Wednesday January 11, 2006 6:15 am Ballina NSW

A. Morning Musings

6:15 am Overcast, but for the first time in almost a week, it isn't wet from an overnight rain. 6:25 am

6:35 am While making these musings and plans a flock of corellas flew over. The racket was really quite spectacular. I went out on the porch to see what was causing it and about 50 large white birds flew right overhead. 6:40 am

6:50 am I have the broad strokes of my plan for the day completed. Now to sit back and muse. I have yet to make coffee. I will try pulling back on this and see what happens. Water is a good substitute. For reasons that are difficult to account for, I really like using the water bottle that we bought last April in Brisbane that is hand painted with frangipani flowers and has a set of 4 matching glasses. I have just taken a few pictures of it and will add one to this page when I download them.

Musing is hard work. While thinking about what to think about, I realized that I should add one more book to my list of semi-regular readings: a book that is about journal writing and notebooks. This would be a nice supplement to the technical books (XML and mathematics) and Literature (novels). I should also have the computer hooked up to the Internet so I can easily access the OED. 7:05 am

8:20 am Continuing to muse, I should also try to put in a couple of hours a week on the book "Ideas" by Peter Watson. 8:25 am

B. Plan

6:25 am My mind has immediately jumped to setting up a plan for the day. I will stay with this for a few minutes and then return to the morning musings section. Uppermost in my mind is the fact that I take the car into Lismore this morning for maintenence. I will take my backpack, a book, and an umbrella. This may be an opportunity to take my binoculars and see if I can see anything near the river. I have yet to take a walk into the rainforest park near the hospital and look for birds there. We plan to meet Sue for lunch at an outdoor cafe in Lismore. I should fill the car with gas while in Lismore as the price is usually about 10 cents cheaper than in Ballina. The daily beach walk could be taken right now, or I can leave it until we return from Lismore. A small, but important item is the tummy exercises on a towel. Dinner will be another new recipe, this time called "Chicken with Lemon and Capers". I have all of the ingredients for it and the chicken is thawing out in the refrigerator. 6:50 am

C. Actual

8:20 am We are back from our beach walk. The flock of corellas was still around and I think I got a few good photos. Then a fog bank rolled in off the ocean and I tried a few more photos with the special lighting. I have no diea if they will turn out. The fog then started to change to rain so we cut the walk short, but it was still nice to get outdoors. 8:25 am

D. Reflection

8:00 PM We did a shortened beach walk in the early morning before rain forced us to return to the unit. I failed to do my tummy exercises before we left for Lismore. I did avoid having a morning coffee and tried water instead. That seemed fine.

As expected, we spent the day in Lismore. We dropped the car off at the Nissan dealer and then went downtown to have lunch with Sue. The meal was delicious. I had smoked salmon and capers with avocado on a turkish bread. The car received its regular 30k maintenance as well as a safety inspection for the renewal of the car license ( a pink slip). I then went over to the NRMA office in Lismore Square and renewed my insurance and received a "green slip" for additional insurance. I am now ready to go to the RTA office in Lismore to renew my car license, probably next week.

I also spent some free time reading a bit from "Dr. Riemann's Zeros". I developed an idea for a graph that plots progress against time and uses Inspiration to place shapes for ideas and oblong rectangles for the life-span of important individuals. Adding some connecting arrows should make the diagram more meaningful as well as messier.

We did a fair amount of walking downtown which compensated for the shortened beach walk. It was very hot and we were definitely perspiring as we returned to the Nissan dealer.

After we returned home I made "Chicken with Lemon and Capers" which turned out very well.

Reviewing the notes for today, the one gap is the tummy exercises. I will do this right now. Done. I doubt that I will notice any real difference for at least 2 - 3 weeks. We shall see.