Friday. Lights out at eleven, half asleep as the fireworks started in the distance at midnight, awakening at six-thirty on this New Year's Day morning. OK, seems good, take my time shaving in preparation to set out at a quarter to eight, the morning café opening late. Could have set out earlier, as they'd already arrivedin preparation for their eight o'clock opening, but I didn't want to have made a mistake and end up waiting in the car.

A bright sun driving to, a bright sun driving back. New Year's Day, we'll at least walk over to the lake to see if there are signs left from the fireworks people were lighting off last night. Yes, the big show at midnight on San Francisco Bay, something you could easily hear in the distance, but some were closer to home and I'm curious.

You were something of a pyromaniac as a kid.

I was a kid. All kids begin life as pyromaniacs and it takes many a year to effect a cure, some more than others.

Later. A nap, nice, and then a walk over to the lake all bundled up as much as I could manage to discover it's cold out there and nothing was open for coffee. Back to the apartment where it was warm, thank you very much. Bright sun with a cold wind. Quite a few more people out and about than you'd imagine there might be with the temperature so low and the wind so brusque.

Maybe they all, like you, headed out without realizing this.

Or maybe I'm older and thinner and more susceptible to the elements. I've read about such things, never quite sure if it's me or the idea it's me.

One in the afternoon. There must be football on television. The Rose Bowl? Later today?

You don't even know who's playing.

Stanford for one in the Rose Bowl. They mentioned it more than once in this morning's papers.

Later still. I'm not able to receive the Rose Bowl without cable, so no football. A radio announcement saying Stanford was way out ahead at halftime and so that announcement is my football viewing for the day. No big deal. Not sure when I last watched a Rose Bowl.

Still bright and sunny, although I haven't checked the temperature. Zoned out on the bed for half an hour or so in between watching segments of an episode of an all afternoon marathon of Midsomer Murders on television. I can occasionally watch the thing, but just now and again, no way I'll withstand an all afternoon string of episodes.

Evening. Skipped out on Charlie Rose at eight (we do skip out a lot on Charlie) and spent the early evening watching movies on the tablet. Now and then you find something you like on the tablet, enough to keep you paying the monthlies and coming back. Up at nine to check the new Benedict Cumberbatch Sherlock Holmes series and stayed with it for forty-five minutes. Hmm. Everyone likes the earlier Cumberbatch series, yet I haven't warmed to it yet. A different somewhat off the wall visual treatment, but a shade too off the wall was the thought.

What does that mean in the scheme of things?

Means I went back to bed and started another movie on the tablet.