Wednesday. To bed last night at a decent hour, although I didn't get to sleep until much later than I like. Not sure why - no watching of this, no reading of that - up this morning with the alarm feeling alright. Such is life. To breakfast, the papers and back, ready for the guitar lesson coming at ten. I say I am, anyway. We'll know soon enough.

Later. It doesn't take me all that long to learn the various lessons life has to give. This one, practicing the guitar, says you have to memorize the entire song and play it over and over to get your speed up to snuff. I can do the individual parts, but stringing them all together from memory: not yet. So I'll go through this weeks lesson over and over until it's memorized and I can play at a faster pace. Going from an open D to a G, to an F, to a B-flat barre chord and back to the D or the D minor is, well, something of a challenge. Still. For me. Kinda like playing the guitar: it takes time and practice (hup! hup!).

I take it you weren't the star of the show this morning.

You take it right. Still, another lesson under the belt, a run by the supermarket to pick up one or two items that have been missing from the larder (including sake), back now for a nap and a walk later in the afternoon and that's about it. Hip!

Later still. We'll write the day off as a recuperation day, a day needed to catch up on a couple of nights without enough sleep. Nothing too terrible, just a bump along - don't want to do this, don't want to do that - day that's drawing to an end (and, as usual, feeling better as the evening arrives).

A couple of pictures. The birds find and eat mussels in the lake (remember it's a salt water estuary). You find many, many shells along the shore and at the bottom of the lake near the edge. This gull was dealing with one as I passed. Should have stayed a little longer to see if I couldn't get a better angle, but I wasn't up for it (this being a recuperation day you understand).

That seems to be a standard excuse around here.

Nothing wrong with consistency. Another photograph of a gull. The seagulls are so common you forget about them after a while, forget to take a shot when the shot may be reasonably good. Sitting on a bench watching this one for a minute or two it finally occurred to me to take a picture.

An ice cream cone heading around on Lakeshore to hit the ATM (Cash goes fast in this season of giving, does it not?), a walk back around to Grand to have a cinnamon bun and a small cup of coffee at the usual place, a bus then back to the apartment, the day winding to an end.

Had I decided to head for Portland I'd be on the road at the moment or, more likely, finishing up my first day's driving, tired and in a pretty good mood as the mood tends to turn for the better once I'm out and underway. But hey, I get to sleep in my own bed tonight, the one with the recently turned mattress that feels better for that (must remember to turn it over again at the end of February now that I'm a believer). So hup, hup and that.

Evening. I did mention I picked up some sake earlier after my guitar lesson, four rather than two bottles, four bottles totaling 600ml, short a full 750ml bottle by one? Diddle-dee-done? We'll see how the ocular migraines feel about my purchase. And consumption. Personally, I feel just fine. But then one does, here in Oakland, just across the bay from the end of the rainbow, before the morning comes.