any other person. I know this because I've learned things from people you'd least expect to know something you cared about.

The oddest little things...how to clean something, how to preserve something, how to do some ordinary task. And the big things...how to cope with tragedy, how to focus on important things, how to deal with pain.

Having said that, of course, we write off a lot of people before we learn the thing they could give us. Our time is too valuable. Honestly, there is nothing wrong with that. But when circumstances made me need to spend that time I've always found that at least I got that one thing.