Saturday. We live, we learn, but we don't learn quickly enough. The Gay Pride Parade is tomorrow at 10:30, not today at noon. I checked early this morning after getting back from breakfast (up at the usual time going to the usual place) and noted the time was ten-thirty instead of the noon I'd written on the calendar. OK, I'm a little late, but plenty of time to get there and shoot. The bus was late, but a BART train arrived three minutes after I entered the station. Good. Up and out on the street in San Francisco expecting to find a crowd and finding, well, San Francisco. No crowd.

This kind of thing is supposed to happen after a certain age. I was careless. If I'd thought to think I'd have recalled the parade was on a Sunday as I usually drove downtown and parked (the two hour limit not in force) hopping the first morning train. The reason I'd marked it for Saturday noon was I'd copied it from a web site that was talking about the celebration itself starting today at the San Francisco Civic Center, but the parade not running until tomorrow.

OK, a trip to San Francisco and back here now at eleven in the morning, the sun starting to poke through the clouds. A cup of coffee out on the patio at Peet's on the way back to contemplate the morning, the attitude pretty good. A dumb error, not one to fret over, but something to watch.

Easy to let the mind drift on to other nonsense when instead the question should be raised: “does this make sense, is there a question I should ask, reset the brain and think about it for a minute”? A sign of the times? I'd guess. Let's hope the times to come don't make today's mistake look like a clear headed heaven under a bright and healthful sun. Or something similarly saccharine yet sinister.

Now you're going to have to come up with some other pictures for today's entry.

That can be done.

Later. OK, it is a nice day out there, warm but not too hot, so I walked down the way and caught a bus I haven't taken before going east on McArthur to 35th and the Laurel Summer Solstice Music Festival. I figured if I was going to screw up going to a non existent parade this morning I might as well redeem myself by going to something new in an area I was unfamiliar with. Hence the pictures up above and behind the logo. And that was about it. The street wasn't blocked off and the attendance was (to say the least) spotty. Which is too bad as they'd done some preparation, the little brochure they handed out showed effort, but there were more members in the band than there were in the audience.

A turn around then back to Grand and the Grand Lake theater area skipping the farmer's market (packed to the gills, if farmer's markets have gills) thinking I'd go by the morning café unless a bus were to come by just as I was passing a stop and then, if one did, I'd take it downtown and catch the bus out to People's Park in Berkeley (hup! hup!) and photograph the music festival they were having there. And a bus did come by just as I reached the café (and I'd spotted an empty outside table I liked, but wasn't hungry) so I got on the bus. Hup. People's Park. Not a lot of enthusiasm for People's Park.

The bus stopped at my usual stop at the bottom of my street. I thought my thoughts. The bus started, I pushed the button and got off at the next stop and returned to the apartment. I'd gotten two photographs while I was out (actually three with this one), but that was enough. The afternoon was well underway and I hadn't started my guitar practice. And I wasn't up for People's Park. And, and..., but that's enough.

Later still. Too many scales, not enough of the lesson. I avoid doing the lesson by doing scales. I'll get it done, but it's interesting to see the road blocks you put up when you're stretching to do new stuff. I still have no idea what I'll end up doing with this - knowing how to play a tune or two on the guitar - but I'll be damned if I'll crap out before I'm there. And I'm not there. Just ask my neighbors. They'll tell you flat out.

You're bullshitting.

About the neighbors, yes. I suspect they can hear me from time to time, but I keep it down and, if they do hear me, it's not enough to bother anyone. The T.V. volume is set higher and it's no where near over the top. The avoidance part is honest enough. Scales instead of the necessary chord changes and the four fret stretch. The four fret stretch. A title of some kind, a name for a web site.

Evening. Guitar, sushi and sake; much more of the guitar. I really do have to stop going down the hill for sake and sushi so often, the cost and perhaps the sake adds up. But the day is done and there is, indeed, a Gay Pride Parade tomorrow.