Saturday. Rain. Evidently we're close to breaking a hundred plus year record here in the Bay Area on the amount of rainfall in the month of June on this, only the fourth day. Such is the weather here in Oakland.

Sitting in front of the TV last night plinking away on the guitar it finally occurred to me it was a Friday and my weekend Korean soap I was staying up to see runs on, well, the weekends. My, my. So I got to bed by ten, up this morning with the alarm (and the rain), back now at the apartment before eight. I don't get the Times on the weekends so I go through the two remaining newspapers lickety split, no problem finishing up before the parking meters start.

I have no idea what to do today, although the thought doesn't particularly bother me. I checked to see if Winter's Bone was available as a book and it is and it's on its way. Good. I may or may not find it readable, a bit gritty is the least you can say about the story line, but I'll give it a try. I suggested the movie had a Tarantino touch, perhaps something of a stretch, but Charles Portis is probably the better match. We'll see soon.

And I've been threatening to shoot some self portraits later, use the two new small umbrellas with their tripod attachments that I convinced myself I needed and ordered last week, and that sounds like pretty good. On a rainy noon in June.

Later. We definitely have rain, it's not going away, whatever records to be set, will be set, no doubt about it. A nap for about an hour, a nap in the sense (again) I lay down and drifted in an out of consciousness with the radio turned down low in the background. Up now thinking I need to start with the guitar (not good to “need” to start, better to “want” to start) and see if I'll rearrange the furniture to take those self portraits. Test the gear. (hear! hear!) Or take another nap.

Later still. A break in the rain, so I walked the usual path by the lake to see if I could spot the goslings. No goslings. Still, a walk then to the morning café if only to have somewhere to walk, a small coffee and a jam filled bun out front at one of their tables under the awning about the time it started raining again. The sinus-upper-palate-double-vision had settled in as I headed out the door, although it seems to have receded a bit in the walk back home. Guitar, I think, get that last half of While My Guitar Gently Weeps memorized, take it easy. Do what I want, let the rain fall, see what may befall us all tomorrow.

Evening. I've talked myself out of sushi this evening. Could be the lack of funds, could be the fact I'm really probably after sake and not sushi at all and there are many ways to have sake without spending much money on my low rent palate. I worked on memorizing the George Harrison song, although in my hands it doesn't quite sound the way it did when George played it. Eric's treatment also seems somewhat better. I'm neither surprised nor discouraged and now plan to learn the chords. One day, but obviously not in May and, I suspect, not soon in June.

I've decided I like the Carnaval photographs. I evidently need to step back for a few days to clear the head and then look at them from a better distance. The one behind the Sole Proprietor logo up top wasn't included in the group on artandlife, should have been included though along with a dozen others, but if they didn't make it, the group itself must be alright. Not everyone would make my choices, not everyone likes them, but I do and that's more than half the battle.