Saturday. For all my zipping along, feeling good and getting things done last night I managed to forget yesterday evening was the monthly Art Murmur and didn't go out and shoot it. Photograph it. Still, having misplaced my guitar lesson yesterday, I spent the evening looking for it. How do you misplace a booklet and half a dozen music sheets one day and not be able to find them the next? It resulted in my going through and filing all of the various pieces of paper I've had around and about for the last month, moving things here, replacing them there and just generally getting the living room in order.

Eventually found the damned things, of course, tucked in where you'd think they'd be, but cleverly disguised for the less than coherent searcher. Still. There are two Lunar New Year festivals going on this weekend, I plan to take in one of them later this afternoon. Get thee to a New Year festival old man. And don't forget your camera. Or your head.

I got what I thought a “light” night's sleep last night, awakening and then going back under many times, getting up finally at seven rather than six. Feel good, the day just fine, rested, but not what I'd call having gotten a lot of sleep. One night you sleep nine hours, the next you sleep six, possibly seven? Is that OK as long as you get in plenty of the longer nights for balance? Maybe. We'll see. We're sitting here giving ourself a - hup! hup! - treatment to get the body up and out the door later this morning and on the road to Santa Clara, might as well not worry about anything more until that's been done.

Later. The Vietnamese New Year Tet Friendship Festival at the Santa Clara fairgrounds is a hundred mile drive round trip and the traffic near the fairgrounds themselves is reasonably brutal with road construction underway, but we did it, we did. A long drive, a couple of hours at the festival itself, not many pictures.

Taking photographs at something like this are easier to shoot than candids taken on the streets, as there are people in costume and such, but I was thinking, as I was driving back, I'd be lucky if I'd gotten even a few “good” ones. Bad sign when you can't remember one that turned you on. Now that I've gone through them I'm thinking I did OK, no complaints. Nothing to bring down the house, enter in the picture of the year contest, but then when is that ever the case?

Let's see: ten dollars to park, seven to enter the fairgrounds, twelve dollars worth of gas for maybe forty decent photographs along with an aching back and a good attitude. What the hell, that's under a dollar a shot. Or something like that. We're doing fine.

There were a large number of people running around handing out little brochures in Vietnamese and English titled: “The End of the World is Almost Here! HOLY GOD Will Bring Judgment Day on May 21, 2011”. What surprised me was the number of them and their ages as most of them were young and not too wild eyed. The guy that handed me one as I came through the entrance, OK, he was cast to type, but most of them looked like they were promoting something like a college dance or selling automobile insurance, two for the price of one. Still, May 21st. I've heard the story, still, if it does go bang, May 21st is as good as any other date I suspect. Better check the calendar to see if I have anything scheduled, any conflicts.

So the evening is here, I'm tired, no way I'm going to the Starry Plough later to hear my guitar instructor's band play, I'm lucky if I pull it together for the head shot session I have scheduled for tomorrow. The excitement continues, here in Oakland.