Later. A short walk with a long lens over to the lake just to get out of the apartment finding a flock of eleven pelicans fishing along the shore, another pair not far beyond.

I'm not sure I've ever seen more than maybe three pelicans together on the lake (which hardly means it's true), so these guys must be passing through on their way to wherever. Wish I'd had the patience to get better pictures. Oh, and an egret and a duck. Handsome devils but, you know, common everyday denizens here at the lake. We're becoming ever more blasé in our old age.

Later still. Noon, time for lunch. Not particularly hungry, but enough to get me out the door again to think of going downtown to eat something at a table in the City Center, but crossed Grand and walked along the lake instead. The group of eleven pelicans was now down to six, so a picture with a shorter general purpose lens on the camera this time.

Back to the bus stop, the bus due in two or three minutes, still deciding whether to go downtown and before finally saying to hell with it and returning to the apartment. It's now mid to late afternoon, the sun nice, the temperature behaving. Maybe I can convince myself to pick up a steak sandwich at the drive-in across Grand, maybe not. Doesn't this come up every morning, noon and night? It does. Every day of every week written down in quotidian detail.

What the hell. I say I'm in a rut and I indeed am in a rut, but I'm apparently not all that upset. Upsets will come with a plan? You'd suspect, although I'm not sure in what form or which direction they might demand. If they lead anywhere any different from the where I am now. But we'll see. We'll know. Unless we don't.

Evening. Went across the street and brought back the steak sandwich. They're not all that good, but they're palatable and I can get them down. Nothing like ice cream, but then very little in life is like ice cream. Still two pounds over my want to be weight of one-sixty, so that hasn't been an issue, just the idea of certain foods puts me off and their list is long. Life would have been easier if I'd figured out how to bring this condition on when I was young.

Some decent time on the guitar. A repeat of the French Spiral on television at six, the Korean Orpheus soap was genuinely horrible, but in spots. Interesting for five minutes and then horrible (idiotic, incomprehensible and puerile without the saving grace of being weird) for ten minutes. I've vowed to give it up completely (which may or may not hold tomorrow when the next episode comes on).

You said you're in a rut. There's always cable.

One can only fall so low. We follow our own odd definitions around here, only some of which make sense.

Anyway, we'll see what's up later on television, see if there's anything that will keep me after nine and, in the meantime, continue on guitar. At least the guitar has been behaving properly.