Very little time on the guitar yesterday and here we sit a day before this week's lesson. Two sessions today playing along with the music (he said), enough time I hope to tie it all up. Hup.

Later. A lie down and listen to the radio for about an hour, can't call it a nap. Felt fine, but I wasn't tired in the sense of going to sleep tired. Felt fine, just didn't sleep.

Up to put together a section of photographs from yesterday's Temescal Street Fair. I don't like a number of the pictures, first for the strained light, contrast and color, a beginner's errors, and two for the ho-hum banality of the images. Not all, two or three, some I like well enough, but just some, well short of the twenty-one or so that are needed. Will I post them? I suspect I will, but I've not quite rationalized-kidded myself it's OK to do so yet.

Selling out to what in making the decision?

To myself.

A walk then out the door thinking, well, the bus isn't due for fifteen minutes, maybe we'll walk over along the lake and think about whether we really want to go downtown while taking the odd picture. And another odd picture. Decided finally to head back to the bus stop and go downtown, maybe have a salad for lunch.

Waiting on the bus five police cars went speeding by one at a time, lights flashing, clearly with a trouble in mind. The bus was way late, the smartphone app stuck for a good four minutes on “Arriving”. Did I really want to go downtown? Had the bus been involved in an accident? So I set out again walking to the morning restaurant.

Had I continued on, before turning back to wait at the bus stop, I'd have witnessed the car chase the ended in the crash, one of the people who'd been sitting out on the café patio later saying a black SUV had come racing by with four police cars in hot pursuit. Can't tell if it's a black SUV from the pictures, but I suspect it is.

Down beyond the overturned car toward the café along Grand an ambulance and more police cars were gathered, a young man not looking particularly hurt on a gurney being loaded into the ambulance. I didn't take his picture because, well, it's a little ghoulish and that's not why I carry a camera. Not my kind of photograph (unless he was an unusually attractive she). Had I been a newspaper photographer I'd have gotten onto the gurney with him if I thought it might have led to a better image. But I'm not. So we'll skip ghoulish.

Anyway, coffee and an almond biscotti at the café (we've finally lost those three extra pounds, no need to invite them right back) before returning then to the apartment, another photograph or two after the fire engines had put out the fire and left. Just another afternoon anymore in Oakland.

Later still. A description in the Oakland Tribune late in the afternoon, two robbers who'd held up three people at gunpoint in Piedmont and then escaped in a Mercedes SUV. You're holding up people on sidewalks and driving a late model Mercedes?

Maybe a stolen Mercedes?

Ah. That would make more sense. Not much more, though. Holding up people at gunpoint on a Piedmont sidewalk? Holding up banks is stupid enough, but what? Twenty or fifty or maybe a hundred bucks from someone walking along on a sidewalk gets you ten years in jail?

You can take comfort they weren't after their cameras.

Says you.

Evening. Turns out they're replaying the French Spiral series for the third time now at six. Too bad. Tuned the guitar, did the usual warm up and started playing the two songs that have been assigned, realizing I'd forgotten the fingering of one of the chords I've been playing now for two weeks. The head is clear, I feel good, it's been a good day, but forgetting chords I was playing just last night? These are barre chords and a number of them are similar, but I've obviously got some memorizing to do. We'll skip the doodle-dee-do.

I posted the Temescal pictures to artandlife and I'll post them to HereInOakland later. I futzed with one or two of the pictures, added one or two more, deleted one or two others, but they're still weak for reasons that have to do with me, deedle-dee-dee. One might think deedle-dee-dee sets a bad tone, but I guess it's the way I look at taking pictures. Serious most of the time, but with lapses. You'd think such an attitude would lead to you forgetting other matters. Like fingering your barre chords.

This has definitely started to wander.

I gotta sit down with the guitar now, play some music.