I'll be two weeks into this knee business come Friday, a good day to take stock, a good day to set off (finally) on a new project or two, get this knee whining behind me. Oh, and his doctor recommended a double dose of Aleve during the day, an anti-inflammatory pain killer, something I suspect I can find easily enough at my local pill emporium. So we're hyped, right? I think we are.

My computer froze up just now in Dreamweaver, losing something like three paragraphs, something it's learned to do routinely these last many months. Once its frozen up after about an hour into the day it will run the rest of the day without error once its been rebooted, but it's a pain. So I ordered an upgrade to Windows 7 yesterday with the idea of installing the 64 bit version and adding only the minimum number of applications I need to survive. PhotoShop and Lightroom, of course, my copy of Photo Mechanic and a browser or two. Microsoft Office, I guess, I need access to Outlook. No way around that.

I'm sure there are days of frustration ahead, but something's wrong with this installation of Windows XP, some device driver issue, some combination of the moon and the stars and the devil himself. A deal with the devil, these computers. Undoubtedly what makes them so successful. We do like our deals with the devil.

Those lost three paragraphs? The whisking away of one of life's great batches of indelible undying prose? A description of breakfast (“I had breakfast at the usual place”)? Something like that. A thought this week, with the knee getting better, that this week is the real start of spring for this old coot, one or another photography project now appropriate to put into play.

A drive up Highway 1 for a day or two, a trip I haven't taken in decades, a trip many times taken in the early seventies when I was new to San Francisco? Once it was up over Mt. Tam to Stinson Beach, up the early morning coast on motorcycles, breakfast or lunch or whatever up there in tourist central. Now nada. Lately nada. Nada. How has tourist central changed over these intervening years? Could be worth a peek. And a picture.

So much for lost paragraphs.

Later. I've been having this urge to go for a walk. The leg and the knee really aren't aching in comparison to what's gone before. So will a walk, even a short walk screw the pooch? I did push it Saturday and paid the price that evening. Still, that was two days ago, pushing the envelope seems to have led to this current much better condition. Fizzle! Pop! Mumble! Groan! OK, that's enough, let's get outside, see what the real world is about.

Later still. Back now after a walk somewhat longer than the two earlier walks I took this week, but not nearly as long as the Saturday train wreck. A slow walk, a hobbled walk, but a less hobbled walk than I might have attempted even yesterday. And no pain. Well, a bit of an ache here and there if I wasn't careful, but we're clearly on the road to recovery. Thank goodness. I'm running out of ways to say my leg hurts.

Walking down a hill is still the more difficult. Take it easy, take your time. A picture of a wall along the way. Nothing much to see, but easy to stop and take the shot from an odd angle that let's me tell myself I'm being adventuresome and clever and all, if not particularly creative (and all).

Turning the corner a young couple was parking a Ferrari near the parking lot on Euclid just off Grand. A new Ferrari (from the look of it). An older African American dude who's shopping cart and belongings were sitting down by the corner was kibitzing with them - “nice car, wouldn't mind having one myself, a little class beside the grass here on Adam's Point” - and they were responding in kind. Nice. No fuss. They head out for the lake, the old African American dude hooks up with his cart and I, the old Anglo fart heads for the park. I'd have snapped a picture, but that seemed, I don't know, overly fawning for a cool dude who's just run smack dab into a parked Ferrari on a street more accustomed to Dodge Darts (and Honda Elements).

Guys, it doesn't matter where we're from, whether we grew up farting through paper or farting through silk, pay attention when they bump into a Ferrari if only to, ahem, wrinkle our oh so sensitive nose. The guy driving it was in this thirties, more likely forties (hard to tell anymore), quite good looking (the low life son of a bitch), the lady certainly attractive, but not so much so as to suggest she was selected for a Ferrari owner's trophy neuroses. So, good taste in cars combined with good taste in ladies (the low life son of a bitch). Not sure he wants to be parking his iron on our street other than during daylight hours though. They'd come to run the lake, so I wandered on still fighting the urge for a photograph.

Returning maybe forty five minutes later (there was a cup of coffee out at a table in the middle of that walk) the car was still in place and in one piece, so I took two or three pictures because, well, as I said, it's hard to ignore a Ferrari when you see one in the flesh. Even at my age. And experience. And intelligence. And maturity. I'd go on, but my tongue is hanging out and I don't want to step on it more often than I must.

Pretty exciting stuff for an old coot on a Monday, don't you think?

Boy-howdy, Mr. Jimmy. Boy-howdy indeed. And did I mention that the knee feels better? Better than any old Ferrari you might see? I believe I did.