Back home, the sky clear, lots of sun, the cold dissolving with the increasing morning light. Time, I think, for a walk. The morning walk as opposed to the afternoon walk when we get home by two or three to sit in front of the computer and surf the web with the various news programs playing on in the background (and to practice the guitar if we're being really good). Yes, yes: routine. Habit. But we're good with it. (And just a bit suspicious. I'm not sure this is how a “real” life is supposed to be lived as it's described in the popular press.)

What? Living here in the midst of art infested Oakland? All the media saying (should you visit), you'll need to grab the wheel and hold onto your hat!?

Well, yes, but I only hear about it in reading the tales of younger Facebook friends and stumbling across the occasional photograph that suggests there are other schemes and routines afoot.

Later. A brief walk over and along the lake after deciding to bring a camera with a much longer lens. Just to see what I could see. I have a tele-extender and another camera body that would make the lens even longer, but that would require a tripod and make you feel too obvious out there alone in the wilds of Oakland.

That's really a concern?

Not on a Sunday morning with plenty of people about, but visibility isn't something you want as a street photographer, even when you're looking for birds. And, quite honestly, I feel like a dork out there packing the thing around.

Ah, the truth is revealed. No real photographer would give a hoot.

Well, we all have our little hang ups and indeed we were able to get closer to the birds. Back after all of twenty minutes to check the photographs and think about lunch. It's approaching noon. Lunch.

Later still. Lunch today was a walk to the usual place to have a dish of green tea ice cream and coffee, we'll make up for it later with dinner. One thing you're supposed to do to keep the ocular migraines in check is to eat throughout the day, no large gaps to let the gremlins in. So that's the excuse, not that I needed an excuse you understand.

Early afternoon. I never did get into that Beatles song I said I'd learn yesterday, maybe now is the better time.

Evening. So (I do say “so” a lot.), the head clear, none of the fuzzy-headed stuff so far, but the sinuses continue their march to the sea. An extra one of the little pain pills added to the usual two at two, but it didn't seem to help. It comes and it goes, although I've been seeing what I think may be positive signs in these last months, as it's begun to loosen up in the mornings while eating breakfast, perhaps a reaction to the heat from the hot coffee and food.

So (there it is again) what does it all mean in the scheme of things? Makes me think right now it might be nice to take a drink, as alcohol often helps, but that's on the list of don't, so we won't. Still, a hint through it all there's hope.

Maybe a good time to talk about something else?

I axed the two long hand wringing paragraphs I'd added earlier at this point. I'm not sure what's worse: the sinuses or the interminable babbling about it. Can't be good when it starts getting to me.

A Vares at six. I'm beginning to see the pattern in this Swedish private detective series. Mr. Vares has so far seemed to stumble into situations where he gets himself beaten up at least once in every episode, demonstrating (I'd guess) a knock me down, I'll get right back up and knock you out, character that, at least in the abstract, sounds like it fits right in the genre's tough guy lore. Except he's gotten into his impossible fixes through, well, booze, distraction and sloth. Too much alcohol, too little thinking, too much dumb luck dumped into the story line to make him survive. Hard to sympathize.

But you still watch.

But I still watch. And bitch, which makes me cringe to think what my own story line might look like in a more honest world.