Sunday. A decent session on the guitar yesterday, another similar session today, I'm thinking. Hoping. Progress of sorts, short term progress anyway. We'll see how the guitar practice is going in another couple of weeks. Up this morning at seven Daylight Savings time, no need to worry about the parking meters at breakfast on a Sunday, so we got up at six, except six is now seven for the next number of months. Good. Confusing, but good. The sky is overcast and they're projecting rain, but that too is good. We're good this morning. Sickeningly good, overarchingly good, nauseatingly good in just this first paragraph.

Please stop.

Good.

Later. Overcast, yes, but out the door after an hour's nap, thinking maybe a walk down to the usual place to have lunch since I was hungry, even after what would be by anyone's measurement a large breakfast. Checking the phone app, as I was walking down my hill, it said my bus was due in one minute, so I took that as a sign, hopped on and headed downtown. Nothing is open on a Sunday in downtown Oakland so I walked over through Chinatown and cobbled together a sliver of chocolate pie and an ice cream cone for lunch. Probably not what the doctor ordered, but that's indeed what I had. No regrets.

For whatever reason I managed to miss the one bus coming back, so I walked by the hard core mural folks still painting their wall in the rain or, at least, the threat of rain, getting home with an aching back. Aching muscles go away and so they did in about an hour. Still overcast out there, still the occasional sprinkle, maybe it will start in earnest later in the evening, now that I'm inside it doesn't really matter.

I spent an hour or so going through old journal photographs, copying some to a folder thinking it was time to frame those prints. Another - hup! hup! - maybe, nothing will come of it except, well, I've had this feeling now for a while that the time has arrived to get this place cleaned up, junk the various pieces of (junk) furniture, clean out the storage locker and the rest, but having this feeling in a way that in the past has meant I'm actually going to do it. I believe it's called spring cleaning. We hear of such things, we bachelors. We don't quite believe them and so find ourselves dumbfounded when they arrive. You knew that? Well.

Later still. Channel 26 here runs the Japanese English language NHK World Channel and during this tsunami tragedy they've been running it continuously throughout the day and I've had it on in the background. I sometimes write about my thoughts of living, as I do, in a kind of dream, no real interface with reality required if you can make the rent and eat and still have time on your hands. We live here in earthquake country too and something like the Japanese quake will come one of these days with a wake up call. Wake up if you're not dead, old man, finding your life and the life of your neighbors have radically changed, welcome to the real world, wadda ya say about a little sake later this evening before it arrives?

That's not true, of course, this real-world, fantasy-world dichotomy, at least the way I've stated it, but I think everyone relates to the concept. If you don't live under the gun, as many do have to live under the gun, you can quite easily create your own little world where you carry around cameras, play on the web, eat at decent restaurants (occasionally, anyway) and make stupid jokes about sake and how much you may or may not have have.

Time to stop now, you know. We're drifting way to far off track.

A run later this evening after nine for cheese, crackers, sake and a jar of air pop popcorn. Comfort food to accompany a little guitar.