Tuesday. To bed before ten, good, we seem to be making it a habit, some ruts you get into are good ruts to get into. There's little or nothing on television around then. And I've usually played myself out on guitar in that the finger tips have become a little testy.

Up somewhat after the alarm at six-fifteen, the body coming together slowly, to breakfast and back not quite finishing the Tribune before the meters started, the last paper of the three I take with me each morning. Such is life. I can always check for anything I might have missed online.

It was indeed cold last night (thirty-four degrees, an all time record) although the sun is coming up now over the building next door, a clear and warmer day ahead. They're saying rain will start tomorrow with snow for the first time in the mountains, so maybe we're going to dodge what was looking to be a very dry year. We'll see. California has a strange sense of humor when it comes to its weather. One might say it's part of its charm if you weren't a farmer.

I was thinking, well, I'm not a farmer, have never been a farmer and don't have any friends who are farmers when it occurred to me working for a winery involves farming. Grapes, you know. I do remember paying attention to the weather then, the rainfall - when it came, when it didn't - a new and odd sensitivity I remarked on at the time. The quality of the grapes is very dependent on the rain - when it comes and when it doesn't - not so much (in Napa) on the total rainfall itself as I recall we had our water management systems pretty much in place and under control.

But, well. The cold, the weather. We've touched all the bases. Other than football and photography. We'll get to photography in about a minute I have no doubt, less chance with football until the playoffs roll around this Sunday and then we'll have the full set in place as I'll undoubtedly note the game in passing. A full service journal: banal to the core.

You get a fair number of news stories, some few just recently, on employers who check an applicant's social media online when they're applying for a job, tossing any who may have posted, um, less than best foot forward words and pictures. I wouldn't be doing this if I weren't retired, might not be doing this if I understood the full consequences of blathering as an old no longer employed idiot. I started this close to fifteen years ago when journals, now blogs, were new and, although I was halfway careful in how I handled it while I was working, I was still taking chances (and knew it at the time).

“Halfway careful” is about the right way to put it. In today's environment not careful enough. The company, the people I worked for were aware of it, I was running a web cam connected to the office system that was pumping photographs of the intersection outside our office every fifteen seconds to this journal after all, something I suspect would never happen now, something that I, had I been a manager, would probably not have allowed. And for good reason.

First adopters often find themselves inside the wood chipper, bumping elbows with the rest of the refuse, not the best course of action when you're getting ready to retire. Not as bad as a financial meltdown maybe, or having your job outsourced to Asia (as were ours), but bad enough as it's essentially a self inflicted wound. What wounds do I suffer here from this? Sometimes there's no way to tell.

What was that about?

Sometimes it's not good to read news stories about online comments and pictures that get their authors in trouble. Paranoia, you know. Wondering whether we're putting bullets through our own feet and then wondering why we're not out walking more often.

A decided decline in invitations to the ball?

I don't know, probably will never know. Then again, what the hell, it's another day and another entry and the world has successfully turned once again on its axis with or without rain on the horizon.

Later. The last load of laundry is finishing up in the drier. Although I'd gotten downstairs with the laundry at eight, I found there was a young woman ahead of me, a new tenant in the building, who had just started a similar number of loads. Ah, well. It's now after one and mine has finally finished, but I've had a certain feeling of being trapped inside the apartment whether really wanting a walk or not.

I did manage a quick trip down the way for two scoops of ice cream in a waffle cone, half wondering if the little event that kicked in yesterday after eating ice cream might not materialize again (guess who!), but no, so we're doing well this sunny day in January, 2012.

Later still. Another walk down the way to have a late lunch-early dinner at the usual place without any idea what I might be able to eat. I know their menu by heart, but still can't think of a single thing that appeals. Not that I can think of anything I'd like them to add to their menu. One or two items, maybe, but it's not the fare that's the problem.

I brought the small Nikon 1 (V1) camera with a 30-100mm lens with me this time, thinking I need to use the damned thing to at least learn how it works, how to take pictures with confidence, see what it has for both good and ill. So I did. And it does take a good picture, but, after have settled in over the years with these larger boxes, I do find it a bit too small, a bit baffling, a bit cumbersome to use. It will take nice video, I'm assuming pretty good (nice) video, but I - at least so far - haven't developed any interest in video. It's an interesting camera, but it might not be a camera I'll ever really use.

Yet you bought one.

From pictures and comments on the web, toys for the boys. Says more about the bent state of my head than anything else I might say or do. We'll see. It does take pictures. It does.

Evening. More guitar, another Scandinavian police procedural on TV, more guitar and now, well, maybe watch a talking heads program at eight if the guests are of any interest, and then to bed. A good day, the head reasonably clear, just like real folks. Not that I have much if any contact with “real folks”, you understand. Just sayin’. Babbling. Pushing onward, through the fog.