Surely you wouldn't save, what with all your traveling around the area, jaunts up and down the coast, sojourns into Death Valley and such?

Right.

Breakfast at the usual place, pancakes and mixed fruit this morning (instead of yesterday's waffle and mixed fruit, one must vary one's diet), back now with the sky beginning to clear and hints of sun poking through. The pavement was wet when I left as it started showering last night. June in Oakland.

I have been making progress with the small studio lights, discovering how often I have to charge the batteries, for example, to keep them pumping (I now have four “eight at a time” battery chargers that will charge all fifty-six batteries required in something under four hours which everyone finds thoroughly amazing whenever I mention it), moving this background here, that background there, lights closer, light farther away. An interesting web resource for small strobe lights is called Strobist, by the way. I look at it now and again when the moon is full and my electrolytes are tight. None of it seems to help the test subject, though, even with a new haircut. Maybe, I don't know, a more extreme PhotoShop treatment.

Later. A bus ride toward the downtown, then a connecting bus to the Berkeley campus at Telegraph. How long has it been since I've walked Telegraph? Long enough to see that some of the old fast food places are no longer in existence, either replaced by something a little more upscale or waiting on another tenant. A walk up and down the street, a quick look in Moe's Books to see what they had in their photography section, another quick look through Shakespeare's on the corner across the street, a book titled The Tao of Photography of some mild interest, but not thirty dollars worth of interest. My walk was more a reflexive thing, doing what I've always done, remembering the many times I've been there in the past, the places I've eaten (and would probably never eat in again). Not so many sidewalk stands, but then maybe they only show up in force on the weekends.

The sinus-head thing with me this morning, less now that I've returned home. I still sometimes wonder if it would go away if I moved, something I need to try one of these days. For a few months, anyway, enough to find out. The stomach and the various connecting pipes do feel better, much less if any of that “sour” feeling, but still no interest in eating. It was about time for a meal, there were many choices, I had some interest in sitting down for a while and watching the people go by, but the stomach was saying wait until dinner, wait until we get home (with nothing, I seem to recall, in the cupboard). I guess this is good, keeps the weight coming off, but interesting to experience. Novelty at my old age: my goodness.