Wednesday. Up at seven with nine good hours of sleep last night. We'll see if that helps as the day goes forward. Back now from breakfast at nine to prepare for my guitar lesson at ten. Am I prepared? I have no idea, but I've had a good week. Some ups and downs, as any week has ups and down, but the practice has gone well here in Dingle Dell.

Later. I learned a couple of things with this lesson: one or two of which were technical, which is good, keeps you from developing bad habits; and one to do with my practicing routine, which needs an adjustment. Which is rather opaque, but underlines why lessons are worthwhile. It would have been nice to have had access to an instructor or mentor in my earlier years for one and another of my endeavours, makes you aware of how you'd have done things differently had you known this when you started. An advantage of aging, I suspect, not sure what I can do with it now this late in the game.

The sinus-upper palate thing is active, but I'm not particularly tired. Some signs of the double vision driving to and from the lesson, nothing too out of whack, but interesting to see how things are now that I've had two decent night's sleep. So the week progresses, we'll see how it goes. Here's where I generally throw in a couple of hup, hups! You can tell I'm enthused.

Later, later. A bus downtown at eleven-thirty thinking a cup of coffee and something to eat out in front of Peet's would be a good idea, deciding, when I arrived, to go to the City Center instead remembering there'd be a band playing at noon. The center was crowded, the band doing sound checks on the stage, a seat oddly available in front. Good. Felt the sleep last night may have helped.

The Family Crest, not a band name I found encouraging, was playing and they were good. Young, attractive, a bit eclectic in their mix, a first class singer, I was pleasantly surprised. I'd guess their name The Family Crest does work as a description of the band, as I thought “yuppies” from the look of them - the clothes, the equipment, the demeanor - but nothing wrong in that when you have talent and they have talent.

They'd also booked two young women (I'm afraid all women are young from my perspective anymore) in clown costumes preforming on stilts. My, my but City Center seems to be going all out this week before Art & Soul kicks off on Saturday. Nice to see something happening however it may work out.

A walk then most of the way home before getting on a bus and heading to the ATM and then on to lunch at the usual place. I was hungry, hadn't had a large breakfast. Had beef teriyaki with broccoli, carrots and zucchini thinking best to have such every now and then in place of the usual ice cream, M&M's and sake. I believe I've read that somewhere: vary your diet, now and again add items from some of the lesser known food groups. Zucchini, I believe, is one of those.

So back to the apartment still feeling good. A few aches and pains, but not tired. Not sure how far I walked today, no more than a couple of miles, and it worries me a little (a very little) that sore muscles should result from but two miles, but they'll go away soon enough. There doesn't seem to be any way to predict. Sometimes you ache for very little exercise, sometimes you don't ache for a lot. Or is that the norm, something people who've actually exercised in their lives have always known?

Evening. I thought of sushi and sake for a minute or two and then decided to pass. Let's see how I feel after a week or so without any alcohol to potentially affect these various symptoms I go on about. I'm not particularly hungry; the scale was on target at one-sixty this morning, let it stay there for a while; the world appears good, why look for trouble? (And spend that many dollars so soon again on dinner?)

Hup, hup.