So what made the morning less than wonderful again?

Nothing we need to go into here or I'll lose the few readers I have left. No big deal, just, you know, a real world underlining of what you've heard over the years, but never quite understood.

Later. A need to get out of the apartment, but no desire to walk here locally or take a bus, so I drove down to Jack London Square near Beverages & More and walked over to the Barnes and Noble store to have a cup of coffee and a chocolate brownie for lunch, sitting out at a table up on their second story balcony with a flock of pigeons. I hadn't realized pigeons liked chocolate. I don't mean the crumbs, crumbs I understand, but the chocolate frosting itself. A cross species delicacy I guess.

Some thoughts while watching the very few people who were wandering about Jack London Square, thinking my current routine wasn't going to cut it. Not for the mid to long term. Not at all. A trip up the coast next week? Maybe. I was wondering if I could get my hands on a small mobile home for six months, try it out, see if being a loner on the road made more sense than a loner recluse in an Oakland apartment. It might. Pumped me a bit to think about.

Walking back to the car I figured I'd buy a bottle of sake. My two glasses last night hit the spot, eased me into the evening, so why not? (Other than buying a larger bottle might lead me to three glasses and then all bets would be off.) So I went into Beverages & More and discovered they've eliminated even more of their sake shelf space and I thought, well, I'm out and about, why not a trip over to the Tokyo Fish Market in Berkeley for one of the big bottles of Onigoroshi, all one point six liters of it?

Playing with fire?

We'll see. If I keep it to two I'm happy. If I go more I've got to stop kidding myself. One of life's simple decisions. Still, the mood was quite good after noon, the walk around the Jack London Square area nice enough, a walk through something called Pro Arts to look at the photographs and art on the walls and wonder if I would like to buy one of the pottery pieces in their shop. I would, but not enough to pop the $250 they were asking. Well worth the price, I would think, but there are only so many things you can fit into your living space and cleverly decorated pottery is not altogether high on my list.

Still, again, a good day. I finally sent off a card to my nephew who's birthday I missed. Well, who's birthday I remembered about a day late, but was in the middle of not having the bank balance at the time to include the usual gift. Something extra today for his wait.

Nothing on television tonight. There's a Korean soap, but without subtitles and not something I've been willing to follow. There are a number of them without subtitles that aren't hard to follow in a broader sense. You wonder, though, at the youngsters (your basic young couple finds true love) who are forever looking mournfully into one another's eyes, chapter after chapter; who's parents are adamantly against any kind of relationship (because the guy or the gal has a child from a previous marriage or the guy or the gal's family isn't sufficiently upper crust or..., well, the usual set of upsets); you wonder if the actors who play these people are type cast by how handsome/beautiful they are and how they're able to look lovesick/crestfallen ninety percent of their time on camera emoting devastation while forever losing Mr./Ms. Right.

They really are “soaps” then. I thought you were kidding.

Which makes me ask myself for maybe the hundredth time, why am I watching?