5.081 writers, music, movie

Tuesday 02/20/2024

Did a couple of chores first thing, and then still had time to write something for the writers group meeting at 10:45, so I did. The cue was “your favorite hour of the day” and that was an easy question to answer.

After lunch I did some music practice. One thing: the song that Lynn wants to duet on is one I’d never heard, Jimmy Durante’s “One of Those Songs”. She had a sheet with guitar/ukulele chords on it but I wanted to hear it better, so I looked for versions on YouTube, and I found a real gem. This is just too good. Now, there is no way Lynn and I could reproduce this performance but it sets a bar for enthusiasm.

After supper I had the AV job of running a movie. In this case it was Kramer vs. Kramer with an impossibly youthful Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep.

Here’s what I read to the writers group. It’s very meta, talking about itself and all.

I like 8 to 9am.
I am at my sharpest, most alert, most productive. I exit the bathroom showered and shaved. While I dress I hold the shape of the coming day in my mind, its lumps and gaps. I anticipate the times of trouble, times of accomplishment, times of rest.

And usually, I have a mental list — or, often, a physical, written one — of things I need to do. Then I do them. Briskly.

Today I had two listed items, scrawled on the back of a waste sheet of paper last night as I was going to bed, and I quote:

1099
Docent

This morning, after making the bed, putting on shoes, and — the last step of dressing — taking the phone from its charger and slipping it into my pocket, I sat down at the desktop computer, signed in to Schwab, and downloaded the 1099 forms for my various accounts: PDFs dropping neatly into the folder named 2023 Tax data.

Moving to the laptop — because for reasons unclear, the bookmark for the Computer History Museum volunteer sign-up sheet isn’t on the desktop machine — I reviewed my Google calendar for the rest of this week, and reviewed the list of available time slots for docent tours. I meant to pick one, but there were two that looked like fun and I signed up for both, updating my Google calendar to mark off the time for each. There’s a couple of accomplishment time-lumps to be considered on Thursday and Friday.

And looked at the clock: it was 8:25. I love 8 to 9am; there’s still time to hack up some kind of essay for the writers group…

But there were several essays to the group that were better than that. I can’t quote them because I don’t have permission. But this group writes good stuff.