Later. The car is washed and gassed. Just like that. I stopped for another walk around the Telegraph Avenue area for an hour or so on the way back, camera in hand, the eye in no great shape. A couple of pictures, there's always a couple of pictures no matter the mood, and now I'm back to the apartment with an afternoon ahead. My inviolable rut of starting the day with breakfast at the same place every morning seems to be followed by an equal need to get outside before the noon hour arrives, something in the genes. Maybe you don't look a gift rut in the mouth. Maybe.

Then again, the sun shining, the temperature just right and the new Bakesale Betty's now obviously opened at the corner of Broadway and Grand. Bakesale Betty's is a bakery located in the Temescal district on the corner of 51st and Telegraph with a reputation for good things to eat. Coming home this morning there were fifty people standing out in front of their new store waiting to be served. When's the last time you saw fifty people standing in line to buy a fried chicken sandwich or a piece of pie? We'll see if there's still a line in another month. For all my carping about food I can still eat strawberry shortcake. Not sure about the chicken sandwich, but you never know until you find out. And it is located on the way downtown, a walk I make most every day. As you may have noticed.

Later still. Windows 7 arrived this afternoon and I've been backing up files from one of my hard drives in preparation. Yes, I'm going to install the damned thing, although I suspect I'll wait for the new PhotoShop to arrive before I start. Adobe said it was shipping in an email this morning, so rather than going through the hassle of reinstalling the current Photoshop and then the new one a week later, I'll wait. But in the meantime I'll back up the disk.

Why even mention this? Well, living with a computer is a pain, but living without a computer has become incomprehensible. I'm running Windows XP, have been forever, but the system freezes up. I earned my living working with Windows, I still know something about Windows and I'll get this upgrade done without too much effort, but it's still a pain in the butt. So I'll fret. And hope it doesn't continue to freeze. (Bill Gates, are you listening? Dude?)

I've been listening to the news about the oil slick approaching the Texas-Louisiana-Mississippi-Alabama-Florida coast. We've had our battles here in California to keep the oil rigs out. Nothing recent, but we had some oil spills when I first arrived in the late sixties and during the seventies when everyone pretty much decided we'd come here for a reason: the beaches, the mountains, the weather and the whole wide outdoors and oil wasn't something we were willing to live with near the coast. “Drill baby drill” doesn't get any votes.

They're saying this thing could spew oil for three months. What's that going to do to their coast? The beaches, the wetlands, the birds, the fish? They're red states, “drill baby drill” and all that, so maybe this will be a heads up. But that's a crappy thing to say as I'm sure they're as fond of their beaches as anyone else. Nasty stuff, oil.