Sunday. Overcast, cloudy, the usual weather sprites, shadows and sleepy beginnings all in attendance this morning. To bed early last night, up just before eight, to breakfast and the papers and then back after nine. The picture a bit blurry (the lady was moving at 1/15th of a second and the color off kilter, but not so bad for indoors with a D2Xs at ISO 200 with a 35mm DX lens), but nonetheless a picture to start a morning and a new day.

Yesterday was OK, felt good given my recent history - and it's been up and down, this history, but not all that bad I'm admitting - a day as empty of ambition as any I've experienced lately, but without any feelings of emptiness or turmoil. Empty of ambition is no problem without its attending feelings of jumpiness and the need to flee, to get out, out, out. So, a new day this morning, no thoughts of this or that, but feeling certain, I don't know, the presence of impending new interests and direction. We'll see. It's a wide world out there and I've been spinning away in my self constructed miniscule corner, time to peek out and about.

You've said this too many times now to be taking it up this early in the year.

What better time? You probably have time on your hands to think of such things when you're retired, a similarity between the young just starting out and the old just shutting down. What to do? What to do? Doodle-dee-do? Life is good, better than it might have been, let me tell you, let's put it to some good use. My good use, anyway. Let the Muses spin the background music as we dance, set the step as we set out and about.

Incoherence in but three paragraphs this morning. You're getting faster in your pedestrian descent.

Much too dramatic a way to put it, I'm thinking. We're on a budget here and don't want to contemplate the madness and flamboyance a truly big production requires.

Later. Getting out the door on these days is more difficult these overcast days I'm afraid. Still, no thought to take a bus downtown, so I walked over by the book store and then on to the morning café for a cup of coffee and a cheese pastry of some kind, just to sit for a while away from the apartment. Nothing much in the way of pictures, of course, a shot walking along the sidewalk back home, the clash of the colors and such somewhat interesting, but otherwise no great shakes.

A standard photograph along the lake and then another, just to see what could be done a little differently, not having the patience to wait for the seagull to do something more interesting. Another shot or two to finish out the walk, then back to the apartment. Warm, yes; comfortable, yes; but, you know, not altogether where you want to be hiding for another however many (rainy days). A little guitar, I think, the Stones playing through the little Bose speakers on the iPod. Beggars Banquet. Haven't played that in a while. Skip going down to see the Coen brothers’ True Grit, for some reason, not sure why.

Later still. Still a grey overcast day, the upper-palate thing doing its thing. It does get in the way. The neurologist prescribed something more to try, but I found or, at least, I thought I found the side effects from the pill much too unpleasant to continue. It's been long enough now that I've forgotten the specifics, but they were real enough to get me to stop after that first day. Maybe try them again, see what happens.

I have an appointment with him coming up at the end of the week, best to have something more specific to say than I felt like crap. Bummer, this. Wish I'd never had that jaw operation. Then again, wishes. You can't go back and change the thing, best to just put it aside and get on with what's possible. I mean it hasn't put me in a wheel chair, hasn't made me a bed ridden invalid, hasn't done any of a thousand things less nice and harder to overcome. Just an aching upper-palate, after all, more like a head cold with one or two embellishments. Mumble. A pampered mumble.

Early evening. Watching a Japanese samurai movie, one of the good ones. Made in 1963. I'm trying to think of any American movies I would still watch made in 1963. I'm sure there are many, I'm just not having anything pop into my head at the moment. Couldn't have been the cheese sandwich I had for dinner. The two cheese sandwiches I had for dinner. Do you suppose it's the Jack Daniels? Could be.