721 days, 10 hours, 49 minutes, 35 seconds

Also on yesterday's AP wire: Military Trash Becomes Florida Agencies' Treasures. Everything the U.S. Military deems no longer useful is shipped off there: helicopter parts, Vietnam-era helicopters, boats, dive platforms. An armored personnel carrier purchased for $1500 will provide extreme cover for police if they have to ram a building or whatever. Also prisoner-transport airplanes, don't leave them out of the picture. Florida has immigration problems too, you know.

721 days, 11 hours, 13 minutes, 18 seconds

One-third of the students in Texas don't graduate high school. In Houston or Dallas more than half of the kids drop out. This from education experts. This from yesterday's Houston Chronicle. More than two-and-a-half million Texans have dropped out of high school over the past twenty years. Experts warn, if this trend continues, there will be huge economic and social problems. Duh... Maybe she wouldn't have even noticed this were it not for the fact that it's Texas. She's been thinking about it all night.

723 days, 23 hours, 24 minutes, 42 seconds

It's takes awhile, sometimes, for the news to hit home. But on January 23rd, the same day as Bush's State of the Union address, beggar children in Nairobi invade a five-star hotel's food tent and grab what they can. Food is selling for $7 a plate. Most people there, the ones who work, are lucky to earn $2 a day. This is at the World Social Forum where leaders from around the world are gathered. Bush is busy writing his speech. Half a world away, in Switzerland, other leaders attend the World Economic Forum, discussing the problem of poverty. Bush is cooped up in his oval office, reading over his speech again, practicing reading out loud, hoping not to flub too many words this time. And, lest he be called a man who only cares about the rich, he decides to introduce basketball player Dikembe Mutombo, from somewhere in Africa he thinks, who recently had a hospital built, again somewhere in Africa. Underlining this, so he can double-check the town, he breaks the tip of yet another pencil.

724 days, 11 hours, 39 minutes, 55 seconds

At least the Globe hasn't warmed completely yet. Those zoo bears, coaxed into hibernation a few weeks ago, could have managed on their own now.

724 days, 23 hours, 18 minutes, 11.2 seconds

She's not the only one who's crazy here – even her husband suggested it might be fun to bundle up and stay out watching the temperature drop. It's down to fourteen degrees. And don't think she's not tempted. They could sit in the courtyard, maybe blocked from the gusting wind. But The Five Pennies pops into her head again. What she remembers most is the little girl sitting out in the rain waiting for her parents to visit. And ending up with polio, the camera zooming in on the iron lung. She would have been ten or eleven, in Atlantic City, which had two of the major polio hospitals of the time. She has no idea what her parents might have been thinking when they took her to that movie, and she's right in the middle of trying to put everything in place when her husband undresses and crawls into the bed behind her.

725 days, 7 hours, 10 minutes, 18 seconds

4:50 p.m., and twenty-nine degrees out. When she woke this morning it was thirty-four. For the rest of the night, it's supposed to go down a degree or two an hour, bottoming out at sixteen from 5:00-8:00 a.m., then slowly starting up again. She doesn't understand what all the fuss is about, can remember nights here when it got down to two degrees. Except it's been so warm this year, the world's spoiled. She thinks about staying up to watch the degrees drop. Given her sleeping patterns of late, that would be child's play.

725 days, 16 hours, 9 minutes, 37 seconds

1 day, 13 hours, 9 minutes, 37 seconds since Bush's State of the Union speech. Nothing much worth remembering, though. Her husband comments it's the first time in their twenty-two years together that he's seen her sit through the whole speech. And she supposes it is. They sprawled on opposite ends of a gold sofa bought last year, she watching tv, he with a radio and headset on. Their tv has been problematic for months now, cutting out briefly every five or ten minutes. And he didn't want to miss a word. She, on the other hand, really enjoyed those frozen, distorted faces. State of the Union.

729 days, 5 hours, 53 minutes, 1 seconds

Snowing hard in Chicago during the second half. She can see it on the screen. And she thinks of the tv snow she saw as a child. Interference, it used to be called. Another sports term. Another political concept.

729 days, 8 hours, 26 minutes, 4 seconds

Chicago and New Orleans. Blue and Gold. She's trying to be adult here. Having hated football as a child, she's trying to watch with him. She roots for New Orleans, the city after Katrina, trying to pull itself up in spite of our government. They've spent some wonderful time there, listening to music, just walking Bourbon St. She watches two tackles and one interception. But all she sees is blue and gold, gold and blue, those dreaded summer camp color-war divisions. Turnover, punt, turnover, punt. It was never fair.

