We've decided to drive down to Duarte's Tavern in Pescadero tomorrow with some of the usual crew - well, the hard core usual crew - and have their artichoke soup along with some of their other well known dishes for lunch. This is evidently a trip Mr. E and Mr. S made recently with good results so, checking Duarte's on Google and reading their various praises, well, evidently we won't be the only ones coming in off the road for artichokes. So that's good, get me out of here to a place I haven't been to before. Pescadero. Down the coast. Pictures, at least. An hour's plus drive.

I mentioned ordering two light summer jackets over the web. Ordered an additional two pair of jeans from Land's End yesterday, now that I've decided the size of my waist has settled in, added an additional two pair of Chinos, the Chinos for their light brown color to go with (ta, da!) the brown velvet Halston jacket moulding in the closet. I'll probably never wear them (the Chinos or the jacket), but this is my idea of a full wardrobe in the closet just in case. Another suit that fits is probably in order, but we'll leave that until needed. Funerals come to mind when I think of suits anymore, no need to dwell on those. So I am sartorially invigorated, or will be when they arrive. Now if the weight would settle in after no more than, say, another pound or two, all will be fine.

You said you'd hold off on getting another two pair of jeans until you were sure your waist really was settling in at thirty-two inches.

And that was a few pounds back. I am now comfortable in pants with a thirty-two inch waist and I'm close to dumping the old pairs still hanging in the closet. The problem with losing sixty-five pounds (now closer to seventy) is how you look. Your arm pits are caves, rolling on antiperspirant is like poking something into a hole looking for, I don't know, moles.

The wrinkles are exaggerated. Well, they're certainly more prominent. The stomach and such seem to be better, but it still looks like a veritable washboard of wrinkles, skin hanging off a skeletal frame. Wrinkles, not the hard as a washboard kind, the too many to count washboard kind. This seems to be improving, but this is what getting thin again is about? Be careful what you wish for (at the age of sixty-six)? In the mirror I'm seeing the ghost in the machine and I'm not recognizing the haunted look inside the once familiar (but now spindly and wrinkled) frame.

There's a icky element suggesting you're bragging in bringing in this weight loss business: skeletal frame, wrinkles aside. Are we looking for attention, waving our little arms and calling out in kindergarten class?

Well, I am ultimately happy, but nothing, it seems, comes without its share of surprise. We'll see what the morrow brings and maybe not worry so much about what the package looks like as long as there seems to be indeed a morrow in the mix. Smooth doesn't count if you're deceased.

Later. No desire to get out of the apartment although the sun is out and the temperature is fine. A run to the supermarket to replenish just about everything, buying a can each of every kind of Friskies cat food in hopes my black cat with the finicky appetite will find one she'll eat. She'll eat one set of foods for a month or two, no problem, and then turn up her nose, even when I stretch it out to see if hunger will overcome her mood. And litter, of course, we needed litter. And a bit of sake. And Merlot. Cheap sake and cheap Merlot, we're not particularly picky anymore.

Oh, and hungry, even after a relatively large (avocado omelette) breakfast complete with country potatoes, mixed fruit and coffee. I've gone on about my lack of appetite. Well, after breakfast, the appetite returned. At least a need for food of some kind returned and I pigged out on cheese and crackers, the cheese with a laughing cow on its label. We are still tired and we are still uninterested in getting out of the apartment, but we're feeling better now and thinking of something ambitious next such as an afternoon nap.

Later still. So much for the day. Not a nap, but a lie down for about forty-five minutes listening to the radio, which was good, feeling tired, up now looking halfway forward to listening to my various news programs and then another chapter tonight of my interminable Korean soap. I was listening to an interview with the author of a new book as I was driving home this morning, his suggestion being: never put anything even mildly controversial on your Facebook account or blog, something seemingly innocuous such as a picture of yourself with an open can of beer in hand (whether you're well over or under twenty-one) as there are many instances of people not only not being hired, but being fired for such a “transgression”. I feel my admission I've been watching this particular Korean soap puts me in the same trap. A sure confirmation of addle-headedness, of lacking even a minimum level of smarts.

How long ago was it I was in Portland? Last December? Two months? I remember watching whatever episode it was on the evening before I left thinking, well, given what I'm seeing, the entire series will come to resolution and be wrapped up by the time I get back so I'll never know how it turned out. That was two months ago. Forty episodes ago, five every week. They really aren't any further along than when I left. There could be another forty chapters to go and it wouldn't surprise me a bit. So I say I'd be judged a mental deficient for admitting to watching it and I have no doubt I'm correct.

So do you ever watch American “soaps”?

Never have. I'd say I never will, but you never know what the brain will do after adding more years, maybe my end will come not with a bang, but with a string of American soaps.

Is it the complete disbelief provided by watching soaps designed for another culture that's making it palatable?

I could argue that, I suppose. Obviously in keeping a journal I haven't been too worried about getting fired or getting hired again. Although I've thought about it. Occasionally worried about it. I know the short personal history I have attached to this defies every form of common sense. Living in my own little bubble, I guess. Which is OK as long as it doesn't lead to people in uniform busting the door in, one of my Korean soap's actors turning out to have been Osama bin Laden in drag, feeding hypnotic transmissions, chapter after everlasting chapter, to his followers and sundry unsuspecting others across the pond.

Your really are tired.

Heading down to Pescadero tomorrow should perk me up. I guess you go days when you're up and then day's when you're not and today, well, I'm not so much tired as overly relaxed and sitting here like a sack of cement in this chair. Thinking in terms of pouring a bit of that sake I picked up earlier at the supermarket.