I mentioned I backed up quite a few images, the images I take day to day, for the month of December. Tired or not they went rather easily, although the DVD printer is toast, has been toast for some time now, and I ordered another (different brand, hope it works). So that's good. I got that done feeling tired, although the real “tired” didn't get its socks on until early evening. Today (so far) I see no reason we can't continue with something similarly spectacular. Look at this list of what is now twenty-one tasks to accomplish this day, this month, this year. It would surprise the hell out of me if I actually paid any more attention to it, actually got any more of them done.

Why not? This is supposed to the the year of all years.

Well, yes, but I've been thinking in terms of long days on the beach eating grapes with the Ms. Right sisters, not “getting things done”. I know they say keeping your act together is the best revenge and I assume they know what they're talking about, but “grapes on the beach” has a much nicer ring to it. Don't you think? Out there? Hello?

Later. We are back from a walk (an amble, here, nothing too strenuous) down to Noah's Bagels on Lakeshore, a cup of black coffee outside at their sidewalk tables sitting beside the people who are sitting outside of Starbucks right next door drinking their Starbucks coffee. I generally buy a cup at Noah's because they usually have more empty tables to choose from and I'm on a black coffee kick at the moment. Nothing I lust for, this black coffee, but there aren't any other combinations of coffee and stuff to be mixed with coffee that I lust for either. I like sitting out at the tables with a camera in my lap taking the occasional picture.

A walk back (what else) passing the parking lot behind the abandoned Kwik Way Drive-In (McDonalds wanted to open in its place, but people picketed and squashed that idea for good or ill), passing the theater playing two movies I'm thinking of seeing, maybe one of them later this afternoon around three, sitting at a bench beside the replanted grass in front of the columns by the lake, getting up to pass a homeless person who's taken to taking in the lake at the same spot for these last many months, when the sun is out anyway; another few minutes at one of the lake benches, a walk then back up the hill to the apartment.

All this is good. All this without being “tired” as I've been describing it, the sinus-head thing in some sense of remission, talking to me, of course, but from farther back in the background. “Back in the background?” Does that compute? Scan? Make any sense?

So, are any of the photographs worth the effort? Maybe. Can't tell anymore. That's a good sign. Means I'm stretching. A phone call later this afternoon to the doctor to see if these lungs should be better after three months of using an inhaler, the lungs not getting better, not getting worse until lately, when I'm wondering if they aren't, I don't know, finding ways around whatever it is I'm breathing into my lungs from this clever little device twice every morning. They have all kinds of stories about old guys and their lungs, how they're less reliable as you age, land you in the hospital at the drop of a virus. So we'll take precautions. Later this afternoon. Maybe in the morning.

Later still. We are well into the afternoon, a much better day and afternoon than yesterday or any of the days since I returned from Portland. Nothing exotic in the way of accomplishments. I finished backing up the December images, quite a few of them with the Christmas party and the drive up the Oregon coast, the twenty DVD's waiting on the new CD printer to arrive. Another walk down to the Grand Lake theater area to make a deposit and drop an envelope in the mail, a picture or two on the way back. One, a standard framed shot at the lake with the fountain in the background. It looks more interesting when you blow it up, though, cut out just the people posing for the photograph. The background, the color, the whatever more interesting. The faces clearer.

So we'll say the day has gone well. A noticed a photograph my sister had taken on Christmas Eve of me sitting on a couch looking overweight and very very tired. Maybe that's the proper visual of what I mean by feeling tired. I took a series of self portraits some years ago, heavier, of course, but with a similarly tired as ashes look evident in every picture. I was working then, but still, you wonder what you're up to, what's going on. Age? I'm sure that's a part of it, but there's something else as well. We'll see what we can do. Oh, and I think losing another ten pounds would be useful so I'll start keeping a clearer eye on it. Get these pants I'm wearing loose on my frame without letting any, you know, ribs start showing. Don't want to get to the point ribs would show. Certainly not here. In Oakland.