Tuesday January 3, 2006 6:50 am Ballina NSW

Morning Musings

6:50 am The trip to Brisbane was uneventful, although the two traffic delays at Tubin and Brunswick River bridge cost us an extra hour and a half. Gayle had a great time in New Zealand.

It is only day 3 of my new timetable and already I have missed by "exercise" activity for one day. A glance at the grid indicates that today is fairly full - a total of 6 hours are scheduled across 4 different activities, and I am an hour behind the timetable already. I also have some chores for today: wash the car, pick up a key from the realtor, fill up the car with gas, do some grocery shopping, and post Gayle's paintings. I have decided to use a purple background on the grid to highlight activities that I failed to complete.

On a more positive note, the sky is blue and the air is still. A very pleasant, calm start to the day. 7:10 am

10:10 am I am getting organized for the day. I have reviewed a recipe for Beef stir fry with leeks and snow peas and plan to buy the ingredients later today. I must remember to phone the Pancho Villa restaurant in Lennox Head for a reservation for tonight. Now to continue working on the web site for the novel "The Story of the Stone". I am still playing with a few ideas for the overall format. I must try to set this up as an XML/CSS set of files.

2:50 PM We are back from a trip to the CBD and have just finished a delightful lunch of cheese & crackers, mango, fruit salad and wine/beer. Lovely.

While in the Book Warehouse I bought 3 more books, all on history: Ideas by Peter Watson, In Search of the Dark Ages by Michael Wood and Medieval Lives by Terry Jones. The Watson book looks wonderful. After reading his A Terrible Beauty I am prepared to buy anything I see by him.

I also bought all of the necessary ingredients for the first recipe in the stir-fry cookbook. Tomorrow I will see how close I come to the photo. One thing I Learned was that ketjap manis is a sweet Indonesian soy sauce. I am looking forward to putting it all together tomorrow. 3:00 PM

8:10 PM Evening Reflections We are back from a superb meal at the Pancho Villa restaurant in Lennox Head. This was Gayle's treat, and it was a beautiful evening.

I am falling behind on exercise, Technology and Drawing. I will see what I can do tomorrow morning to rectify this. I am pleased with my efforts to make some notes for "The Story of the Stone". Keeping the numerous characters straight is a bit of a challenge, but now that I am making notes, it is becoming much clearer.