I've put off building an image database to track my photographs since the beginning of time and now is the time to start. I have the tracking software, I know how to use it, why not start? To find the two photographs to frame. No need to put off the framing itself, but dedicating a couple of hours a day to a database project will shake out two needed prints. Right?

I just ordered label printing software (that was another project, looking for the label software that came with the label printer, resulting is a massive clean up of old CD's) to replace the software I can't find, which will allow nicely printed on the DVD backups of the photographs that have been sitting, two separate copies of each on two hard drives, since the beginning of time. Photographers need this, the process has started, I'll comment as the days go by for my own veracity and sanity. It's always good to have a pool of veracity and sanity in reserve, he said with a straight face, eyes wide like pies.

Breakfast at the usual place, five other customers coming in to have breakfast this morning as I read the papers, home before eight, the sky overcast, the sun expected before noon. I've been waking up in the mornings these last couple of weeks with congested lungs and it takes about an hour for them to clear. Because I leave the bedroom window open at night to cool the room? I occasionally hear the upstairs neighbor cough with a cough that says he has it too, he being, I believe, half my age. Does he leave his window open? Living too near a heavily trafficked highway, here in Oakland? Who knows? Doesn't seem to make me want to do anything about it other than to forget to mention it at the next checkup.

Later. A walk to and from the post office to post a necessary item, not enough exercise to count, but it's just now after noon and there's some possibility of sticking my nose outside again. Some. I'm hungry and don't have anything I want to eat in the apartment, that could do it. It would have in the past; now, after this stomach operation, I'm not sure. A strange and unexpected development.

I'm in the middle of reading the manual for the image tracking software. I use something called Photo Mechanic for moving photographs from the camera into the computer and adding tags, copyrights, descriptions and the like, a standard for many photographers who do a lot of shooting. In looking for the Photo Mechanic manual, I stumbled on Extensis Portfolio, software used to create image databases, software I've had in hand for years, gone through the expense of upgrading more than once and have never done more than think about using it after installation. It's another standard often used by Photo Mechanic photographers, I learned about them in a photography course. I'd forgotten this was the software needed for a tracking database. The brain..., ah, the brain, so slowly slipping its moorings.

Still, Extensis Portfolio, I have the CD, I have the serial number. (I found the label printing software, by the way, after ordering it over the web this morning. Couldn't find the serial number to activate it - the printed CD label had melted in some strange fashion when candle wax was evidently dripped on it by some idiot - so no harm placing the order. Still, finding it after a detailed search, giving up the search and ordering it online, I had a premonition. Such is life.) So, Extensis is installed, a database has started and I am making progress.

Later still. Received the estimate from Nikon. I sent my approval. A bit more than I was thinking, but in the ballpark. No complaints. If you live, perhaps you learn.