This "door to door" system seems pretty neat. The people next door used it when they moved out and I asked them about it since it seemed so easy. I like easy. They deliver a storage box that's accessible through a door. You provide the contents and a padlock, they store the box in a secured temperature controlled building. You want to get into your box, you give them two hours notice (7 x 24) and they move it to an access area. $49 per month, $59 for initial delivery and pickup, they drop off two boxes in case you need the second one, but don't charge you if you don't. It looks pretty big in the picture. It looked pretty big when I saw in from a distance. It will be swell.

I've been thinking about the area I'm moving into. It's on a residential hill beside Lake Merritt overlooking the city (I have a great view of a blank wall, but a nice blank wall with a tree growing beside it.) and as I've mentioned, it's within walking distance of my office. I have access to the lake, a theater, a small section of neighborhood shops and restaurants as well as the city itself: Chinatown, Jack London Square and City Hall. I think I'm going to like it there.

Somewhere in that mix will be my first photography project. Shoot it morning, noon and night, straight and stoned, color and black and white, in focus and out, summer and winter. Time to get an Epson Photo deskjet printer and make prints. All kinds of prints. This is sounding more and more like fun, a concept I'm familiar with through my reading of fiction, but one I'd like to know better up close and personal. Fuck buying the Jeep. Until next summer. When I might be able to afford it.

My friend Mr. Post wondered at the fact we Americans think of wooden shoes when we hear of Holland or The Netherlands and I'm not sure I know. I have the cartoon image of the Dutch girl walking in her wooden shoes on the label of Old Dutch Cleanser in my head, but that's not the origin of the image because it was formed for me when I was much younger and cleanser was not one of my interests. I can only give the thought there are worse images to evoke in this world. Much worse.

I remember a story (maybe it's true) about a man named Rabbit who named his son Peter and he was asked why he would do such a thing to his only son, assuming, as I did, that he'd be ridiculed to pieces in school. And Mr. Rabbit said, well, my name is Peter too and what I discovered is that people, old or young confused me somehow with those early memories and instinctively treated me much better than they might have treated someone else. And I thought, well, yeah.

Wooden shoes aren't up to Peter Rabbit as an image, perhaps, but they're not bad, particularly when you don't have to wear them yourself. Throw in the tulips and the windmills and you've got a pretty good deal. People over here are never going to figure the difference between "Holland" and "The Netherlands", one part of the other, but what the hell, our plastic's good and we leave the guns back home in the closet for our kids to look after while we're on tour.