I'm not sure the lady who cuts my hair approves of my decision, but does her best. We'll see. With the hair trimmed I'm planning on getting passport photos taken next door at the Kinko-Fed Ex shop and renew my passport due to expire in June. I've had it for ten years now, never used it once, will probably never use it again, but I'm willing to pay the ninety-five bucks just in case. A world traveler I am not.

Why not?

Too old, too paranoid, don't like to fly on airplanes, they're killing people in Mexico, stealing photographer's cameras in Rio and I don't speak Japanese, although I'd like to visit Japan. Europe, for some reason, has never appealed, even when I lived in New York and had both the summers free and the price of a ticket. Go figure. Some people have no imagination, no adventure in their souls, and I am perhaps a not altogether unique member of that group. Unless my attitude changes, of course.

The day ahead looks to be another clear day, there's some overcast at the moment but it seems to be breaking. The Chronicle web forecast is for sun straight through the week, a sure indication we're finally back in California again, probably heading into another drought. Up and down, these droughts. Most unpredictable weather I've ever experienced, these last forty odd years living here. Fires in Napa when I arrived. Hot in the summers, except when it's not. Cold on the San Francisco streets in the middle of the summer, all of them jumbled in some kind of weird order known only to the gods. And they're mum on the subject.

Other than those, the haircut and the passport photos, for which I'll wear one of my new, actually fits, drip dry button down shirts - one of the two I bought last month and have worn each but once - I have nothing more going. I may do just fine with but two shirts (that fit), as I think about it, if it turns out I'll wear them but once or so a month, don't you think? Blink?

The company that provided the comment section for these pages went out of business, turning it over to another operation some time back. I subscribed to the new company's service, but was unable to get their code to work. I'm sure it does (work), I've seen one or two other blogs that successfully use it, but I was frustrated with their written instructions and just gave up in a snit.

I've never really earned a living writing instructions on how to install software, but I have opinions on the subject. I figure if it gives me pause, having spent fifteen years as something called a Senior Systems Analyst helping herd a large company's laptops and desktops, well, who else is going to make sense of it? Except I would like to have a comments section, so maybe a total redesign of this site? Some of the blog software I've seen is nice. Their designs are nice, clean, certainly better than mine. Maybe? Starting today? This week?

Oh, and I mailed those bills and such I said I'd put together and mail this morning on the way to breakfast. A task that took maybe fifteen minutes. How much energy is involved in avoiding a task that eventually only takes fifteen minutes to finish? One of which was to inform my storage locker people of the new expiration date on the credit card they use to charge me for their services?

Sitting here, looking at their letter, I calculated what I've spent on that storage locker since I've lived in this place. There are many psychological studies that describe how people will shoot themselves in the foot by paying outrageously to sooth their feelings over the short term while at the same time screwing themselves (monetarily) for the long haul. I'm obviously one of them. I'm going to visit my storage locker today (or more likely tomorrow) and start emptying it out. I am! Really! I am! Today! Tomorrow! Next month!

Later. We are shorn. We are photographed. We are home now before noon. We are thinking maybe these “snug” shoes have more times to drop before they really fit, if they will ever really fit, but we are upbeat over the prospect after removing them and inserting our made out of solid wood stretch them mercilessly trees. Did I mention it's before noon (but just?), the day still ahead?

A picture or two on the way back from the City Center, the eye OK, but what? The heart not in it? How can the eye be OK and the heart not be in it? Aren't they essentially the same? No energy to follow through is more like it, a promising idea that could have been much improved with some time and effort. My, we've said this before. Run the tape back and start over, Dr. Freud.

Later still. Another walk down the way, sitting by the lake for a bit and then a walk farther on down to the morning café for a cup of coffee and a coconut cookie. Why a coconut cookie? Maybe it was the chocolate they'd dipped it in calling out, their other choices under glass in their cabinet downright unpalatable. Impossible. Not overly enticing. Still, coconut. What was I thinking? A bus back to the apartment, the afternoon quite warm, the sun quite warm and the mind, if not the body, done for the day. Time for my various news programs, open the bedroom windows, open the sliding glass doors and comfortably, happily, finally, get back into old man mode.