All your need to do is get off your ass and ask.

I know, but I'm an old fart and effort is discouraging.

Old fart rationalization. A sign of what's to come.

As a techie I'm more susceptible to buying gadgets, although the XM On the Go radio that arrived yesterday seems a necessary item for pretty much everyone. It works just fine. This one sits in a cradle connected to my stereo and can be easily moved to another cradle in the car once I've figured out how to install it in the car (the antenna: I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do with the antenna).

I think, realizing I'm going to retire soon, that I'm acquiring things with the half formed idea I won't have the money to buy them when the income goes down the toilet. Then again they'll all be obsolete next year, the new models more powerful and less expensive and thoroughly more wonderful (no doubt) that anything I've just acquired. Kind of like a car you drive a hundred and fifty thousand miles in a year so you need to replace it with a new one every eighteen months. Then again, if you're putting a hundred and fifty thousand miles annually on a car, you're probably an insomniac truck driver who's generating enough freight income to cover your overhead. But again I wander.

Still, XM radio. With however many hundred channels, I still went through the list realizing there were only a few that might hold my interest. Better, I suppose, than the one or two I can listen to on the commercial dial. I admit I wanted to hear what Bob Dylan was playing and saying on his Wednesday morning show and this thing allows me to set its clock and record it. I suppose I could bring it in and set it up at work, but that seems ambitious. Everything, everyday, seems ambitious.

Bullshit.

Now you're starting to sound like a broken record.

The days are tiresome, but the head is clearer and more solid in the evenings so I've been getting up out of my chair and puttering around doing things. Little things, inconsequential things, but things that denote progress, even if only snail's pace progress. The upper teeth don't really ache all that much anymore, the problem area is getting smaller, the thought (for example) of setting up a tripod and a couple of lights in the living room to shoot a self portrait is getting stronger (But not, as of yet, leading to actual action. These things take time and contemplation and writing about it at length here). So. Here we are. In Oakland.