It still says it's in stock and the order has been sent to their warehouse, but no notice so far that it's been shipped. Probably better I hadn't checked. They send an email when an order goes out with a tracking number. Just sit tight and don't think about it, right? Right. And check the email once or twice. Every minute.

Embarrassing to admit, don't you think? Acting like a kid at Christmas? At your age.

What the hell, some of that never goes away. I've always understood there's more than one idiot kid here in the mix.

Later. OK, B&H has a shipping number beside the order on their web site. I'll get an email confirming it later. Tuesday, I'm assuming, having paid for three day shipment. I'm good with that. I'll sit here and wait. I will.

Off to the lesson and back. It went reasonably well, although I still don't quite have Cinnamon Girl down to the point anyone would want to hear it played in their presence. By me. Deedle-dee-dee. I've had a couple of others I've struggled with and I've been including them in my ongoing practice sessions, working after the fact to get them tighter so I finger and hit those chords just right. Yes indeed I do. Anyway, we're doing Tumbling Dice this week along with a longer set combining the blues riffs we've been practicing now piece by piece. They sound good when played by my instructor. We'll see what they sound like with the student on guitar. This week. (Hup!)

Lots of sun right now. I have another delivery coming today, an attachment for that camera that's coming Tuesday (I hope: still no email from B&H), so who cares if I'm here to receive it today? I'm thinking a walk down to the morning café for lunch. I'm hungry. Still under my target weight, so hungry is OK. Actually it's OK even if I'm over my weight, I've never been into self flagellation over food. Or most anything else that isn't so illegal that you might get caught.

Doesn't sound like you've been tested very hard in this life.

Everyone's been tested, just not in all things (thank the Fates), the wheel of life seems to act like a roulette wheel more often than not. Some say life is indeed a wheel and what you don't get in this go around you'll get in another. For the time that's left we'll just keep our head down and take the occasional picture and assume there aren't any really startling lessons still coming down the pike.

Later still. A walk down to the morning café starting out along the lake, a BLT, potato salad and coffee out alone on the patio (it had been raining earlier I guess), a walk then back to the apartment arriving just before three. Lots of sun, some ominous looking clouds disappearing off to the north, but sun and, one hopes, a preview of what's coming tomorrow. (Went back just now and checked the weather forecast: yes, tomorrow, in the seventies, hup!)

Evening. My waitress gave me another of those cupcakes with the (I say cream cheese, but some kind of) cheese inside and, since it was wrapped in plastic, I dropped it in my pocket and took it home and put it into the refrigerator. I tried some of it just now. Some of it. It definitely doesn't agree with my stomach and the remainder now sits in the pail under the sink. So we learn. It takes us more than many to learn these little lessons - don't eat the brown berries, stay off the lawn - but I do eventually learn. I do.

Some time on the guitar, some time listening to the news (I'm still not sure it doesn't make you cranky and rot your mind) before not watching the six o'clock Scandinavian police procedural at six (the Scandinavian police procedural is often an Italian police procedural except when it's something completely different, this particular T.V. channel a bit scuffed from scraping the bottom of the barrel for so long) so I took a look at my Dykes on Bikes section again on artandlife. It needs work. It needs a lot of work; enough, in looking at it, the very thought of it slows me down. Way down. But we'll see. Maybe we can pull off a “forward one picture at a time” approach, let the thing evolve over a month or so and let it happen.

And finally, going online, UPS says the camera is due to arrive Tuesday, May 1st. A day when things to photograph are going to be happening out there on the street. More than one. Does one hang around here waiting on delivery (which is guaranteed to come when the day is over if indeed you've decided to stay and wait?) or does one get out and photograph these potentially quite interesting May Day events, asking the apartment manager to sign for it if he's around? I think we take our chances and go out and shoot. The only problem, if it's really a problem, is there's a one day's delay. Is this even a question? The idea here is to take photographs, right? Not about all this equipment crap.

We'll see.

I'm afraid we will.