Tuesday. To bed after nine, to sleep after ten, up this morning with the alarm at five forty-five and off to breakfast and back just like that. The sky is overcast, they say clear and up to seventy degrees here in Oakland later on in the afternoon, the day starting well. We'll see. It's of interest to me. More so than I suspect I realize.

A long day on guitar today I'm thinking (please?). I've been putting the time in but I know I should have been doing more. We'll pull it all together today and see how it sounds. Progress, no doubt about it, but I feel I'm at the edge of one of those jump forward times and I'd like to see it get off the mark. Closer to actually playing this damned thing, nine months of lessons later. I'm like a dog worrying over a bone, frustrated yes, but definitely engaged.

Later. I've been meaning to pick up two more rechargeable 9-volt batteries for the guitar and foot activated tuner so I used it as an excuse to get out and take a bus downtown. Nice, the sky now clear, the sun giving a nice photographer's light at ten thirty in the morning.

I bought the batteries at the City Center Radio Shack (fifteen bucks each for rechargeable batteries?) and then sat out at a table with a cup of coffee taking a picture of a table on the lower level from above. Turned out OK. Another photograph from an upper level table looking into the sun. I say I don't mind flare, and usually I don't, but I could have done something a little better with this one. No complaints. Hard to sit in a place where you've sat a thousand times and come up with a (unique) picture.

A walk back then down Broadway, again the late morning light rather nice, not sure why today, as I've walked this route many times in the late mornings, home now to pick up the guitar. I'm ready. Is it?

You've got that backward.

It's just that it takes me a while to build up a head of steam. You've noticed my carping about energy levels, head full of cement and such?

Later still. OK, listen to the news in the background, plenty of news to choose from on the various public television stations we have here on digital TV, and play along with the song (Imagine) badly, but better than I have in the past; go through the series of barre chords that I seem to now be able to remember how to play. Give me the chord and I can find it without thinking (too much). Still have the lag between chords, but it's getting shorter, won't take much more time to learn than, say, the rest of my life.

Given the variations, there are five each for each of the two sets of seven, seventy in total. I've only learned perhaps twenty-five, but twenty-five is a start. There's more out there on the higher frets, but not that many more and they'll come along soon enough.

And that's it for chords?

Um, no. I haven't been all that curious about the number of chords you can play on a guitar, but I suspect seventy or a hundred is probably off by an order of magnitude, seven hundred instead of seventy, but a whole lot of them are undoubtedly, well, esoteric and heard maybe once in a life. I hope, anyway. I'm not sure I want to know there's a thousand chords out there when I can only play my three or so dozen right now and I struggle enough with them as it is.

Oh, and there's another chapter in the unknown penguin series, popped up this morning on Facebook.