A sunny day: good. The Nikon repair web site now says the camera shipped late yesterday and will arrive tomorrow in time for the Chinese New Year Parade: good. Another long drive to a doctor's appointment, setting out in less than another hour: not so good. Still, we're alive and well and the late morning, early afternoon cruddy feeling has yet to materialize. Let's not get all bent out of shape unless and until the shit starts to happen again. And even then, what the hell, we'll make a decent day of it. Hup!

Later. A long drive down due to slow traffic. Still, not so bad, none of the late morning, early afternoon symptoms, so nothing to complain about. The drive back had a similar bottleneck, but it went more smoothly, I thought, again nothing to complain about. The MRI was negative, nothing growing or changing or crowding out the necessary components running up and down the spine. Which is good. We like that.

So a walk then over to the morning restaurant to have a pumpkin cream cheese something or other and then on around the way to have a double scoop in a waffle cone. If that doesn't tip the balance into the red I'm sure nothing will.

A photograph taken just outside the doctor's office while I was wondering if I could make something out of the bush and its shadow against the pole. No, I couldn't. Still, a try. Not an end to the world.

A picture or two on the way walking back to the apartment. Again, nothing turned out, but these things happen. Better to fail than not to try. Even if we didn't try very hard. The day is going well, no complaints, no need for an over the top effort just to make an over the top effort. Which in my case I'm saying is OK, if you don't take rationalizations into account. Our friend. Rationalizations. Yes.

This one to bring photo back and check it against one of the birding books. Lots of these on the lake, lots of these everywhere come to think of it, although there are others, many others. I'm beginning to see the problems in sorting them out. This one's a Ring Billed Gull as opposed to a Herring Gull is the guess, but then I'm just starting out.

Just starting out?

Well, I thought it might be nice to be able to identify the various birds that I bump into along the lake. They vary by the season and these days you see a lot of Canvas Back gulls that you don't see in the summers, these along with coots, the ever present Black-Crested Herons, egrets, cormorants and various mysterious others.

The gulls are so common as to be almost like pigeons, they're always there right in front of your nose so you don't really notice them anymore. Best to know their names is the thought. The common ones, anyway. I'd say. Whether I go out one day to photograph them properly, well, we'll see from someone who doesn't really photograph anything properly. But tomorrow, I think. Tomorrow.

Back now with the News Hour droning on (again) in the background. Some guitar work to catch up on, we'll see how the rest of the day plays itself out. Hard to say, other than to say the weather has been really nice, the week ending nicely as I don't have another doctor's appointment coming up now for another (yes!) six months. The neurologist, unfortunately, but I guess we'll want a follow-up by then. The ocular migraines and double vision have been on the wane, in my own estimation, let's hope that's what I have report then again.

Evening. My, my, an ocular migraine at six.