Monday. OK, I watched what I've been calling my historical Korean soap last night, so I didn't get to bed until eleven. My, my. A run to the supermarket beforehand around nine to pick up one or two of the things I've run out of recently (I've run out of most everything recently, not sure why I allow myself to do that) including two of the small bottles of sake. If we're going to live with ocular migraines coming round the bend at odd moments, we're going to live and not worry about the occasional drink. My drinking is hardly drinking and my lament here is not much of a lament. Nice end to an evening, though, last night.

Still, up some forty-five minutes after the alarm, to breakfast and back in good time, home now on an overcast morning. They say partly cloudy on the local weather site so maybe we'll see some sun later. I can live with that.

So this is the week before the week I set out for Portland. I do want to see my sister and family, but I don't want to drive during the Christmas season and I'm not yet quite sure how I'm going to manage it. We'll have a talk and see what the overall consensus is this Christmas: a time of good cheer and no small amount of stress.

I assume the photographer in the picture above is including the man in his shot, I assume a homeless man who isn't there in his Santa suit looking to go bar hopping the afternoon long, as he's holding his camera horizontally rather than vertically. My own image would be a more interesting picture to me if he were shooting vertically and consciously or unconsciously ignoring the man on the ground.

Too subtle to notice at the time, the position of the camera, although I too was, of course, consciously including the figure in the hope it might make an interesting shot, hard to see why I'd take the picture had I not. I noticed the position of the other photographer's camera later when I viewed it and realized the realization might get me to think a little harder, get the eyes seeing a little more clearly, the next time I'm out. Time and patience will tell, it would have been nice to have started shooting a lot sooner, this image business.

A fair period on the guitar yesterday, we'll see how it goes today. The playing is going more smoothly, the notes closer to notes, the sound more like the sound you'd expect to hear. I'm looking for ever more interesting progress over this coming year. But enough of the “hup, hups!”; I'm slow, but even I know when I've beaten something to death.

But you won't stop.

Short term memory loss. The next morning, the next entry, the slate is clean and we repeat the mess.

Later. A walk outside with the winter coat. My, my but it's cold. A walk back to add a down vest I'd bought in the late '60's before they shipped me off to Korea, a vest designed to handle really cold weather, and then back out to miss the bus by about twenty seconds. Fine, a walk down two stops to catch another bus that goes downtown, but ten minutes later. We are going to the Rotunda building for a cup of mocha coffee, the one thing I could think to get me out the door. (Hup!)

OK, this second bus takes a dogleg along the lake where I saw this. My, my. Pull the cord, get off the bus, go back and take another picture. I'd forgotten this was the day Occupy was going to try to shut down all the ports along the west coast and I'd not seen anything like this thing out on the lake before. I was happy to walk the mile to the Rotunda building to get the picture. So good. This trip is starting out rather well.

I had the mocha coffee and a reasonably decent piece of chocolate fudge or something similar (watch out for chocolate it says on the ocular migraine list) before heading into the old Occupy area in front of City Hall, not expecting to find much going on. I was assuming the close the port operation was underway at the port facility itself, if it was underway at all (I'd heard a report on the radio at six this morning, people there, stuff happening), and that meant there wouldn't be many people left in the plaza and, for all practical purposes, that seemed to be the case.

OK, a picture or two to document the day, maybe take more through the week and get together another section for artandlife. A bus in a few minutes, maybe I should cut out right then and catch it, but decided to go on for one last picture or two and wait on the next bus coming in thirty minutes at a table across the street in the City Center. So I did, wondering at the sound of a helicopter somewhere up overhead. They're usually out when there's something going on, but over at the port was where I'd expect them, what was this one doing here?

So, missing that bus led to another bit of Kismet as a small group had begun forming in front of City Hall now that it was noon, everyone soon moving to the plaza entrance at Broadway and 14th. Not a large gathering but I realized, in finally reading one of the fliers, they were planning a march from City Hall to the port some four hours later at five. No way I'm staying around to photograph a march on the port after an hour's shooting now, but I was feeling quite happy with the pictures so far today and the way things had turned out. Two, maybe three sections for artandlife (I suspect if I stretch it) followed by a not a small effort to process the photographs later when I get home. As I said, Kismet. Diddle-dee-det.

Evening. OK, a long period of processing photographs interrupted by an hour on the guitar and thus we are done. I was indeed stretching it to get three sections, using a few that could well have been left out, but it gives me some sense of what it looked like and how it felt at noon today at Occupy Oakland. I'll read how the march transpired at the port in the morning papers, but for now, just a bit more guitar before I conk out.