OK, feeling pretty good, some congestion in the chest, but nothing out of whack. We have a doctor to visit in another two hours, the sinus-head problem doing its thing, but in the background, not aching all that much. I say not aching as it does go up and down, back and forth. Be nice to know what it is, what could be done, how long it might last (if not forever), but then again there are many things in this life one might like to know, some of them useful, some of them not.

I created a second page of Chinese New Year photographs last night, a second wind kicking in around eight and lasting until after eleven. The problem with a “second page” (about twenty or so photographs) is in their selection. How many marginal, don't really quite cut it photographs do you put in just to make your number? Maybe just not think about it too much, better to go ahead and make mistakes, learn from the mistakes, come back and clean them up later when all has been revealed and I know what photography is about.

In walking through the crowds at the parade late Saturday afternoon I ran across a mini drama of a kind. I was wired together looking for faces more or less on autopilot, when this unfolded at my elbow. He's focused on a person in front of him who's totally engrossed in a smart phone of some kind, obviously managing some task to do with the parade and oblivious to the old man holding out his cap.

I was able to turn and take the photograph, then another photograph stepping back, but I wasn't able to think quickly enough get the guy oblivious to the situation into a picture. That's the way you learn is my guess, prepares you for the next time something like this comes along and you're able to get it then without thinking.

A little cold, these “get the picture” comments, sounds like there were two oblivious idiots there on the street. Is this real emotion or a shtick? Looks real, doesn't it? I had and have this gut feeling it wasn't, that I've seen him before with exactly the same expression making exactly these same moves on Market Street. Nothing wrong with that, it's called survival and you don't argue with something (reasonably legal) that works. Still, I'm wired into this expression thing, taking nothing but close up portraits at a parade, for Christ's sake, and what's real about an attitude or a projected image is of interest. Artifice or not, I'd like to have gotten that shot. And then the crowd swirled and they were gone. A bit of drama in San Francisco one evening, who knows what it was about?

Later. The doctor seemed surprised the pills hadn't worked, so I have another prescription for another inhaler and an appointment for a chest x-ray. “Let's see if we may have missed something” was his comment. OK. An x-ray. A little more radiation will probably not hurt. Some comments back and forth on my late afternoon, early evening “hallucinatory” episodes, he shaking his head. OK, a neurologist is in order, I have the go ahead.

Home then for a nap. Well, I was listening to the radio in bed, but the words were blurred and some of it should count as sleep. I spent the rest of the afternoon continuing to work on that second Chinese New Year Parade page mentioned above (then adding the link), went back and PhotoShopped some of the earlier images and making them larger. What was I thinking when I did them originally? Was I that far off the mark? Must have been, nobody else around here I can see.