Monday. To bed and to sleep early again, getting up at six and remembering it was a holiday and I could drive rather than walk to breakfast since the meters wouldn't be running. Except, warned by a waitress, it turned out they were in fact running. I'd have driven anyway. What can I say? I'm easy.

An omelet for breakfast. Just two papers, the East Bay Times doesn't deliver on Mondays, so a more thorough reading than I might otherwise have made, stretching it out, feeling just fine. The head clear, the attitude up, none of yesterday's tiredness or fuzzy headedness in evidence. Some of that due to being a bit depressed on this Christmas? Probably part of it, but this is not the first time I've spent the holiday on my own. We'll say yes, it was a factor, but that was yesterday and right now it's a new day and the sun is shining, we'll take it from there. From here. From wherever it takes us.

As in onward, through the fog? Kidding our little self?

And why not? Feeling good on this last week of the year. Might even come up with a picture or two to celebrate it.

Later. A dose of the pain meds that seem to again have done some good before walking to the bus stop, planning to go to the Broadway ATM. The smart phone NextBus app was saying another bus was due in 35 minutes (the buses run every 30 minutes on holidays) with a second bus due in 37 minutes and so I assumed it wasn't working properly and a bus might well be due right then. And there were two people who were sitting in the bus kiosk waiting.

Five minutes later without a bus I set out to walk instead to the Lakeshore ATM, the bus I'd thought might be coming passing me by just after I'd started walking. Ah, well. It was sunny, it was indeed cold, even with the goose down comforter, winter coat and sweater, but a decent enough walk only to find when I arrived that the Lakeshore ATM was out of money.

OK. What the hell. A walk back to have a bus arrive at my bus stop on Grand just as I reached it myself on the way to the apartment. Got on the bus to the (working) Broadway ATM and then walked back to the apartment. A good longer walk to make up for missing the breakfast run this morning. Two less than spectacular pictures.

Later still. It was driven home to me that I had no clue what's been happening in popular music these last decades when they announced George Michael's death at the age of fifty-three. I vaguely remember I'd heard "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go", one of his hits from the second Wham album, but that was it. Didn't recognize his name or Wham or anything else about him, one hundred albums sold over his career or not, although I do remember a few names from the 80's when he and Wham had made their debut. Probably not unusual for a tuned out old(er) dude. Not my era. Still, a heart attack at fifty-three. Twenty years younger than I.

Oh, and reading a post on the local NextDoor app it says the meters were in fact not running today. You learn and then you learn you didn't learn. Again.

Evening. Today's Democracy Now! was an hour long interview with Bernie Sanders, the first half of which I caught on the radio this morning and listened to straight through from the beginning on television this evening. Depressing that he didn't get better media coverage during the election. He didn't and so we're now looking at someone disconcerting and entirely different. Entirely different will be spelled out when Trump and his staff take charge next month. Best to not do too much guessing, too much hand wringing, until then. Still depressing. You get enough stuff that's depressing this time of year as it is.