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Here In Oakland

Art & Life


   



August 16, 2014

Entertainment

Saturday. Up with the alarm feeling pretty good for six o'clock in the morning, off to breakfast wondering how the marathon was going to make driving more interesting than it's been in the past. Yes, lanes marked off with orange cones and the local police administering the intersections (all the traffic lights flashing red instead of their usual red-yellow-green cycle), but a clear drive to the restaurant with parking still available across the street from the café. Even I can manage that.

A big breakfast I wasn't able to finish, one I could have finished, probably would have finished had I been the old, younger me, but sated anyway and ready to return home. Ah, the marathon runners were now running by along Grand and so a picture or two as I was leaving. A drive home threading the orange cones along the road, a walk then back down the hill after I'd parked to take some snapshots/pictures with a long lens on the camera.

No ambition to return for more photographs, the left knee aching a bit, but aching at a point higher than the last round, just up above the knee. I wonder if these things linger on as long as, say, a sprained ankle will linger on (as in forever)? Let's hope that's the case, that there's nothing more serious and complicated involved. He said, babbling, not thinking.

The morning overcast, the tinny sound of a distant drum as someone down by the runners is urging them along at the top of his lungs, this going on in the background now for over an hour (doesn't the guy ever get tired?). Maybe a walk down the hill again to see what was happening? I do like the long lens on the camera, the 80-400mm this time instead of the 70-200mm. I wonder if I'd find it as useful if I were to take it to one of the parades or festivals?

Later. No more drumming or shouting in the distance as I set out over by the lake, all the orange cones gone, no signs left of the marathon and so heading on through the farmers market. Sat for a while on a nearby empty bench, the head a little wobbly. Not dizzy, no vertigo, just, I don't know: the eyes a little slow in focusing on an object. Puts you off your game, it does. Not much, but enough.

Two scoops of ice cream at the ice cream shop on Lakeshore (how long has it been since I've done this?), a walk back along Grand to a coffee shop near the fitness club to have coffee and a bun. Bun: crumbly, more a cupcake shape than a pastry shape that tasted reasonably good. Why I wanted it after the ice cream, after the large breakfast, I don't know.

Home to lie down, let the odd vision/head thing settle out, up now in the mid-afternoon feeling better. Again, the usual routine: the mornings often a little off, the mid-afternoon into the evenings feeling much better. I've wondered about my morning breakfasts in the past, wondered if they were part of the problem. But then I've wondered about most everything you might imagine in looking for a culprit.

Evening. Nothing on television and so to bed to watch a Netflix movie on the tablet that, in retrospect, was probably best left to its own devices. A house filled with a dysfunctional group of couples, all there for a family reunion to which was added three armed men in masks who were looking to end (almost) all of their lives in the usual bloody fashion. So much for enlightened weekend entertainment in Oakland.

The photo up top was taken at the Oakland Run The Town half marathon this morning with a Nikon D4s mounted with an 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 VR Nikkor lens.


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