Monday. Up this morning to take the blood pressure reading at five-forty: 105/75. OK, just out of bed, measure it again as we're leaving for breakfast: 111/81. So far, so good. I guess. Bright sun and a nice walk, arriving a little earlier than usual. Plain waffle with sliced bananas and strawberries, no butter or syrup, but a light dusting of powdered sugar.

Not bad, finished early with but two papers today as they don't deliver the East Bay Times (formerly the Tribune) on Mondays, so a walk back home passing by this guy as he approached with his sign. You can never tell what you may find in the way of a picture, even in areas you've traveled every day now for years.

Yet you keep taking photographs of the same subjects. One might say there's a hint of madness in that. Mr. Photographer?

We rationalize and say it keeps us amused. Oh, and returning from breakfast, the blood pressure was 108/75. I must admit this is getting interesting. Now starting our second day off the blood pressure meds, feeling wide awake and clear headed.

Later. No desire to go anywhere, but the weather is nice, the temperature now up into the seventies, so a brief walk over to the lake and then back across Grand to have a bagel with cream cheese and coffee at the café near the fitness center before returning home at noon. Blood pressure 123/80, now fifty-four hours since taking the blood pressure med, thirty hours since skipping the med I should have taken yesterday morning.

And we're supposed to cheer you on?

I do believe the pressure will continue to rise and I'll have to go back on them, just at a smaller dose or with a longer time in between taking them. Be nice to lose them altogether, though. I've always thought blood pressure rises with age, but I could easily be wrong and something has changed here for the better. But we'll see, any cheering will have to wait until after a conversation with the doctors.

Later still. The reason I don't eat bagels with cream cheese (very often) is because I've noted they will occasionally bring on an ocular incident, a thought that passed through my mind when I ordered one earlier. Usually the body rejects them and so they're easy to avoid ordering, but the one this morning probably led to the incident that arrived as I got off the bus at Latham Square. A “funky dry mouth”, feeling funny and tingling, the head in a fog, the vision not right.

Took one or two pictures and then had lunch near the City Center, hungry, but more to sit while eating to deal with the ocular migraine. Another bus home and now feeling better, if more stupid than I'd like. I often feel more stupid than I'd like.

Oh, and the blood pressure was 131/74 when I got home, lying down for five minutes it was 98/57, which makes me wonder how accurate and/or consistent this Omron home meter of mine might be. Deedle-dee-dee. The 98/57 reading, even having taken it after lying down for five minutes, is as low as the earlier reading that got me to stop taking the blood pressure med in the first place. Well. It's accurate enough.

Evening. Democracy Now and then the first half of Charlie Rose, but that was it this night for television. To bed to watch this and that on the tablet. A bit like pulling teeth, most of the stuff available to watch, but you get tired or frustrated with one and so you turn to another. At least we don't abuse our smart phones during the day on the sidewalk.

The blood pressure was running in the area of 125/75 and so, finally, a blood pressure med before turning out the lights. Been through this before, spacing out the period between taking the things. Talk with the doctors, talk with whomever and just get on with it.