Why not just return the cable that came with the rental guitar and pick up another one from the music store?

Well, they'd probably say I broke it. And a fellow can always use a guitar cable to go with his Pignose, don't you think?

But you don't own a guitar.

I guess I didn't mention the electric guitar I ordered to go with the cable.

No. You didn't.

I did wonder for a minute after pressing the damned “buy me” button whether or not ocular migraines can bring on short moments of dementia or even, in an evil world, the dread loose brain syndrome.

Loose brain syndrome?

That's where, if you move your head, even a little, you feel your brain rattling like a small rock in an empty can. “Loose brain syndrome.” The doctors know about it, but they disguise it by translating it into Latin. Allows them to double their fees, “loose brain syndrome” not sounding quite like something you'd hear from a high priced, respected and licensed professional.

Oh.

Morning. Up at six, to breakfast by six-thirty, a substantial breakfast over the papers (the scale said 155 this morning, best to add more fuel for the fire), back now: the sky overcast, they're saying a sunny but cooler afternoon ahead. Maybe get the car washed after the bug spattered trip. A project for a day, I think. Oh, and the prints I ran yesterday. Put them together into a cohesive package, see if there isn't something more in them than just a whim on my part. Much of life seems to boil down to a whim on somebody's part, might as well be one of mine I suppose.

Later. Today was not perhaps a day to have a car washed. A bus downtown to buy next month's bus pass, another bus then to the Summit Hospital area for the eye exam recommended by the neurologist. I was fifteen minutes early and she was forty-five minutes late, but the examination went as planned. I have the eyes of a sixty-seven year old, but good eyes for a sixty-seven year old, twenty-twenty vision, optic nerve clear, some slight glaucoma forming, but no more than it was last year, normal for someone my age. So good.

Back then to the downtown on a bus to buy a guitar cable, a fifteen footer, and to pick up a prescription I'd called in earlier. I know, I'd ordered a cable earlier, but I wanted to have one that worked now. Right now. Today. So I can play. Hey.

A bus back to the apartment to test the guitar cable (it works fine, the rental cable is now safely coiled away to be returned when the rental period is up), a bit of practice now that it's after one. I'm to a point where the pleasure is in the practice itself and not in an anticipation of being able to play more complex pieces in the future. Maybe all playing is practice. No tunes yet. Well, a tune or two, but nothing involving many notes. Still, I do the scales, I enjoy doing the scales, picking each note in a cadence of my own invention. The three practice chords now come more easily. We are making progress. Honest.

And your electric guitar?

Amazon said it shipped this morning, due by the end of the week. The guitar along with another cable, some guitar string cleaner and something for the maple neck. I've been told it's good for your guitar to have a maple neck and the one I ordered has one. Diddle-dee-done.

Diddle-dee-doom is more like it.

It becomes difficult at my age to tell the difference anymore: done and doom. Done as in “done in” or done as in “done good”? Doom as in “doom and gloom” or doom as in “Dr. Doom, Man of Mystery”?

We are drifting even farther afield I'm afraid.

We often do when the mood is good and the guitar is talking to its amplifier.

Later still. A walk down to the ATM, then on to the morning café for a BLT and a Coke feeling, for whatever reason, like crap. I thought to take in The Apprentice at the Grand Lake, having recently seen the previews, but walked by the theater some fifteen minutes too late, so I returned to the apartment for a nap. When feeling like crap it's best to take a nap. Maybe make it a rule around here. Nap for crap.

Coming home on the bus earlier from the downtown we passed a car wreck on Broadway. I was sitting on the wrong side of the bus, but took some quick pictures through the window as we were passing. I don't carry a camera in case I run into something that verges on adventure, but there's no reason not to take a picture when the opportunity presents itself. So I did. Diddle-dee-did. Here in Oakland.