Friday. Pulling into the basement garage this morning from breakfast, a CD playing in the car, I realized I was indeed listening to more music lately than I have in these last couple of decades, some of the habits of my teens, twenties and thirties were coming back. Not to the original degree, no thought that will or should happen, but I'm now more in tune with the music than I was as a later life techie planted in a cubicle farm. I think it's good, even if the logic doesn't quite work.

Some rare energy last night as I was preparing for bed, went through the piles(s) of magazines that have accumulated over the last few months, separated out the photography magazines (which I keep) and then trundled the rest down to the paper bin in the garage. It wasn't so much the act as the energy I was experiencing. Felt good. Be nice if it were to stay around. Much could be done.

Anyway, to bed then, up half an hour later than the norm, to breakfast and back as noted, the sky overcast with sun in the morning forecast. Friday has arrived. There are one or two things coming up I'd like to photograph, both scheduled for tomorrow unfortunately, but we'll work around that.

Lots of guitar practice yesterday, we'll see if we can't manage the same today. I figure if I've built up a head of steam on Wednesday through Friday after the lesson I'll feel much better about my progress over the coming weekend when time is more constricted. Or something like that. A good start is a good start is probably what I'm saying, it's just, you know, too simple minded to state it too clearly.

You're starting to lose it, now. Best to stop.

Later. A quick check of the web to see if there was anything I'd missed coming up this weekend and I noticed there was a union demonstration planned for this morning in front of the Oakland City Hall starting in fifteen minutes. A quick check of the smartphone to see when the next bus was due to arrive: four minutes. OK, I can get it together and make it to the bus in four minutes without having to rush. Too much. When I got to the stop and checked the phone again it said the next bus was due in thirty-three minutes. Hmm. I missed it? I've seen this before, sometimes it jumps the gun, and waited a little bit to see it arrive. Good.

So, an unexpected hour and a half shooting (another) union demonstration in Oakland. I keep saying I need to shoot more of these things, learn how to approach them to get my kind of picture out of it, and I'm making progress, but slowly, slowly. I shoot thinking look for facial expressions, the more in the same frame the better, against a background that tells the story: who they are, what they're saying, what they're doing. At least that's where I am on my learning curve. Far from there yet.

A good outing, two hundred and twenty-five pictures, maybe a tenth of them worth the trouble. Actually, there may be more having just looked quickly through them. Nothing spectacular, but some worth the effort. It will take the rest of today and tomorrow to confirm.

I have a pair of headphones due to arrive today through UPS, probably in the early evening if past experience matters. I've been thinking it would be nice to have a set of decent headphones for the guitar, which would allow me to turn up the volume without shattering the neighbors, not to mention being able to plug into some of these other devices I have lying around. Anyway, the list of excuses and rationalizations I invented to make the purchase and now it's due to arrive.

Later still. More time with the photographs, making progress on two sections of twenty-one that I'll put up on hereinoakland. Thinking I'd had enough for a stretch, needing a stretch, I walked down the hill to have sushi and sake, a way to celebrate the unexpected photo outing, and met two wedding photographers at the sushi bar, a couple who explained they'd started shooting professionally full time eighteen months ago.

The usual talk about equipment, what worked, what didn't, why they'd settled on this, why I'd settled on that. An interesting dinner. In looking at their web site I realized they were pretty damned good, they seem to have a genuine passion for it, seeing what they had up on the wire. So again, a good evening, heading into the weekend.