Saturday. To bed last night at ten. I said I'd do my best to get to bed not long after nine in the future, but last night it was ten. Short term memory loss maybe, what was I thinking? Still, got right to sleep, up with the alarm in good fettle (as good as fettle gets at five forty-five in the morning), off and back from breakfast, the sun now creeping up over the building across the way, soon to make me cower behind my monitor. A good, same old morning.

Although I take a picture across the street from my morning café whenever the gas prices change and post them up in the corner, I don't really “follow” them as such. I seem more comfortable anymore doing things I'm not able to give a coherent reason for doing. Learning the guitar for instance.

Anyway, someone mentioned on the news that prices were very high for this time of year and I wondered about that, my mental comparison always being to four dollars a gallon, if it's less than four we're fine, so I looked back at January 7th, 2011, 2010 and 2009. My, my. $3.35, $3.03 and $1.93. Today's $3.69 is pretty high, which was the point the commentator was making, saying we'll see $4.25 regular nationwide this summer, which probably translates to at least $4.50 here in the Bay Area. I'm now thinking maybe electric cars are coming more quickly than I'd imagined. You do see them around. More Tesla's than you'd think, lots of hybrids.

A BART ride down to the south bay this noon hour with Mr. E to attend another E Clampus Vitus event, the same one we attended last year. An easy enough journey on BART, although I'm not looking forward to any drinking. Which I'll do, of course, hard to not once you've said you're going, but we'll see. Take it easy, take some pictures as I did last year, get back by three and await any ocular migraine events that may follow.

I'm saying this without particular anguish. Once you haven't had one in a while it's as if they'd never happened. Which is why they always surprise you. Surprise! Here I am! Through that same door you'd opened before by drinking-eating-doing all that stuff they told you not to do! Woo, hoo! Probably best I never put too much of this stuff on my old resumes.

Just stop!

Of course.

Later. A call from Mr. E bailing on the E Clampus sojourn! He's got something going in San Francisco and has to bail! My, my. We'll see if we can't turn this to good effect! Like a nap!

Later still. What else but a walk along the lake, through the farmer's market and on to have lunch at the usual place. Too large a lunch. They brought a mixed fruit side dish, as they do in the mornings, and the combination of it, the sandwich (chicken and avocado) and the half order of potato salad (if that was half an order I'd hate to see what a full order looks like) was too much.

No complaints, but I feel guilty if they, being nice, bring me something on the house and I don't get all of it down. Particularly if it's something like an orange or a piece of chicken. Why an orange? Because it's a gift? Probably to do with how you were raised and trained: “Bobby! Eat your ______ or your ears will fall off!” Sounds a good enough story line when you're making it up.

I mentioned I had to adjust the color temperature on some of the pictures I took downtown with what is now the “old” D2X camera and realized, in looking at the pictures I'd taken this morning, that the color balance is indeed off in certain light. Could be out of adjustment or could need recalibration. Which I've been unwilling to do (much as I've avoided cleaning their sensors), but do have the necessary equipment to bring it off.

You can screw up cleaning a sensor, in fact trash the sensor (this is a cop out, I know it's a cop out, but a not uncommon cop out among photographers). You can't really screw up a camera by botching a profile. And this is an older camera I don't even carry insurance on. So I think I'll give it a try. Might be interesting. Might get me, well..., we've heard it before: off my duff.

So it's now afternoon, no trips down the way to E Clampus, so more work on cleaning up the color balance on one or two more of these photographs and some time on the guitar. I got quite a bit of time in yesterday (for me, anyway) and made progress with the chord progressions and such. Quite a lot of progress. I'm encouraged. See if I do the same today. We'll know if so by the end of this entry I'd think. If just saying it hasn't put in a jinx.

Evening. A long day for not doing much. A book arrived this afternoon I'd ordered yesterday, The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan by the Rolling Stone writer Michael Hastings, recommended in yesterday's Glenn Greenwald column at Salon (enough product touting for one sentence?) and I actually read the first hundred pages. So far, so good. Anything that can get me a hundred pages into a book is OK by me, but I'll say something more when I've finished. The world is undoubtedly awaiting my analysis.

Yes, a guitar session, but not enough to say I've practiced today. I'll take another crack now, hope something comes up on TV I want to watch while I'm playing. Complicated, this, as always.