Thursday. To bed last night after a later evening run at nine to the local 7-11 look alike for a pint of ice cream. The appetite has been returning. Have I mentioned that? The weight has been steady, although I'm two pounds over my target at the moment, and although it's not like it was (ice cream seems to be the only stalwart that stood the test), a better appetite is probably good. If you keep an eye on what it implies, ice cream before bed and the like on the scale.

Otherwise up with the alarm, a good breakfast over the papers, back before eight, an early morning overcast with the cool fog coming in off the ocean last night, but a sunny seventy degree day ahead. And we need pictures, we do, for the journal. The Gay Pride Parade coming up in San Francisco this Saturday morning, that will take care of pictures for the while, but it's good to keep a bit of ongoing pressure on the old fart.

One of the reasons I went to Ms. T's opening on Tuesday was to give myself a kick in this framing of prints for a show of my own business. Ms. T suggested she'd be happy to give me a kick, help me in hanging the pictures if necessary, so that seems to have worked out. No commitments made, no deadlines set, but some impetus in there somewhere I'll be able to take advantage of one day. Is that hopeless enough? How long has this been going on?

I have thought to just do five or six as a start, a group that holds together and could be integrated easily with more as a start. Break it down into manageable steps they say. Why not? Well indeed: why not? This may go on forever.

So again, another day, clear of commitments, feeling pretty good. A lot of time on the guitar yesterday, we'll see how we do today. Good to see progress. But otherwise, where to take my walk? I have something to pick up downtown, an excuse to go downtown, but then where downtown? And why?

Later. A bus downtown and then a walk back after picking up some fiber pills at the Rite Aid store. Don't want to be without my fiber pills in this day and at this age, I'm afraid, but that's all that needs to be said about that.

A picture or two as I was walking home (feeling pretty good, I might add, the dry mouth not in evidence, the product of a waffle with fruit on top this morning?), one of what now seems to be a recurring work of graffiti attached to this fence by plastic ties, another a transient piece of street art that deserves kudo's (IMHO). Oh, and a picture of a reflection in a window on Grand near Broadway. Too obvious to let pass.

So far the morning is bright (at eleven), but still cool enough to call comfortable, the day ahead. Time to tune the guitar and see if I've made any progress since last night. An odd thing to say, but it has some small element of truth in it, there does occasionally seem a difference once the brain has had a night to process the prior day's practice, strengthen the pathways, drive the guitarist forward in ways that some say lead to drink.

Later still. Hmm. I was hungry thinking, well, I've had enough sushi this last week, don't want any sake, how about going down to the local pizza parlor to see if they have their pizza and salad spread? And if they don't? I'm thinking I need some greens. So I got on a bus, went downtown, had a salad with a piece of chicken in the City Center and walked back home. Two walks in one day. I really am feeling pretty good.

The callouses on the fingertips are starting to look a little ragged and calloused, which is, I suppose, the way they're supposed to look with time. I just wonder what a real guitar player's fingertips look like? One who plays hours and hours a day? I'll have to ask. Sneak a look. Oh, and a blister is forming on the ring finger now that I'm doing barre chords. The 5th Root Barre Chords require you to lay your ring finger across three steel strings. I'm looking forward to having that one firm up as it's painful now to play. I suspect there are other patches yet untouched on the fingers to come. Diddle-dee-dum.

You want a gold star or something bucko?

A little bit of that, I guess. I've had people who've played guitar in the past ask me if I'd developed callouses and I've said I have, but they really weren't showing much and, although they were a bit harder than normal fingertips, they really didn't show the wear. They're starting to show the wear and that's good if only to show I actually am playing the damned thing when they ask. So I'll admit to the hup! hup! crap. I stopped collecting gold stars after getting about my twentieth bowling trophy in high school. Have no idea what I did with them, haven't bowled in years and years.