Friday. Got to sleep after ten, up with the alarm. Not as much sleep as the last two nights, but things seem to be fine. To breakfast and back noting another jump in the price of gas, sitting here now in a good mood. It's overcast out there, grey, almost but not quite to the point of rain, but it will clear up. It always does. It mostly does. Generally a safe bet.

We'll see how the day goes with what seems to be some energy about. The head is in a good place. Knock on wood.

Later. A bus downtown to go by the bank and then pick up some vitamins at Rite Aid, a short walk and then a bus back home, not a picture in the entire trip. So it goes. They were blocking off streets around the City Center and the City Hall getting ready for Art & Soul tomorrow. That will pretty much take care of my weekend except for a benefit poetry reading I plan to attend for Mr. W being held in Berkeley Sunday evening.

Otherwise it's one in the afternoon, the sky still overcast, I'm back from a walk down the way to the convenience store for an ice cream cone (what else?) and now, I think, I'll listen to the news as I practice guitar. I'm sort of up for that. It's going to be a slow day from the look of it now, nothing wrong with that. The energy I talked about is still flitting about, but flighty flitting, not settling down. Maybe take a portrait or two. Maybe not. Maybe, maybe, here in the vast far flung coal fields of Adams Point Oakland.

No one understands that.

I don't understand that.

Later still. Finally there's some sun. Spent quite a bit of time on the guitar while watching a DVD movie and the various international news programs I seem addicted to on television. With the sun out now I may even take a walk, something more ambitious than the bus trip downtown earlier this morning.

A photographer friend mentioned on Facebook you can buy Art & Soul tickets online for half price, so that was nice, both day's tickets in hand off the printer at five instead of ten dollars a pop. A buck-fifty in service fees, but we won't mention that, and anyway, given the usual fees these people charge, that's cheap.

So we'll do Art & Soul starting tomorrow at noon, shoot some pictures and generally take whatever comes. Remind myself to get in guitar practice in the morning. What am I talking about? I'm not going to spend more than a couple of hours at the festival, more than two hours will tucker me out, do the guitar whenever. Too many hup, hups!

Again, the late afternoon and the evening seem to be times where the head is most clear. No ocular whatevers this day, nothing much otherwise, a bit of double vision, but fleeting and not serious. I'll still say it's getting better, happening less often and lasting for shorter periods, and I'll not think too much about I may be indulging in wishes come true and similar stuff.

When I was in the Rotunda building day before yesterday having coffee I shot two or three pictures with my iPhone. They don't allow pictures, but there was a younger couple shooting pictures with their own phones down below, as there was no building guard around at the time to intervene. So I got out my own phone, left the camera sitting on the floor, noticed the image on the face of the phone was blurry (I use reading glasses and these head symptoms, when they're acting up, make my close up vision worse) and took some few pictures noticing how technically, if not aesthetically, well they turned out. (Don't ask me why I shot the bannister other than I was in stealth mode. Silly, I know.)

Phone cameras are doing nothing but getting better and better and I hate to think what they'll be capable of in another few years. Like computers: they grow. Ho, ho. It's not goodbye the expensive Nikons yet, but that day could be coming.

I don't think that's news to anyone out there. You'll give up the Nikons when you can't lift them anymore.

It did surprise me when I brought the files up in Photoshop. The lens isn't nearly as good, but you really don't notice that in this smaller format. Nice color. I may have to do a side by side comparison next time I'm out.