Thursday. Another lights out before ten to then awaken a minute after six on another low marine layer overcast morning, cool, but comfortable enough walking to breakfast while wiping away at the occasionally tearing eye, the restaurant open when I arrived just before ten. A Thursday, the second day of August, time to do the laundry and go by an ATM. Curious to see if I'll do the laundry, much more likely I'll do the ATM.

Had the two strips of bacon breakfast again, more because I couldn't think of anything else I wanted and so settled down to delve into the papers, reading longer than usual until nine.

The sidewalk picture was not quite in focus, walking out the door, the flower picture better. I'd passed by this along my street when I was heading to breakfast and so took a picture when I returned. People leave all kinds of furniture on the sidewalks as often as not and it does seem to get picked up. Eventually.

Why take a photograph?

Blame it on something, an itchy finger, a need to justify carrying a camera on breakfast mornings. The phase of the moon and the prominence of Mars.

Later. A bus at eleven to the Broadway ATM and, having ten minutes to shoot a few photographs at the construction sites before the next bus arrived, walked to Webster and the construction at 2330 and then around the corner on 23rd to take a picture of the building that had burned at 2302 Valdez followed by one of the back of the 2330 Webster building, the two of them facing one another across Valdez.

Still had enough time to return to Grand and catch the bus home, getting off two stops early to walk along the 400 block to see if I could find the location of the hair stylist I'd saw listed in the phone book at that address. I'm going to need a haircut in another couple of weeks. Found it and so I suspect we'll give it a try.

Came home, thought about the laundry, but gave up to watch the news when it came on at two. I suspect doing laundry is toast.

Evening. Noticed another episode of Happy Valley was playing at eight and so, not wanting to lie down on the bed with the tablet at seven for an hour, watched Fake Or Fortune?, a program I haven't watched before, about authenticating a portrait painted by Lucian Freud, a grandson of Sigmund Freud, when he was an art student in England.

Wasn't sure if it would be of interest, but the portrait they were authenticating I found fascinating, whether Lucian Freud had painted it or not. In tracking down the painting's provenance they talked about the various ways the facial features had been exaggerated and these discussions opened up areas to my limited understanding of modern art.

And?

How often do you have an aha! moment? I go after a certain range of facial expressions in my photography for reasons that are still unclear to me, but I saw a similarity in motivation between this painting and my area of photography I hadn't quite grasped at a gut level, illuminating what it was that might drive you to spend the endless hours of learning and practice required to master a painter's skills. Still a little mixed in my thinking, but a pleasant surprise.

Oh, and Happy Valley. Still couldn't understand half of what was going on because of their accents and the quality of the audio and so bailed halfway through, got to bed early and turned out the lights.