Saturday. Another lights out by ten last night to awaken at six-thirty this morning. Success. A walk on a going to be sunny (and warmer) day to breakfast to find activity in the parking lot at the base of my hill on Grand walking home. Not sure what they're about to do with the piece of equipment pictured above, but they're going to build an apartment house on the site later this year. Any excuse for a picture.

The Cherry Blossom Festival today and the parade tomorrow. Yes, I've been wondering how they'll both fare with my ever increasing tendencies to want to stay inside and not venture forth, even for pictures. We'll have an answer in the next paragraph.

Later. I did go to San Francisco and I did photograph the Cherry Blossom Festival that was well underway when I arrived at noon. I'd been fighting the idea of going right up to the point of getting on the bus at my stop, telling myself I could always return to the apartment before getting on BART once I was downtown. These thoughts totally went away on entering the bus and I had a perfectly good trip to Japantown, no negative thoughts at all.

Which is a little disconcerting, to say the least. Why all the angst and internal turmoil about going somewhere more than a couple of miles outside my ever shrinking comfort zone?

Oh, and the Cherry Blossom Festival. Very few pictures and, the few I was able to find, were at best marginal for the hour or so I was there. Knew it was going badly, but why? There were a lot of people, but not many in costume. There were drummers and such on stage playing to a large crowd, but I was able to find little of what I've usually been able to easily find in earlier outings there. Too distracted? Too warm?

Too warm to be wearing a long sleeve shirt without a jacket, anyway, should have worn a t-shirt and even that would probably have been too warm. I can use that to say it got in the way if I were fishing for excuses. I wasn't physically tired, I don't think, anyway. Had to stop now and again to cool down, but again, large crowd, but few candid photographs. Maybe should have taken a single camera and lens, traveled lighter? You can easily think yourself into circles. Who knows? Who cares? Who's counting?

OK, hopeless. Headed home, a bus arriving as I crossed the street to the Geary bus stop and so comfortably back to BART in a half empty bus, a train pulling into the station as I got off the escalator downtown. My, my. No luck with the photographs, lots of luck with waiting for the transportation to arrive. The BART train (plenty of seats available), however, ran behind schedule. I was wondering if they were having the track trouble they've been writing about recently, the train slow and stopping more than once, arriving finally in downtown Oakland five minutes after the bus was scheduled to arrive.

OK, we'll have lunch at the City Center and wait the thirty minutes for the next scheduled bus, except the bus was itself running those five minutes late, arrived at the stop just as I exited the BART escalator and I copped an immediate ride home. Well, to the burger drive-in stop for a grilled chicken sandwich. I'd had a large breakfast (still under that one fifty-one this morning on the scale), but I was hungry and talking myself into a chicken sandwich wasn't the usual chore.

Downloaded the few pictures I'd managed to capture. One or two halfway decent, the rest marginal to OK. Rather have luck with pictures than luck with buses and trains. But we don't get to choose, just sit here and babble to ourself in ever tighter circles, talking about bad pictures, bus schedules and such.

Big deal, you had a bad day. They happen. Besides, there's always one worst day on any list, maybe you've now gotten yours out of your system.

Cross our fingers and hope for more luck (or skill) tomorrow.

Evening. Nothing on television. It seems some of the public stations are still raising money and the programs they use to make their pitch don't interest me, falling within their demographic or not. Ah, well. To bed and the tablet and the second season of the Ambassador series I started earlier this week. Has me hooked, it does.