In a way, this could be considered a lost day. I had a plan, and that plan fell through. But nothing horrible happened, the earth is still rotating on its axis, we're not at war yet, spring training starts in three weeks, and in the end I can be happy with how things turned out today.

The plan was that Mom and I were going to see a movie this afternoon. I even got up early to get enough done in the morning to justify going out later in the day. For some reason I woke up at the same time today, a Saturday, as I usually get up on working days. This is supposed to be the day I catch up on sleep, but it wasn't happening. So I took advantage of the extra time.

The Boss faxed me some notes this morning, and I can report that the new fax machine works fine. That was the only function that I hadn't tested, its ability to receive faxes. At least, it was the only function I plan to use. I'm sure it does other things that I'll never even know about. I use a tiny percentage of the total capabilities of all the hardware and software at my disposal.

It's about the same percentage as the total available brainpower I use. It's comforting to realize I could do great things, if I only knew what they were and how to do them. This is the kind of insight you get when you read pop psychology books and only understand a small percentage of them. Somehow you fill in the gaps, and it almost makes the world make sense.

Ooh, nice tangent. I wondered how I was going to fill up a whole page on a day when my plans fell through.

We got to the Rialto on time, barely, but the parking lot was totally full. I've never seen it like that before. Here it was, the first time I was going to a movie this year, and there was no place to park my new Saturn. I had no intention of parking it on the street, so after driving around the lot and making sure, we left. No movie today.

I dragged Mom to Office Depot so I could get the W2 envelopes I forgot yesterday on every one of my three shopping trips. She was kind enough to claim that she didn't mind missing the movie, because she was enjoying my new car. It was her first time riding in it.

I tried to take her to the grocery store, but that lot was also full, so I took her home and tried to salvage at least part of the day by fixing her computer so that it didn't filter out my notify list messages as spam and send them to the junk file. I guess we won't know if I succeeded until the next time I send out a notify message.

Anyway, the day was a disappointment, but not a total washout. I guess. I got to come home and do some more work, which should make the last week of January go more smoothly than it otherwise would. That's something, at least.

We'd been planning to see Far From Heaven, because of the glowing recommendations I've received and because it's now playing only once a day, which probably means it's on its way out of the theater. The Rialto started out as a place that showed independent, art and foreign films, but to stay in business it had to start showing more conventional fare as well. Now it's successful, too busy for its own good maybe. As Yogi Berra said, Nobody goes there any more. It's too crowded.