Saturday. To bed and lights out by ten to get a decent night's sleep. Awake twenty minutes before the alarm, up and out the door ready to rumble. There's always that first five minutes when I'm getting up that I'm thinking this is not good idea, but I didn't experience it this morning. So good. Repetitious, these “goods”, but better they than the other option. Whatever: another day has started.

Today is the Oakland 5k Half Marathon and there were police all over and only one or two parked cars along Grand on the way to breakfast, the first runners appearing as I was finishing and preparing to leave for home. So pictures. I should have brought another camera with the long lens in the backpack, but hadn't, didn't exactly know, other than there would be a half marathon today, what was going to happen.

Now checking the web to see if it is indeed just the half marathon today or if there's more to come, more pictures I'll be able to take later by the lake. Rude not to have had all this figured out before it started.

Rude to whom?

Me’em.

Later. Over to the lake with a single camera mounted with a long lens to take a series of pictures of runners now much farther along in the race. Lots of photographs taken within a short period, but only a few of interest. Stopped and returned to the apartment too soon to have gotten enough photographs for a web section, but I suspected that would be the outcome when I looked up and saw those first runners passing by at breakfast. Not enough preparation. Sloth.

Later still. An odd sort of a late morning. Hungry, as it approached noon, and so a bus downtown thinking I'd get a salad at the bagel shop, knowing they're open on Saturdays, arrived at the City Center and discovered a long line with but one person serving. Probably the only time during the day this would happen. OK, was I really that hungry?

A quick walk to Broadway and a bus home, getting off near the 7-11 look-alike, thinking I'd have a tuna fish sandwich at the Coffee With A Beat café right up to the point I passed it by and entered the look-alike for an ice cream bar. Hmm. We are a pin ball in this machine.

I did pass a young guy on the sidewalk who saw my camera and turned to say “hey, take my picture, it's my birthday!” which I did. Sent him jpegs when I got home and he (it turns out he's the manager of a local café across Grand) responded with a “drop by the restaurant when you have a chance”. I might get that tuna fish sandwich after all, just a day or so later and by a more circuitous route.

Karma? Kismet?

An astrological sign of the times.

Evening. Now into the nineties. The trip earlier over to the lake and then downtown this morning was done in t-shirt and jeans. Too warm, even for t-shirt and jeans in this late afternoon, and so lots of time spent lying down with the tablet and a fan at the foot of the bed.

Saturday, the PBS stations still raising money, and so nothing on television. Little on the tablet I'm willing to admit to watching. I've wondered if the algorithms Netflix and Amazon use to recommend movies have boxed me into this corner. Watching too many Korean movies and not watching enough older classics I've seen before included in their calculation.

I think they have the flake in you nailed.

Evening. Too warm, but comfortable enough under a fan. Bed and tablet. Tablet and bed. I've been watching the first season of a Chinese language soap where the story line is interesting, but the brainless young man/young woman interactions are too dumb for grade schoolers. Again, just the current state of their television. Think Bollywood without the dancing. Reminds me of our old fifties television. But I watch. Fitfully. Now and again. As I have this evening.