Everything I Get
Tuesday. The usual overcast, breakfast reading the papers at the usual place, home now feeling pretty good, pretty good being pretty good, no complaints. What that means in the overall scheme of things - the way life is going, the way the health is going, the way the summer is going - I have no idea, but I seem to be upbeat writing it over and over in the mornings, the day ahead. Cheerleading, perhaps, here in July, running out of Dykes on Bikes pictures for the journal. Nothing new about that.
I went to the Amtrack web site and priced out a round trip ticket to Portland in a sleeping compartment, a trip I've taken many times now over the years. I got to the point of starting to enter my credit card data and stopped. First, confirm the apartment manager will be here to feed Emmy; second, what in the hell am I doing? Sleepwalking? Sleepwebbing? We're driving, remember? Up the coast? Take a few days? Oh, right. Click! No more Amtrack web site. I do the same thing with books, but the damage there is minimal. A fellow can always use more books (wall space, book cases, more wall space, more book cases), no way to do much damage, but still, but still....
Later. I took the bus to Broadway and turned away from the downtown and headed north to an address between Broadway and Telegraph some seven blocks farther up to look at a condominium building, get a sense of it and scope what the neighborhood is like. The first time I've actually looked at one of the condos listed for sale on places like zillo or redfin. The price was closer to right, the building was, well, less than spectacular and the neighborhood, well the neighborhood was doable if you had to make do.
So, a step forward of sorts? Hard to say. I took half a dozen pictures, walking by the condo building itself without stopping before heading back to the City Center and then returning to the apartment. Pictures of buildings mostly and an interesting sign. I think I'll do more of them, perhaps start routinely searching them out: old Oakland, funky Oakland, off the wall Oakland, an Oakland I've always liked.
But you don't like the idea of living next to one of them?
I've lived here now for well over ten years but not, I must admit, next to every old building I've found in neighborhoods where there are no pedestrians at night.
You don't walk around your own neighborhood at night.
But others do and I might.
Later still. Listening with little enthusiasm to The News Hour where they're discussing the current Congressional health insurance debate, not for lack of interest but for overkill. I'm punch drunk. Too much information too much of the time. My fault. I talk about cutting down my news intake. Good luck. I'm listening to four white Congressmen spin the issue in language suitable for third graders and I deserve everything I get.
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