Overcast, cool. I'm wondering if I shouldn't just throw caution to the winds and drive to Jack London Square and pick up some more coat hangers. And maybe some t-lights. I'm running short on t-lights and candles, my habit of lighting them as often as not in the evenings lately is emptying my stash. A hold over from the past? Hippie candles at my age? Sure, why not? Harmless enough if you don't forget to blow them out when you're heading to bed or leaving the apartment. He said with confidence.

Later. Another bus downtown to stop by Latham Square to see if there'd been changes. Didn't expect any, but it was a good enough reason to get me out of the house. Overcast, a little cool, so a sweater and a jacket. Had they moved the three planters to block the gap on Broadway? I suspect they'd done it earlier and I hadn't noticed, but a couple of pictures to note the difference.

A walk then by the City Hall, a man with two young boys beside him operating a remote control car, the car powered by a gasoline model airplane motor. Made lots of noise and boy-howdy did it have power. Zero to whatever almost instantly and out of control most of the time, so naturally a picture.

Nothing open in the City Center, so a walk over to Washington to see a baseball-stick ball game being played by fire fighters in the middle of Washington. They'd blocked off the street from 9th to 10th and installed a D.J. who was playing loud music in front of Pacific Coast Brewery. Interesting. I'd not seen anything quite like this before.

A walk then to a café to have coffee and two almond Biscotti's out at a table on the sidewalk, a walk then back to the bus stop to catch a bus back home as the sun was coming out to lose the sweater and jacket.

I've been pretty dry for these last several weeks (months, years): too much the hermit, too little travel, too little getting done and I'm not sure how change will come (without effort). Interesting times. How do they differ from similarly dry times when I was in my thirties and forties? Well, there's these damned sinuses. And the naps. One of which I think I'll take right about now, come to think of it.

Later still. A nap before another walk outside this time in the sun, heading over to the lake and on to Lakeshore, passing the restaurants packed with diners. A walk resulting in a scant one or two pictures.

Back the long way around (skipping the shorter route over the hill on Mandana) to the usual place for a lemonade. “What, no ice cream?” No. “Well then, on the house.” I'm not sure if that's good or it's bad to be so well known at a single place, but a nice twenty minutes was then spent out at a table nursing a lemonade and feeling better.

A slow ramble back to the lake to sit for at one of the benches, the sun warm, but not too warm, in shirt sleeves, finally noticing a tree with small framed pictures hanging like Christmas tree ornaments from its branches. Had they been there when I'd walked by earlier? (They were, I checked their web site later.)

Would have been interesting if they'd also set up a camera somewhere nearby to take pictures of people's reactions. I was curious to notice how many people were wrapped up in their own little worlds and didn't see them, how a smaller number did see them and walked over to look at them more closely.

Anyway, a good outing, if only in the sense I finally slowed down on the way back and paid more attention to my surroundings, none of this fuzzy headed I'm not altogether here crap, a picture of two taken for the fun of it.

Evening. Repeats of every program that was playing this evening. I may actually have to do something constructive about this dearth of after six entertainment other than bitching about it for months. Still, some guitar and then to bed early, I'd think. Deal with this mess again in the morning.