730 days, 11 hours, 4 minutes, 19 seconds

She did dream last night, one of the few lately she remembers, and it was of her computer being hijacked. Something called Road Warrior, an animated white screen in the center of the desktop, indexing all her files. Then, trying to record it this morning, Dragon crashed. On reboot her desktop icons were raised almost off the screen, and Dragon wanted to come up with a C+ runtime screen but never got that far. He tells her Hillary's now officially running for President. He says this election promises to be a battle. She reboots again, everything back in position, re-records her dream. It's shorter now.

730 days, 11 hours, 6 minutes, 34 seconds

He says she's dreaming.

730 days, 11 hours, 18 minutes, 13 seconds

She was awake at 3:15 a.m., unsure whether she'd been asleep for awhile or not. She got up. It looked as if there was fog outside the window. She went to the bathroom, then downstairs to take a muscle relaxant, which she supposes she should have taken before she went to bed. That fog is really snow. She sees it coming down fast outside the kitchen window, maybe a quarter inch accumulation on the ground, even on the sidewalk. There would have been reasons to get dressed, go out and enjoy it, but he was sleeping beside her. She assumed it would still be there in the morning. She assumed a lot of things.

731 days, 10 hours, 30 minutes, 7 seconds

Alone in the exam room waiting for results. With no one here to look at, she picks up Family Circle. "Can This Marriage Be Saved;" a three-page ad with mothers telling how proud they are of their enlisted daughters; a Topomax ad which shows a woman with her fists clenched, wedding band clearly visible on her finger: "Do you worry about migraines even when you're not having one?" No. No, no, no, no, no.

731 days, 11 hours, 0 minutes, 29 seconds

Of all the folders here, hers is one of the thickest. Mammograms once a year, sonograms twice a year since that last cancer, biopsies, wires inserted to mark the spot. The surgeon wouldn't have even been suspicious yet, that's how good this lab is. The technician takes four pictures, picks up all the records, leaves her alone with the machine. She'll be back.

731 days, 11 hours, 20 minutes, 34 seconds

If she wasn't here today she'd be teaching at a senior center. When she started these workshops, over thirty years ago, it was almost but not quite her grandmother's generation, then her mother's. Now they're more or less her contemporaries. Mostly women. Mostly in good health. One man with diabetes. Another man left when he was hit by a car crossing Queens Blvd., came back for awhile, then left again when his son died.

731 days, 11 hours, 32 minutes, 41 seconds

A woman across from her puts her PDA back in her pocketbook and pulls out a compact, pushes her hair back in place, pulls out her PDA again. And she thinks of last night in the theater. A woman beside her pulled out lipstick five minutes into the first act. The smell as bad as perfume. In a dark scene change she crawled over her husband and the friend next to him to get to an empty seat at the end of the aisle. And, actually, she could see better there.

731 days, 11 hours, 37 minutes, 38 seconds

A hot pink cashmere turtleneck with a thick gold necklace. A tailored grey pants suit with a low-cut white lace top. Thick black beads. Three coats with fur collars (one of them purple). She wears jeans and a black top. No jewelry. And she refuses to hide behind the New York Times.

731 days, 11 hours, 46 minutes, 53 seconds

She enters and takes a seat in a room full of women. And one man. This was one of the first places in the country to focus solely on breast diagnosis, her doctor told her, years ago. It took six months to get this appointment. Ten or twelve years ago she recalls sitting here, bored, staring at the women around her, trying to guess for whom this was just routine, who would be called back for further tests. Then she was called back. Today she sits close to the one man.

731 days, 12 hours, 12 minutes, 26 seconds

If she's headed for the doctor's, and she takes a taxi, and the taxi drives across 79th St. through the park, she can see patches of snow on the top of rocks, or icicles hanging down the walls of the transverse.

731 days, 22 hours, 32 minutes, 34 seconds

So okay. It's been a warm winter. But remember, there was snow today. You had to be quick to spot it, but it was snow. And probably just north of the city much of it stayed on the ground. But then she comes home at close to midnight and finds a fly in the apartment. She's not kidding – only one window cracked, and it has a tight screen, but somehow this fly got in. Large, half dead, flying back and forth between her and the computer screen. Finally she traps him against a wicker cabinet in the bathroom. He doesn't even try to get away.