Later. Not tired and so no interest in a nap, a walk over to the lake taking a long lens to see if we couldn't find something a long lens is useful to shoot. Not sure we did, not sure a I got a decent photograph out of the lot, but the eye was working, the brain wasn't dead and we had ourself a good time for the little time we spent.

Back to work on the photographs, what few we shot. Downtown now? Pick up that B-12 I couldn't find last time? Nothing happening in downtown Oakland on a Saturday, no one at the City Center, nothing open. Usually, anyway.

So we'll see. My guitar practice turned to naught yesterday, we can get a head start on that.

Good luck.

Well, yes. We can always use good luck.

Later still. A decent bus ride downtown, not very crowded to say the least, off at 14th Street to pick up the vitamin B-12 at the pharmacy and then on through the City Center, the place essentially deserted except for one security guard overseeing the tree. Nothing in the gift wrapped boxes, but there are always people about who would want to be certain.

A bus coming in three minutes, nothing to keep me, so to the 12th Street stop to take a couple of pictures of the pigeons sitting up on the fence overlooking the people waiting below. I don't remember them doing this in the past, but it allowed me to get close for the photographs. Do we not take pictures of pigeons because there are so many of them or because they're all grey ghosts with messed up feet, enormously successful in living in our mess, but invisible for the very fact?

A bus back, I the only passenger for most of the way, now to tackle the guitar. Not hungry or I'd have stayed on the bus to the morning restaurant. One day you're hungry, one day you're not, you might think I would have learned by my seventieth year. Can't complain, keeps the weight off.

Evening. Nothing on television so we'll play more guitar and then get to bed early and maybe read something from the pile of books I've started before going to sleep. I seem to be every bit as good at starting a book without finishing it as I am with starting and then not finishing movies. Not something that ever happened in our salad days, but we're in a new chapter, best to concentrate on what's good about it.

My guitar teacher is moving his office from his old house to a music school in downtown Oakland, we start on the last day of the month. New Years Eve. I have a lesson on Christmas Eve as well, but I'm thinking of skipping it. Not because I'm not ready but because, well, hmm. Maybe think about that. I do recall working on Christmas Eve's when I was employed, not thinking a thing about it.

For someone who's ready for his lesson you seem to be looking for ways to avoid it.

And I am ready. Maybe I'll think about it.