Does that mean you're up for Mr. E's suggested blow out in Ashland for the Shakespeare Festival?

Now, now.

Breakfast early, dropping off prints I'd promised to the waitress who noticed I'd taken her picture last week and she'd asked for a print. Although I always carry a camera with me to breakfast (I know, I know) I usually don't annoy the staff by taking their pictures. I've been asked for a portrait or two - Ms. X is leaving, could we have a portrait of the two of us together? - sure, that's no problem, but when you go to the same place every morning you don't want them thinking you're some kind of whacko who does whatever one does with people's pictures taken half surreptitiously over toast, eggs and country potatoes.

So why did you take the picture?

If you could be replaced I'd arrange it. Believe me.

Still, a sunny day, the temperature in the sixties. I have the balcony door open and I'm wearing a sweater, the door open because I'm never sure if it isn't something about my apartment that aggravates this aching sinus-head thing. Am I holed up here without taking a walk because the sinus-head thing is acting up or am I in a funk, the sinus-head thing leading it along? When I get out the door my attitude improves, but boy-howdy I'm sitting here (listening to some interesting programs on NPR) thinking I've walked down to the lake about a billion times, walked down by the theater about a billion times, gone downtown to, say, Jack London Square about a million times, do I really want to go out and add to the total?

A sign of depression? Old age? Sloth? The Internet Age? Lack of alcohol?

Alcohol helps the head, but doesn't do anything for the rest of the crap on the list and creates its own problems the next morning. Besides, I'm re-calibrating my head this week as I mentioned: no wine or whining allowed. Well, no wine allowed.

Interesting. Just as I wrote that the NPR program On The Media started on the radio, the lead story about Japanese young men (most always men) who barricade themselves in their rooms (media immersion pods) generally in their parents homes and live online in a fictional space surrounded by radio-television-movies-Internet-Face book-Flick-journals. The story was about Japanese men but the phenomenon is growing here in the United States and around the world. How about some old guy who posts most every day to an online journal for what's coming up on ten years now?

You worried about that?

Not really. You look over your shoulder, you check for demons and drunk drivers, you kick your tires from time to time and survey your surroundings to make sure you still recognize the territory. I've always had hobbies, I've on and off always paid attention to the written word in both the on-line and off-line worlds. Some people still do this for a living and they're often considered relatively reliable, not that you'd want one to marry your sister of course.

Later. I noticed an entry an hour or so ago in the Oakland section of my Google News page: something called “Salmon Aid” was happening this weekend in Jack London Square so I hopped in the car, found a parking space near Jack London and walked around the periphery a couple of times with a camera in tow. The outing didn't change the head at all but as an ex-Seattlite I felt the need to show the flag and make a show. Most Seattlites my age grew up fishing for salmon, learning to clean them and broil them for dinner after a long day in a small rented boat out on the sound. Losing salmon as a species gives me pause, gives a whole lot of Pacific Northwest people pause. I'm not sure how any of this is going to end, particularly when people become more hungry than they are now and it comes down to that one last fish or feeding the family.