The temperatures got into the low nineties here yesterday and they're saying the eighties today, but we'll see. The sun is as bright in a clear sky as the sun gets, the morning air still cool from the ocean breeze and fog (was there any fog?) overnight, but the afternoon is not looking as if it's in the mood to be any cooler than it was yesterday. I'm feeling better, less tired than I was for whatever reason (I guess some days just go that way at my age) so who knows? Maybe a trip to the second and last day of that weekend park fair in Berkeley. I haven't photographed it since my days starting out again with film. We'll see. Minerva says it's time to walk on water. I think today I'd settle for a swim.

What does that mean?

So many Pisces in the world, so many ways for a Pisces to swim. Not sure walking on water is all that good for a fish even if it's just Minerva playing with words. Out here by a lake in Oakland.

Hopeless.

Never hopeless, my bucko. Just, you know, a bit scattered. I have an ailing cat hunkered down under my bed. I'm allowed, it's to be expected.

Later. A very short walk down by the lake to sit at the usual bench and watch the people run, walk, drag their asses by; a short dog leg to the line of benches facing the white columns, again to sit and contemplate this and that, nothing too important, nothing to get excited about, the day again bright, the air still cool with a light late morning breeze. Getting a bit warmer here in the apartment, though. Maybe slide open the balcony doors a bit, see if the air temperature outside is any cooler than it is in here.

Changing into my slippers in the bedroom I ducked down to take a look at Emmy, she sitting quietly looking back with big round eyes. No indication of discomfort except there's no way to tell, they hide it so carefully. OK, to the vet's tomorrow, just to see, just to make me feel better. Get something out of a visit for one of us, I guess. Concern and duty, not hard to maintain when they overlap.

Oh, and another attempt at a reflection in glass, thinking in terms of the photograph for the main artandlife page, not happy with the one I took yesterday at the same place. I like the current one, it makes you look: what's there, ah, the people reflected in the background, the distorted reddish “heads” of children printed on the poster behind the glass. Something that implies what's inside without being too specific, allowing the imagination to answer questions. I like the one that's there, although I'm not sure how well it works. We'll see.

Later still. I wasn't up for a journey to Berkeley on a bus, on BART and then on another bus to visit the Live Oak Park Fair in Berkeley, but I did get on a bus and go downtown, sitting out in the City Center for a bit to confirm that I and a couple of security people were the only ones present (except for the one and two people at a time who'd come from various directions walking through), took a picture more out of desperation than any esthetic reason, walked over through Old Town looking for someplace serving something I could fathom eating.

Most of the restaurants were closed, but the limiting factor was my damaged appetite and palate. A swing by the Oakland library used book store, which was closed, a walk then to the Chinese Cultural Center to have a green tea ice cream cone (thank god for ice cream, not even a busted palate considers stopping a good cold scoop from going down), another picture for whatever reason (I had the 135mm lens, which is limiting in what it can shoot, although what it can shoot it shoots very well) and then a walk back to Broadway heading north until a bus arrived to take me home.

Phew! There's still a breeze out there so it's not as warm as it was yesterday, and it feels really nice sitting here with my feet up, the keyboard on my lap and a fan blowing a light breeze across the body. It's a nice day at three in the afternoon and I'm tired after that walk, my right arm aching a bit from the weight of the camera. These are good things when they're not too severe and they're not too severe this afternoon.

I've had a couple of sessions with the guitar, both of them rather short, with maybe two or three still to come by the end of the day. The fingertips, I think, are getting stronger, harder, whatever they have to become to finger the strings properly without pain. And I was able to form two of the three practice chords without too many problems. That is progress. They said the fingertips would harden up in about a week, I thinking two weeks from the way they said it, and they may be right. A week and, if not a week, then another week will do fine.

Emmy is still under the bed, looking back at me placidly from the dark, her food dishes untouched. She doesn't look any worse and if I didn't know she wasn't eating I'd think on first glance she was just fine, but she's not, of course. As I said, a needed trip to the vet's when they open in the morning.