Monday. I admit to watching that Korean historical soap last night, the first time in a couple of weeks, this being the one that only runs on the weekends from ten to eleven, an hour past my bedtime. I hadn't missed much. Same old fifth grade level of discourse overacted and, well, overacted. Not quite to the level of an old silent film, but close. The excuse was to get in another hour on the guitar, which I did. Most of it, anyway. I'd said yesterday I wanted to catch up on Sunday. And maybe Saturday. Catch up on the week and I do believe I did. Can't play any better, but my homework is done.

That said, up with the alarm this morning, to breakfast and back by eight, the sky clear, the sun shining and all seems well with the world. Good old California, it behaves like California often as not. It's the not's that sometimes get out of hand: the earthquakes, the droughts. But such is life. Surf's up.

It's now pushing noon. I've had an hour's nap (very nice, maybe it made up for last night) and I'm thinking of heading out for a walk. This late in the morning I'll probably go downtown, check the City Hall and get something to eat, but the attitude is reasonably good and what I'm ready to believe is the start of a good week.

Later. A bus downtown, a walk over to Rite Aid to have a prescription filled, a walk by the Occupy area in front of City Hall noting, in passing, there was still someone up in that tree. They were serving soup of some kind over on the opposite side of the plaza and there was still plenty of security about. OK. The first day of Occupy week nine, as good a day as any to stop. Ease off. Have lunch instead. So I had lunch instead (coffee and a turkey sandwich with everything but onions sitting at a table in the Rotunda building). Palatable. Which isn't saying much, but that's about all I have in my vocabulary anymore. Still, keeps the weight off, no complaints about that.

Getting off the bus early to get an ice cream cone, I took a dog leg and walked along another part of the lake, one I've walked a million times but not recently, not in say the last month. Took some half hearted pictures, this one from too great a distance noticing how many cormorants were gathered together on a single long floating buoy of some sort. Another of three seagulls and their shadows that didn't work. A real photographer interested in getting a “better” picture would have used these as a starting point, as an idea for a picture, worked with it, analyzed the setup and found better angles and light. Come back during the next day, if necessary, in the morning or night if that would make it right. I know this, I'm not complaining, but that's not been the way I've been taking these lake photographs, just describing how I think it works. For me. Deedle-dee-dee.

Maybe you should go back to studio portraits, see if they won't give you the greater charge, see if they won't drag you kicking and screaming into a better place.

I've thought of that. I have. You never know. Kicking and screaming.

With the change of the season (the wind, the leaves blowing, a chill in the air) and the dropping now of my current short term photography project, I was thinking (again) I really do need to try something else. I've obviously thought of moving to a new place in the past, but decided that's only appropriate if it's an adjunct to something else. Maybe a trip of some kind, something longer than just a week, a month or two heading out into the distance a rental RV? Just to see. I've talked about that. Interminably. Here.

But then I've gone through all these things many times. I'll be heading up to Portland and then Seattle for the family party being held this year just after Christmas. That will at least get me out of the house. There are things I need to wind up here before I leave and I'll undoubtedly think about doing them right up until the last minute. Be interesting to see which are the ones I finally get done.

Later still. Some time on the guitar and a lot of time finishing up the Occupy and the Holiday Parade photographs, two sections of Holiday photographs now up on artandlife. It was nice to get back to shooting a parade and taking pictures of people rather than (clever) signs, tent tops and static landscapes that don't really lend themselves to my particular bent.

No bent in the tents?

Oof! Even I'm embarrassed. For a minute or two. Until I write the next one.