This late night reading (late for me, anyway) resulted in getting up almost an hour after the alarm before heading out to breakfast, feeding the meter for an extra hour to make amends. Which happens. A picture of two of the pandorea flowers as we now seem to do every morning and now back at the apartment on an overcast morning, my guitar lesson coming up in the afternoon.

Are you ready?

Only if I put in a couple of hours of necessary make up before I leave.

Later. The old funky ocular whatever came along in the later morning, so I crawled into bed and let it wind itself out, getting up just before two to let my guitar teacher know I'd be missing this afternoon's lesson. So much for trying an afternoon time slot.

You sure you just weren't prepared and didn't want to go?

Things were coming together by two, but I decided not to push it. And I was ready, as ready as I ever am. I bitch and moan more to push myself along than anything else. We're still making progress.

I often wonder. You can B.S. reasonably well when you feel a need.

Truth is better than fiction. A lesson generally learned later in life unless you're presentient or lucky.

Later still. From funky to relatively human, a walk over to the lake to turn right instead of left and walk down toward the fenced in area next to the bird sanctuary building to take a picture or two as I was walking, a walk then back over to Grand and home, stopping off at a café I've been in a couple of times to now try their advertised “organic” green tea ice cream. One must be familiar with the local ice cream, must one not? Diddle-dee-dot?

Some pictures using the new 80-400mm lens. I must admit I'm using it more often than I thought I would, I'm tempted to try it for people at a parade. More than tempted. But we'll see. Probably soon.

The lake itself was full of geese, I probably passed close to a thousand (well, maybe more like six hundred, which is a lot) as I was walking. Basically the lake has been populated so far these last two months with geese, seagulls, cormorants, Snowy Egrets and Black-Crowned Night Herons, just a few egrets and Night-Herons. The trees on the small islands just off the shore were full of nesting cormorants. Not sure how many of those heads sticking up out of the nests were adults or cormorant-lings chicks.

Evening. Another Maigret I haven't seen before at six, the same routine where he questions people who are genuinely offended and hostile they're being questioned, who seem insulted an inspector would ask questions in a murder case. I think of it as a cultural thing (set in 1950's France - I'm pretty sure it's set in the 50's, given the time frame and references to the Second World War), at least to my totally untutored eyes, a time and place when anyone in any position of authority, especially police, were leaches and crooks preying on the downtrodden.

Certainly not something that would happen here in 21st Century urban America. Distrust the police? My goodness gracious!

Absolutely, as enlightened as we old middle class white men certainly are. Maybe this is just the particular conceit of the Maigret stories, some of which I've seen on television, none of which I've read and, as I'm writing this drivel, something I realize could be easily corrected.

Amazon?

I won't admit to Amazon, although I'm guilty. I suggest Walden Pond, the local used book store tomorrow morning. I'm willing to bet they'll have one or two on sale.