Friday. Another repeat of yesterday, I'd say: to bed by ten, up without the alarm at the usual hour and out and back from breakfast. I guess if I get to bed on time seven or so hours is enough sleep. Until it isn't. Such is life.

The head seems reasonably tight, the eyes clear, not too many strange animals staring at me from the walls or hanging from the ceilings. This is always good - clear headed, mood upbeat - the curious beings in the walls and ceilings rarely do more than stare and make an occasional rude and disrespectful remark. Here in Oakland.

I think we'll just wait until the next paragraph to see how the next chapter in this day turns out.

Later. A brief walk down over to the sidewalk beside the lake to check the geese for goslings and ponder where I might walk this morning which resulted in my turning around and returning to the apartment. I seem to have been at this place before. Still, recollecting I needed to do the laundry, I trundled it downstairs and the last load is now tumbling in the drier, no need to think about it for another month.

That's a trivial task, you know.

I think it's genetic, some kind of laundry avoidance gene. Everyone is born with it, some of them are turned on at birth, some of them are turned off. Didn't make much difference in the old cave man days, makes a little bit more difference now. But it's done. I do get it done. Even when I was young and infinitely more foolish.

The day is nice, the temperature not too warm and I've been listening to the news as it plays in the background thinking I really don't need to consume the news. One can live a perfectly happy life without it. I read the papers in the mornings and listen to the various international news programs in the afternoons and occasionally into the evenings. Hopeless situations spattered like liver spots cover the world, I'm starting to wonder if a steady diet of this stuff is good for my health.

A walk out the door and down the way to sit by the white columns on the lake and watch a couple of young guys practice on a skate board and a bike, both of them pretty good. I should have stayed longer, not limited it to three pictures, but I meandered on to the morning café for a cup of coffee and a pecan brownie. A pecan something or other as their selection is very Asian in the sense they don't really sell anything that contains a lot of sugar. It's all sweet, but not to an American palate, whether that makes a difference or sense.

Back now in the mid-afternoon feeling better. I talk endlessly about hitting a wall in the late mornings that lasts through the early afternoons, a wall that will usually come down by mid-afternoon and the rest of the day will go well. Like today. And, although it's a bother, writing about it even for me is getting old. And a little embarrassing. Time maybe for a direction a little different.

As in get a life?

Nothing too drastic, we're much too good at keeping to our well travelled rut. Peep over the edge now and again, sure, that's certainly allowed. But only in the late afternoons and evenings, when the head is clear and the temperature is mild.