In His Apartment
Thursday. Well, yesterday was strange: a lot of sleep, some thought toward the end of the afternoon if I'd eaten something at breakfast that had set my insides off, a dozen or so glasses of water as I watched television into the evening, more with the stomach in mind than any sense of thirst. Slept in til nine this morning, came up from consciousness at my own slow pace, a walk to breakfast around eleven (mixed fruit and a waffle) and a walk back stopping for a while to sit in one of the park chairs. All this and it's only noon. Perhaps you only find excitement like this in exotic places like Oakland.
The webcam arrived this morning. It was sitting outside my door when I opened it to bring in the papers, carried up by someone in the building who'd been at the front door when the UPS truck arrived. Door to door service. Now to read the instructions and get it up and online. I'm not sitting here jumping up and down at the thought, but I'm up for it, none the less. Start with one, maybe add others. If you're going to put a webcam up in a place where there's nothing to take images of (other than an empty room or two and an alleyway out front that doesn't get any traffic), why stop at one? This is America, is it not? The land of ambition and dreams? Gotta start somewhere they keep saying.
Ms. M flew in from North Carolina last night for her son's birthday, staying with him in San Francisco, the idea being to get together with mutual friends here in the Oakland area later today to catch up on old times. Good. She'll be in town until Sunday, I think, and then back east, back to what I believe is born again territory. Born again folks with very specific ideas about how you yourself should act at home and in public. We have similar strains running around in the bay area, but it's considered rude to suggest they change their ways and it's bad form to intervene unless whatever they're doing involves firearms, baby snatching or murder. There are those who say we're not much into firearm ownership here, but I can assure you, push come to shove, we have more than enough to go around.
Sounds sinister, this gun business.
That's why we keep them locked up and only take them out for national holidays and during times when the larder is bare and the bank account is down.
Later. So, pick up Ms. M, head over to Alameda, say hello to people I haven't seen in years, head to dinner at a Chinese restaurant (pretty much tasteless food - I've eaten lunch and dinner too many times for too many years with people who were born in China or who's parents were born in China in a city with a large Chinatown), a run to the Oakland - San Francisco ferry to get Ms. M back in time to San Francisco, sitting here now before nine thinking I feel reasonably good, but it's taken most of the day for that to happen. Who knows why? I'll assume I'm still coming out of this cold, still getting the stomach and its connecting pipes in order and get up early tomorrow morning and see how it goes.
Oh, and lunch tomorrow with much of the usual crew. Nothing wrong with that, I'm thinking, cranky old fart sitting in his apartment.
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