Wednesday. Rain last night, rain this morning, having returned from breakfast at the usual place and at the usual hour, thinking of getting my act together to head out for my guitar lesson. Have I practiced enough? Yes. No necessarily intelligently enough, not stressing going through this week's objectives in their proper order, but practicing the elements of the lesson, going over the new riff again and again, the chords and the chord changes. I'll do a practice run before I set out. We're making progress and a little worry over our preparation is good in making sure we continue to push against our boundaries.

I'm not sure if that's the truth or we're doing the old hup! hup! here to paper over our omissions.

I'm never sure, but that's probably the idea. Keep pushing and if a little worry over the hours we're spending - are they focused, are they enough? - helps it along, well, all to the better. Just, you know, don't obsess. Or write overly much about it.

Later. A good lesson, a new riff to learn has now been added to the list. You'd think, well, that's good, finished with the old - clear the deck - on with the new, except you still need to go back and practice the old riffs and chords to not only maintain your facility, but improve them further to the point they're engraved in your noggin’. Well, something like that, we're doing another hup! or two here to keep our focus.

I've spent a lot of energy over this last week getting some of my old pictures taken in the early seventies together, I've talked about it often enough these last several days. I've noticed my energy and interest in getting these things done, getting things generally in order, have been improving. Good. How long has it been now since I retired? Three years? Have I been in a funk, a low level depression all this time? And maybe for some of those last years at the office? I've said not, but I wonder, seeing how I'm feeling now versus how I've been feeling before. So good. We're good with the “goods” and the “hup! hups! hups!”

I'm thinking of going through some boxes of crap I have here stored in the apartment, look for those negatives I appear to be missing. Normally I'd just think about it in passing and no more, but today I think I'll do something about it. Just in checking through the negative binders I've accumulated over these last years I've discovered photographs I've forgotten and never used. Whole batches of black and white negatives and contact sheets taken at parades I for some reason filed and then forgot. If I take this no further than putting all the images into some kind of order I'll count it a real achievement. (Hup! Hup!) Shit, let's do it.

Later. I went through the storage boxes I have here at the apartment. Didn't find the negatives, maybe they're in the storage locker, more probably out of sequence in one of the many negative binders, but found many another thing I've been wondering about and junked a bunch of stuff. Afterward I took an hour's nap. Pooped me out it did.

A Roku internet box arrived yesterday and I hooked it up to my TV, wondering if my particular setup using static IP addresses would work. It did. Not sure how it did, but it did. Connected to Netflix and watched a movie. Well, half of a movie, but that's pretty much my speed. Very easy to do, very convenient. I have a blockage of some kind with signing up for Comcast or any of the other connections (less so with satellite), some aspects of this blockage I understand, many of which I don't. I can live without the programming. I tell myself I have other interests. Let's see how this Roku thing goes. It is nice, picture quality and such.

So it's been raining all day, dark now as it approaches five. Some sushi do you think? A little sake for a long day of going through cardboard boxes? No? Yes? Do you understand who gets to decide?