Friday. I suspect the two photographs I've run recently as heads should be paired together.

Up this morning after eight after a good, albeit up a couple of times to take a pee, night's sleep. To breakfast after nine, home now well after ten. I need to get the car serviced, may do that, get my now long overdue monthly blood thinner test taken care of (the hospital lab is right next to the Honda dealer's maintenance shop), may do that, and skip the camera flash class in San Francisco this afternoon. The class itself had been sold out, but the instructor said it would be alright to show up, he could take another participant. I know the flash well enough to understand what he's going over today (probably) and besides (probably more important), the idea of driving over to San Francisco for the afternoon, parking and such is, well, depressing.

You could take BART. The buses will be running when you get back, no need to take a taxi.

True. One way or another we'll sort it out.

I awoke this morning, as did we all, to hear Mubarak had resigned. Good. Now they enter the unsettling task of converting a dictatorship (supported by the United States) into a democracy (one hopes supported by the United States) and the process is fraught with, well, traps. Not a lot of difference between a Mubarak military dictatorship and a military dictatorship carried on under a leader with another name. Some of these things turn out - ours did - it's great to see the Egyptian people gather more courage than I suspect I myself might be able to muster, and make this happen, but the best of luck over there. Good luck times two and steel nerves will undoubtedly be needed for a chance of success.

That seems, well, not overly optimistic.

I have no damned idea of the complexities involved. Another country, another mind set, another reality altogether but I still suspect they'll need a suicidal level of optimism and determination for it to come to pass. We have enough trouble here fighting to keep a balance in our own social contract and we've got over two hundred years of doing it, sometimes going better; sometimes, such as these times, going worse. They have maybe six months to pull it off? Is that time to put together an election and organize viable political organizations and candidates? In six months? Good luck times three I'd think.

Later. A drive over to the Honda dealer to have the car serviced, my 30,000 mile checkup, if there is such a thing. It came to a lot more than I was thinking. Maybe I need to stop going to the dealer in the future as I've done with my other cars in the past. Still, it will be ready at five, so I walked downtown and had lunch, picked up the prescriptions I'd phoned in two days back and then took a bus back home. We'll pick the car up now in another hour and settle those “ a lot more than I was planing for” damages.

I was carrying a camera (of course), I took one or two pictures, but nothing really of interest. These things happen. I did pass two women, both of them out shooting with telephoto lenses, so I took their picture in a kind of salute, one photographer to another. Not sure why they weren't using lens shades. Maybe they're into lens flair. Lens flair artists. Specialists. Very advanced practitioners.

Later still. Went to pick up the car after four. They'd said, when I brought the car in late this morning that they'd sent all of my maintenance history and data to the body shop they'd recommended to me when I'd creased my door last month and they no longer had any of it in their computer, could I please give them my address and phone number? Which makes no sense whatsoever. This was evidently still a problem of some kind when I picked it up, but it resulted in them giving me a free battery and a larger discount for the trouble. So I guess I'm somewhat mollified. And I have my car.

Oh, and Geico sent me a letter today saying, having creased the side of my car and having gotten two speeding tickets early last year, that they were dropping me from coverage. We'll think about all that tomorrow.