Tuesday. A good evening after work at PCB with the Ladies and Gents Who Lunch. George was there with an Apple laptop, with James arriving soon thereafter and, I thought, well, George is working against a deadline of some kind. Turns out PCB went wireless that afternoon, a DSL line with a wireless HUB, so George was online and connected, which is appropriate for this gathering. "You have a blog? Let's take a look." How incestuous. How fascinating. I'm the one old fart in the group, but it doesn't seem to be an issue. Pull out the camera, shoot a picture, have a Guinness, have a potato skin, have another Guinness. Life, wired, here in Oakland.

One thought. Gwen is driving up the coast soon to Vancouver and George put a recordable CD into his Apple and burned a set of travelling music. I'd asked if he'd downloaded any of the 99 cent songs available on the Apple site and yes, he had. Nice feature. Ninety-nine cents a tune, you can make as many copies as you like for your own use (or to give to a friend heading up the coast). I used Napster briefly when it first appeared, but my interest in music has been on the back burner. The occasional CD, ordered from Amazon.

The ability to sit down in an evening and think, well, I'd like to listen to this or listen to that, none of which is available without a lot of getting up, going out and looking around and only then on a CD with a bunch of other crap I don't really want or care about, but I could download the lot for ten bucks and burn a CD, well, would I do it? In a second, my son, in a second. In the seventies I'd get twisted in the evening and make a tape from my collection of lp's. Twisted tape one, twisted tape two, the evenings and the tapes growing. Then, on another evening, on another afternoon, select a tape to fit the mood.

The trick was creating it on the fly as the mood struck and the evening progressed, the way I'd always played single cuts during an evening without recording them from the records in my collection. This iTunes download thing might encourage me to try it again. I'd like that. That would be good. It's supposed to be available for Windows by the end of the year. Time to think of acquiring what's needed when it comes.

Wednesday. Last night I got in around eight after three beers and an order of potato skins, not sure which of them did the most damage. No complaints. Today a long day, but a good day as far as the head is concerned. I've been feeling an urge building inside to step out over the line again and do something. This is good, a premonition maybe the vertigo world is passing. Hi, ho. Who knows, it will probably pass, this urge, and, after all this time, who cares? (I care. I do care. Really. It's just, well, it stumbles on and on and on.