Thursday. Watched a Netflix movie last night, one that I realize I'd seen before but didn't remember the story line all the way through, although I had individual flashes of yes, I've seen this before. An odd art house quirky movie that should have left more of an impression, but obviously hadn't. I'm sure I'd originally rented it through Netflix too. Well, OK. I'll rate it four stars this time and in the event I do forget it (again) I'll know from the rating I've seen it before. As opposed to those movies that arrive and I do then remember, as they're starting, and say “oh shucks!”.

Up this morning, however, at eight. Not sure when I got to bed, but it wasn't all that late, yet I obviously needed the extra two hours. I'm sitting here now ready to head out for a haircut appointment at ten, a bit hungry, as I have yet to have breakfast, the head sitting inside a bell tower just after it had been rung. Overcast out there. Maybe that has something to do with it.

Later. A bus downtown to get the haircut, a walk then to Rite Aid for Chapstick (has the weather changed?) and vitamin D. Not sure why I take the vitamin D during the summer as I get out in the sun, but I guess once you start it's hard to stop. Rite Aid was putting up signs as I entered advertising flu shots so I added a flu shot. What's that, a three-fer? I'd think. I've learned to get them when you find them in this new world.

I'd taken the newspapers with me going downtown and managed to read the Chronicle over breakfast next door to the shop, returned to the apartment before noon thinking I should go to the usual café and finish the Times and the Tribune while they're still around, that coming from an announcement yesterday that the Tribune was combining some half dozen of its regional papers including the Oakland Tribune into one regional paper to be called the East Bay Tribune. Actually, I think they were to be combined into two regional papers, but mine is going to become the East Bay Tribune and cover a larger local area.

I remember starting my morning newspaper reading in New York by the age of twelve with the Times, the Herald Tribune and the local Yonkers paper, which I delivered as a paperboy for a number of years in grade school. Habits are hard to break, I guess. Do old newspaper boys continue to read the papers? There was one other newspaper I read, its name I forget, that was a large New York City paper that my father brought back with him on the train from his commute. I'll look them up, edit this later, be nice to remember their names.

I wonder if I'd have thought of majoring in journalism as I did back then should my years in school be happening today? I might. You do it because you like/love it if you do it at all. But that's a set of thoughts from a different time and a different era. I'd have done it then if I'd really wanted to. I had the choice, that's more than's given to many, no regrets.

Are you sure or are you kidding yourself?

I got close enough to know what it was you did day in and day out. Writing is about writing, every day, day in and day out. Journalism is the same way, it has its own demands, its own rewards. I checked them out, at least, didn't stint, and have comfortably lived with my decision.

Later still. A walk right after returning from the downtown to the morning caféto finish the papers over a waffle and coffee, calling it lunch. A walk back with a brief stop to sit on a bench by the white columns, the back muscles twitching a bit. Again, asking the question for the eleventy-millionth time: why do they ache, with so little walking/exercise, often as much as they will ache after hours of running around? Don't know. They go away pretty quickly, just another one of those things to put up on the shelf and forget about.

A nap, needed the nap, and now it's late in the afternoon after a session on the guitar. Spend my time with the guitar, finish the day out right, get to bed early, see if I end up sleeping late again and, if I do, not particularly think about it. (Hup! Hup!)

Evening. Another good evening: head clear, sinus-upper palate in check, a good attitude. Go figure.