Later. OK, a big breakfast at the usual place followed by a run to Safeway for cat food, more cat food, cereal, milk, orange juice and Dial hand soap. Down to my last sliver of hand soap in the bathroom other than one of those hand pumps that puts a white foam into your hands when you push the plunger. I'm sure it works just fine, but it's not really soap unless you can rotate it in your hands under a stream of hot water. But I digress. Breakfast is done, the head is reasonably intact and the attitude is good. The sky is overcast, but the apartment is warm. A week of rain on the way they're saying. OK. There are things to keep me occupied here inside. I have a list. Well, I don't have a list, but it won't be hard to remember the first long avoided dozen as they stare at me with a baleful gaze when I get up in the mornings.

Later still. I packed up the balance of the various pieces of lighting equipment into what I call my traveling kit and discover, well, there's still a lens or two left over without a home, not to mention another battery charger or two that would have to travel and, well, do I really need another case, a fourth one having arrived just last week? And the film equipment. Would I ever travel with film? I might. I have, well, more than a couple of film cameras. Why would anyone want to have them packed as if ready to take flight? In case of earthquake? A need to go out on the road without ever actually getting out on the road? Do I have a subconscious need to move? Too much time on my hands so I'll not stop acquiring this crap until I'm broke? Well, I'm broke. Stop. Time to stop.

The sun is out and it's approaching noon. A walk around Jack London Square later, maybe, see what they did with their palm tree lighting as it starts to get dark. I noticed the newspaper photographers were using wide angle shots for the parades. Wide angle lenses generally come out when you have to come up with something dramatic in a situation where little drama seems possible. You have a client who wants pictures of his warehouse. How do you shoot a dramatic picture in an empty warehouse? Push come to shove you get down there on the ground with something in the low twenty millimeter range. I can do that, I have the equipment, but, well, that's the advantage of not having a client (a newspaper in their case) who needs what amounts to a stock newspaper shot, something from column A. I'm not suggesting they weren't good shots from column A, it's just, it's more like, you know, work.

Later still again. A nap, a nice nap, and then some puttering around in the living room putting things away, moving the old digital picture frame from the top of one of the speaker columns to a place behind my computer chair. When have I ever used it? It's displaying photographs at the moment I loaded years back. I believe you can buy them today for a fifth of what I paid, but still, progress. I actually find them offensive, like having a neon sign in your living room, but there was only one way to find out. I found out.

Dusting here, dusting there, the clouds getting darker as the afternoon progresses. I have the XM radio playing in the background, old sixties and seventies rock and roll. Not what I'd call good underground FM radio sixties and seventies rock and roll, more pop than not, but still, they're playing my record cabinet. How long since I've listened to any of it? How long have I been paying for XM radio without listening to it? There are other choices, other channels, but, but, but.... They say rain this week. Hunker down and futz around putting the apartment in order, old rock and roll music and, who knows, maybe some opera playing in the background. Maybe. If I can keep this head of steam. Steamed head. I did many things, had many interests in my prior lives, maybe some of them can come back for a week's visit, see if there's any way for them to move in. Good. I guess. Out here in Oakland.

Oh, a couple of pictures I missed when I went through the Children's Holiday Parade photographs yesterday. Easy to do. I've sometimes gone back after, say, a year and found a number I'd missed the first time around. Sometimes they're more than good, sometimes, like these, they're nice and should have been used. Had I changed going back after a year? I don't think the pictures had changed, unless we're devolving into magic and superstition here. Magic and superstition. Without the drugs. Might be fun. As I get older.