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Here In Oakland

Art & Life


   



February 24, 2013

Somewhat Unsettling
Sunday. Up this morning at six-thirty without the alarm, having gotten to bed last night at ten, and so off to breakfast and back to read the Sunday papers, my Chronicle missing its editorial section along with another I always read and look forward to. Exciting stuff, you'd think. Still, life will not end over the loss.

Blood pressure one-twenty over eighty, smack on the mark, we'll see how it holds throughout the day. It was too high last night when I returned from the parade, something like one-forty over one hundred, that just before I took the med, so we'll watch and see how it stumbles along this afternoon. Like juggling balls in the air when you're not a juggler. Still, feel pretty good, given my endless history of complaints.

I did get a section of photographs for artandlife, but just. As I said, it's hard to find photographs at this particular parade when you're only there as it's forming up. The various queens and princesses don't come out of hiding and mount their floats until the parade itself starts, so no candids of one of the main attractions (but for these two ladies whom, I suspect, were princesses keeping a low profile until the parade was ready to start).

Still, a section is OK, a good enough start to the New Year and a new season. I'm ready for a new season.

Later. OK, now to finish that article. Why I've been fighting it I don't know, but I've been fighting it tooth and nail and doing naught today but the parade photographs and the journal. The Chinese New Year Parade photographs are up on artandlife, as I thought just one section, although there are twenty additional photographs posted that don't show up on the small thumbnails and have to be viewed by going down to the individual photographs and then navigating along using the little arrows. Too many of the same subjects, but still photographs I wanted to post.

Nice day out there, the blood pressure seems good, we'll maybe have lunch and then go back and finish what we've promised. Hup!

Later still. A walk to the ATM over on Lakeshore and then back around to the morning café for ice cream and a lemonade. Oh, and a cookie, but not a very good cookie. Back now, the day sunny and reasonably warm. Have we started on our projects yet? Just.

Evening. An odd sort of an Italian wine expert turned detective program at six which I watched and played along with on the guitar (but not enough on the guitar). I'm ambivalent about it, but what am I not ambivalent about anymore, crotchety old dingbat I've become?

Finished out the evening watching a Netflix movie I'd started and then quit some time back, more because I found I was feeling uncomfortable with the character's predicament than any thoughts it wasn't a good movie. Odd. In my younger days the idea I'd not watch an original and interesting movie because I found it uncomfortable would never have crossed my mind. The fact you find the character's situation tragic or personally uncomfortable doesn't mean it isn't a good movie, it means it's effectively getting to you, but in ways you emotionally dislike.

As in you've become a wuss? Uncomfortable characters?

Well, who knows? My tastes have obviously changed (deteriorated, become unhinged, gone out to lunch). Even the foods I'm able to eat have radically changed, let alone the loss of interest in movies, music, books and making trips of any distance farther than the local supermarket (and those I often fight). Life is proving to be an odd, interesting and somewhat unsettling ride.

The photo up top was taken at the San Francisco 2013 Chinese New Year Parade with a Nikon D4 mounted with a 70-200mm f 2.8 VR II Nikkor lens.


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