Let's see, something to bitch about: I did my morning check of the Nikon site to see how my D3 is doing, waiting on "parts hold" for a "minor repair". It's been eighteen days. I'll give them a break and write it off to their earthquake and flood in Thailand - I'm not in any difficulty because it's delayed - but I suspect many another might be put in a bind if this waiting on parts is common.

The sun seems to have finally broken through, although I headed out on my walk dressed for the cold. A good idea, as it turned out, head out the door, a overcast sun still putting the day in doubt. A walk along the lake (of course) and on to the morning café for coffee and an apple turnover, a walk then taking a shortcut through a parking lot passing a flowering tree in front of a condominium behind the Grand Lake theater, realizing how little I know about flowers.

A walk around the Lakeshore loop stopping for an ice cream cone (again, balancing my midday meal: an apple turnover and ice cream cut with coffee pretty much incorporate all the food groups - hup!) and then back home, stopping to sit for a while on a bench beside the white columns. Took one or two pretty much standard, passed by them a thousand times, photographs, but feeling I hadn't fallen into the “seen it before, can't be anything worth shooting” trap. Better to be in the “seen it before, but shoot it anyway with a glimmer of hope” trap. Not much better, but better. Better is better and the light was nice.

Some time on the guitar now, I think, while I listen to the news droning in the background. I happened to pass by my guitar instructor on the sidewalk this morning, probably a message from the gods reminding me about my lesson tomorrow. Or are we into our own self importance to the point we feel the gods are giving us guitar practice heads up? Well. No, probably not.

I take it we've run totally dry?

Sometimes I can do it in less than a paragraph.

Evening. For some reason I seem to have gotten into futzing with a group of photographs I took in the studio some years ago, a little voice saying what you like to do is portraits, why not shoot more portraits and, as I ran some of these through Photoshop (we've learned a bit around here since I'd last worked on these), I thought why not LEARN TO LIGHT THEM PROPERLY! (Sorry for the shouting.) All these pictures of a model who was posing without clothes and I found myself happily cropping them as portraits. Hmm.

And I listened to the President's State of the Union message and I listened to the Republican rejoinder as I was all the while working on those photographs (to keep from shouting loudly and disturbing the neighbors). I considered just skipping them altogether, but that's not an option. Some things, like voting, you just do because you really do need to when you're at participant in a democracy, even if it's acting more like an autocracy when the push come to shoves. But we've said all this before.