Up quite early, so I took a long leisurely bath before getting it together to arrive at my usual morning café by six-thirty to read the papers over coffee and then order breakfast at seven when the restaurant section opens. I need to arrive early when I drive as it takes me somewhat over an hour to finish breakfast and the papers and the parking meters won't give you more than an hour. And I know from experience the meter maids are out there waiting.

Why aren't we walking to breakfast?

Because god, in her wisdom, has instructed me against it.

A common story in the Chronicle and the local Oakland Tribune this morning: six people gunned down out on the street in Oakland this weekend in the early morning hours, none of them evidently related. I've not been able to find any killings on the local online homicide map near my neighborhood, but they definitely give people outside the area a fear of visiting, let alone moving to Oakland. Keeps rent and housing prices down, I assume, not that it much matters now that I've retired.

Another story in The New York Times business section today gave me pause reporting The San Francisco Chronicle is currently losing a million dollars a week. A million a week. I like newspapers, I like to read them in the morning over breakfast (as you may have noticed) but I rarely pay attention to the ads, taking time to throw out any advertising sections included inside before sitting down to read the paper. Same with ads on the web, of course, I ignore them, but I'm exactly the demographic advertisers want to avoid: cranky old bastards over sixty.

I ordered some computer stuff that arrived this morning, for example, but I knew exactly what I wanted when I ordered it online from B & H, my photography vendor in New York City, because it was cheaper and easier and it never occurred to me to look for computer ads in the paper. Which undoubtedly means I'm not going to like what happens to newspapers in the coming years. No need to fret over that which you have no control, said the old man on the mountain. I wonder how the old man on the mountain gets his newspapers delivered? Does he have, for example, an alcohol fired coffee maker? Always the questions, never the answers.

Later. So what's happening? What swell adventures have you in play for the day?

I walked (this time) back to the café for lunch, ambled home feeling pretty good as the sky was overcast until three and the temperature, by my lights, has been close to perfect. I connected the stuff that arrived today to the computer and I've opened a folder of wedding photographs that's been sitting there now for well over a year, wedding photographs that were promised but never delivered.

I wasn't the principle wedding photographer, no way I'd let something like that slide that long, but it's been, as I said, over a year and I haven't sent them their photographs. Why have I let this slide? I don't know. Will I ever know? Probably not. Do I have any possible excuses? Blurry pictures, the batteries weren't charged? What's wrong with blurry pictures? I generally charge extra for stuff like that.