Today I spent the day relaxing, goofing off, and catching up on some miscellaneous things. I really want at least one day a week when I don't have to do stuff right now. Not a work day when I'm running to and fro putting out fires and scrambling for my life. Not the usual Saturday when I'm spending time with my friends. Just a day where I'm by myself and work on things at any speed I choose.

First, I didn't get to sleep Friday night until 06:00. I had a few shows and movies that I had taped throughout the week and I wanted to clear that backlog. While I had the videos playing it took me a couple of hours to clean up from the BattleTech session and write up the results. Late night, when I'm tired, I can still work as long as it doesn't take any original thinking, although I slow down appreciably.

So this morning I work at about noon. Then I drove to Berkeley to check my post office box. I've had this PO box since I was a sophomore or junior in college. Moving around so much, it's a good idea to get some sort of permanent mailing address. It's so much trouble to keep changing your mailing address with all these companies.

After getting my mail I headed back to Concord and stopped at the local Safeway to do my weekly grocery shopping. This is my chance to get a Sunday paper and replenish some of my stores. The only useful thing I get out of my Sunday paper is the TV Week. I like to go through the movie descriptions to see if there is anything I want to take in the coming week. In contrast, TV Guide doesn't have that kind of information which is why I don't use TV Guide.

I keep my grocery shopping down to $25 a week. It's not a hard and fast rule, but something to keep in mind as I'm wandering the aisles, putting random things in my shopping cart. My limit used to be $20, but inflation takes its toll. Actually, I used to limit myself to nine items or less so I could go to the express lane, but later on I changed my shopping habits and seemed to always get more than nine items.

Berkeley and Safeway took me almost two hours, a lot of it spent on the road. I came home and watched Xena, which I had let tape an hour before. Then I set up the VCR to tape Stargate and walked to the local theater to watch "Three Kings". Walking to the theater and back is probably the most exercise I get in the week. It's a 20 minute walk each way, quite pleasant although sometimes it's a bit hot like today was.

Three Kings is an ok movie. The camera work is rather stylistic, lots of footage that has this quality to it that's hard to describe. It's like it's been aged. But it was quite and enjoyable movie, fair amount of action and some character development. Going to the movie and back took almost three hours so it was almost 19:00 when I got back.

Then I watched Stargate. After that I watched 12 Monkeys on ABC, Practical Magic on HBO, and The Pretender. Meanwhile, I prepped for the next BattleTech session, made and ate dinner, and wrote the weekly BattleTech news for my campaign. This all took me until 02:30 and I then watched Pensacola: Wings of Gold, another show I like. And now I just finished this journal entry a little after 03:30. And this is my Saturday.