Another one of these cheer leader exercises to get the blood pumping? Are they really necessary?

Evidently. Let's see. The camera is due to arrive from the repair shop today, I'll test it, of course, to see if it seems to focus and operate as it should. You need the tools, of course, and you have to spend the time to keep them in shape, but they're a distraction after all is said and finished. Life has its distractions, would that they were all so simple as sending it in a package to an authorized dealer for repair. But I digress, as I often digress, here in Oakland.

I should have driven on by the apartment to the hospital lab and gotten my monthly blood test to see how the thinner is working. I was debating it briefly on the way home, but drifted off into other territory and didn't bring it back into focus until I'd (automatically) made the apartment turn. Tomorrow, then. Another one of life's little tasks, be thankful they have it for those of us who need our blood to run thinner than the norm.

I'm hoping that label printing software arrives today. It's been a full calendar week now, this the first day of week number two, and these projects I keep babbling about will bloom once it's in place. Many DVD's to make, many image files to back up, many images now lost in the intricacies of the many hard drives to be revealed. I've made progress in creating a couple of new Miscellaneous Oakland pages for Art & Life, none of them posted yet. I'm looking forward to completing them and posting them online. Remember “not enough Oakland photographs for an Oakland photographer”? Well, I do.

Putting together those two pages have been something of a struggle, by the way. I'm going through a period where I'm not liking any of my photography, I'm talking at length about silly stuff like lens choices and the like, although I don't think this is particularly unusual or necessarily damaging. You go through shifts, if you don't go through shifts you really are in trouble.

The message to keep in mind is do what seems to right, make the choices that seem right and don't - particularly don't - pay attention to thoughts you may have about how others will view them. This is a hobby to keep us amused for the foreseeable future. That's the goal. You can talk about Cartier-Bresson and the rest (throw in a little Robert Capa from time to time), but this is a home brewed put up on the web for all to see because the technology allows it, a hobby photography project in a world where everyone has a camera, many an eye, a vision and suitable subjects.

Obviously another god damned pep talk told at the expense of one and all. Hup! Hup! Hup!

They're like band aids and Mercurochrome, aspirin and Tylenol: more psychological balm than anything else. Pats on the head. If I don't, no one will. We are taking care of ourself, here in Oakland, as best we know how. Life is good and even with all of the complicated equipment, photographs, if they keep you amused, are cheaper than many another thing you can read about people doing in the news.

Later. I forgot about lunch today with the old APL crew, the calendar reminder popping up in Outlook when I opened it at 11:45, the time I was to be outside the office waiting to join them to walk to a sushi restaurant down near Jack London Square. So I skipped the bus, hopped in the car and drove downtown, found a parking space in front of the restaurant on Broadway (when will that happen again?), had lunch and now I'm back no worse for wear. How bout that?

I spent much of the day buried in Art & Life pages, moving one set up to the site and starting another. As I said, I'm not liking my photography at the moment, but something is happening, getting happily buried as I was in a project is good. The camera and lens hadn't arrived when I got back, so I guess I'll chill, do some more HTML and, I don't know, take a nap.

You had sake with lunch?

Not very much.