I'll be interested to see if the mood lightens up a bit now that the commonly understood “strains” of the season are done with. I don't believe I think all that much about it, the holiday crush, but I'm sure it's there and saying it's not is more fantasy than any unusual grip on your emotions. Susceptible souls, we are, comes with the human condition.

Have things been all that out of whack?

It's just seemed slower in ways I don't remember it being slower in the past. Maybe because it didn't have any notable ups and downs, maybe just pulling your head inside the shell a little more than you might otherwise have done in past seasons, a couple of degree drop in the temperature, not enough to notice, but enough to feel. Last month, though, not this month, we've got a winter to finish and a spring to meet and get the arms around.

Later. Sunny, but warmer by six or seven degrees than it was yesterday they're saying for today, the mid-fifties instead of yesterday's high forties. Still, seems chilly. But off to walk along the lake and then on to Lakeshore to have a blue berry pastry and coffee out at a table (in the sun) in front of the bagel shop, shooting the odd photograph as I was walking.

No great enthusiam in taking pictures, but an element of interest was indeed there, so no complaints. A photograph to note the number of birds out on Lake Merritt, another of a guy with his back to me, a photograph I often take not so much because there's little chance of upsetting the subject if he were to see me taking his picture - a factor not totally absent - but for the larger Edward Hopper element of an individual alone staring off into the distance, a good subject around which to build a photographic project. If one had an ambition to set out on a photographic project.

No signs of ocular anything, I was careful with the breakfast, the sinus-upper palate thing albeit still in evidence, but otherwise a good morning given the set of mornings we've become accustomed to anymore. Time to walk, time to sit, time to take in the day. I'd set out to go downtown, but then couldn't think of a single reason to go downtown and decided to skip the passing bus I'd gone to meet and head on by the theater toward Lakeshore in the opposite direction. Maybe something more ambitious later.

You haven't been to San Francisco in a while.

I know. My sinuses and I have been discussing the project.

Later still. A bus downtown to walk around briefly before having a half sandwich out at a table in front of Ratto's on Washington Street, walking then back to a bus stop on Broadway and taking the bus to the morning restaurant (debating whether to go home or go on, the decision made by the Fates when the bus passed by my apartment stop) where I had ice cream. A bus then back to the apartment.

One or two pictures, because that's what we do, now to listen to the news and play guitar. Well, practice the guitar, playing is something I've not quite gotten around to yet.

Evening. Went to bed to take a nap at four and woke up thinking it was six in the morning and I'd slept for over twelve hours. I finally got my head together and realized it was six in the evening (let me tell you, it took a while) and that I'd awaken coming out of a fairly powerful ocular event, the world in a very different place than my head. Took another two hours to calm the day and allow my head to put itself back together again.

So. Not sure what that's about. Maybe the alcohol over these few evenings, never more than three drinks at a time, but additive perhaps. I usually have intervals of days in between drink. And maybe the moon is made of green cheese. I suspect I have no idea or, more likely, too many ideas looking for a cause.

At least some guitar before I go to bed (again).