The alarm didn't go off (set for six - did I mention having difficulty setting it last night?), and so up at six-thirty to head off to breakfast, the usual overcast sky, but the attitude good. Well, clear headed, that alone will push the attitude positive. Some pictures of the pandorea vine as I was leaving, the vine flowering like crazy now after what seems to have been only a so-so summer.

Home now having edited and posted yesterday's entry. I was thinking of doing the laundry, but will put it off until tomorrow. Let's see how the guitar is progressing, maybe pick it up and try a little practice this morning, the lesson coming up later in the afternoon. We've done much better with the guitar this week, doesn't mean we're any further along in our ability to play.

Later. A good long nap after futzing with the Bose radio clicker to see how I may have screwed it up last night if only in that the five radio station preset buttons were probably now pointing to other odd station and discovered the stations hadn't been changed at all. Which is odd because I remembered getting weird gibberish from alien stations when I'd repeatedly fumbled with them last night. Hmm.

When I say these ocular things are a little weird I guess they really are, more so than than I imagine. Or that I don't imagine enough. Or pay attention. Or something.

Anyway, a walk then along the lake with the long lens running immediately into what I assume are five pelicans left over from yesterday, where the other eight may have gotten off to, who knows? They seem to be swimming the same stretch of the shore line scooping up whatever it is off the bottom. Not easy to get a picture that's different from any of the others after you've shot a few.

Real photographers don't have that problem.

Real photographers spend hours and hours on a shoot.

But let's see. It's now afternoon, maybe some lunch down the way (no, I can't think of anything I'd like to eat) before a brief warm up on the guitar and then off to the lesson.

Later still. Not bad. Not good, but not bad. The lesson. We're on to another song for next week, cleverly picked, I'd guess, because although simple, it contains many of the chord changes that I found difficult to hit at speed in this last lesson/song. Which is good. Just keep at it. He said. Over and over.

On by the supermarket to pick up cottage cheese, more grapes and sake. Yes sake, not two bottles this time, but six. Yes, there's a discount on six, a decent sized discount, but we're experimenting with our ability to keep it to two in an evening.

That is so much bullshit. Two: good. Three, four? You'll not feel remorse. So what you're saying is bullshit.

Again I must remind you. This is my journal. If you're going to pay for your banalities, at least you should be able to pick the banalities that appear on the bill.

Evening. A Maigret I haven't seen before so no question of watching the Korean soap I've been complaining about (other than to watch the end of it when the Maigret had finished). This while getting in a fair amount of time on the guitar. Feeling good throughout, with two of the bottles of sake disappearing as they (and I) were strumming.

Just two?

Well, three. We're into compromise. There's no chance someone like me would survive in the current Congress. Three is, after all, well, three. Deedle-dee-dee.