We're headed for the North Beach Festival, are we not?

I suspect not. I'm a flake and it's, well, too warm. As good an excuse as any in the mix of lame excuses to choose from, I'd think.

I did spend some time working to clean up yesterday's entry before posting. If you think it's ragged now, you should have seen it before I worked on it this morning. Not an excuse, I know, but I evidently feel a need to put them out here, a sign of internal debate. On a warm Sunday morning, this Father's Day in Oakland.

Later. Not so warm outside after all, setting out in a t-shirt to find the breeze a bit too cool. A scoot back to the apartment to put on a long sleeved shirt and set out again to walk along the lake and then over by the school to see what I could see. Deedle-dee-dee. Didn't look all that exciting to me either.

But a walk on then to the morning café for coffee and a bun, a walk back to the lake to sit by the white columns for a bit, getting up to take a picture of the geese (getting down on my knees like a good photographer and getting my pants properly dirty and wet). Not sure the results were worth the effort. Some shots again when passing one of the gosling families feeding by the sidewalk as I headed back home. They do seem to be growing at dissimilar rates, do they not? Are they all from the same gaggle? Brood?

I still don't feel like going to North Beach, I haven't taken a photograph yet today with the energy that should be applied, but the attitude is good and the eye wants to do better. Downtown again? Not sure I can do that. Anywhere else I haven't been in a while? In a year? In a life? We'll see. I've said this before. First, though, change the pants, spray the discolored spots picked up from the grass (on the ass) and head out the door.

Later still. With all the imagination I could muster I hopped a bus downtown, took a picture or two of a new chalk mural at the entrance to Justin Hermann Plaza at Broadway and 14th, walked over through Chinatown to the Asian Cultural Center, sitting for a while trying to decide whether to wait in line for an ice cream cone, deciding to walk on for a sliver of strawberry cheesecake at a bakery I like, then a bus back home, taking one last picture before crossing Grand.

You're hopeless.

I know, I know. Still, the day's gone well, none of the ocular migraine crap, no overriding need for a nap, only one or two brief periods of minor double vision, so I can't really gripe. It's approaching six and, if memory serves, tonight's police procedural is Italian and impossible to watch, so we'll play guitar and take the rest of the day off. No sake, though; no sushi down the street. No playing with fire, not until we're well into the coming week.

Evening. I did post another section of miscellaneous photographs to HereInOakland and will copy them over later to ArtAndLife. I have had urges to update - tighten up, get on with - the web sites and I've been spending quite a bit of time lately playing around at the computer in Photoshop and Lightroom.

I guess I've finally decided to replace Photo Mechanic with Lightroom to download and manage pictures from the camera before sending them to Photoshop, the reason a preference for one or two of the tools Lightroom provides that the RAW editor included in Photoshop doesn't. Such is life. Tough business, software development, tough business altogether without unlimited energy and luck. Especially luck.

Nobody knows what you're talking about.

Well, yes. A set of software used by many photographers (Photo Mechanic and Extensis Portfolio) to download and track their photographs now seem to be history, replaced by what appears now to be a better functioning Adobe Lightroom. But perhaps I do digress.