Still, awake this morning well before the alarm feeling just fine, thank you, the sinuses no longer aching, the head relatively clear. Who knows? Off to breakfast and back on what they're saying is going to be a very warm day and, given the current temperature and the sun, I believe their every word. Let's see if we can make the day work in some different way than these last many days, do something I haven't done in a while.

You're drifting into the usual exhortation b.s. that you never follow, know you won't follow and still roll it out as if it were edible and fresh.

At least my heart's in the right space. Chicanery can have its place. “Edible and fresh” is a bit too clunky a word choice, though, don't you think?

Later. A walk with a light step in shirt sleeves over to the lake to run into four pelicans trolling for, well, whatever they find under there. Not sure I want to know. So I took some pictures. A good start.

On then around the loop over on Lakeshore all the way but not quite to the ATM to turn back and come around to the morning café for ice cream and lemonade. A bit early for lunch, but the right choice. So far no foggy thoughts, no aching sinuses, although you can always tell they're with you, on then back to the apartment.

I think I'll dig out the guitar now and go through these barre chords I often complain about. Complain in the sense I haven't yet memorized their names (A through G, major, minor, seventh, major-seventh, minor-seventh and all their positions on the frets), although I've played them through and through more than enough. Why haven't I done this yet? Learn my A, B, C's?

Later still. Took a nap instead of picking up the guitar. A good nap, no sleep really, but refreshing none the less. Just the slightest hint though of symptoms I've described in the past. If I wasn't familiar with them I wouldn't have given them a second thought. Still, up now in the mid-afternoon, the guitar has been tuned (and is staring at me from its stand), let's maybe take a look at those barre chords again.

I listened to an interview with a baritone who's performing at the moment in The Tales of Hoffmann (Les Contes D'Hoffmann) at the San Francisco opera and it brought back memories of the time I first heard it in the sixties at the old New York Met. It was a favorite and the three arias they played in the interview (this is my idea of a nap?) brought those memories back, yes, but also a good dose of the emotion it's evidently still able to raise.

No big deal, but it made me realize I'm now old enough that I've attended performances by singers in a world famous opera house now gone that many have only heard in recordings, a realization from an odd direction that I am indeed getting along. Still, nice to hear, nice to have the old emotions stirred at a time when I haven't listened to opera now in many years. Maybe play some Hoffmann tonight. Might.

Evening. Word on the Protime test I phoned in earlier this afternoon, all is well, do it again in a week. Good. I guess. I seem to have the test steps down. No wasted test strips, needles or pipettes, but it took some two or three weeks to learn. I suspect I'm not the only one who didn't learn to do it right overnight.

Another Alain Delon Frank Riva French detective pot boiler at six, so we played along on the guitar for the hour and a half or so that it runs going over barre chords. The barre chords over and over. And over.

I'd been hearing a group of people playing drums down by the lake starting in the late afternoon and so, when the Riva program was finished, I walked to the lake to take a look and come back with a couple of pictures.

They're good, maybe two dozen people sitting around listening to half a dozen drummers who don't seem to easily tire after what are by now many hours playing. It's getting dark, the drums still drumming in the background here at the apartment. We'll see what's on television and then, if we're lucky, head right to bed. It's been a good day without too many complaints from here in the peanut gallery.