Friday. To bed at ten, up at five-thirty after a fitful night's sleep. Fitful in the sense I awoke to turn over a number of times. Feel pretty good, maybe that's normal, but I'm thinking to bed by ten, radio off from here on out. See if I can't get the sleep locked down so I don't have to sleep for twelve hours now and again to catch up. Or something like that. Raining, of course, but not so much now returning home from breakfast at eight. We'll see how the day goes, maybe stay inside, get in more time on the guitar.

Although I didn't practice after my lesson on Wednesday, having some other things on my plate, I got quite a bit of time in yesterday eventually looking through the beginner book I'd begun with before I started taking lessons. The book stresses reading notes rather than what is called tablature, a diagram of the frets and the finger positions used by many and by my instructor, and I do want to learn to play from standard music notation too, so I went back to that beginner's book and discovered I've pretty much gone through the whole thing since I started the lessons (I have book two and book three in the series, so we've got room to follow along in the future.)

So, using the book, I went back and played the scales they recommended and played when I was first starting and sight read (again) some of the simple songs included. It didn't take long to remember the scales, the notes and the songs, but I had gotten rusty. I'm good with this and suspect my practice sessions will get longer now, if only because I'm enjoying it more. Hup! Hup! Here in Oakland.

Enjoying or tolerating?

Either way it keeps you playing.

Later. Lots of rain.

Later still. I changed fonts. Not sure if it's any better or any worse, but I rather like this font the New York Times uses on their web site, so I've changed it from my old Times New Roman to Georgia. Go figure. The New York Times doesn't use Times New Roman, not that it was named for the paper. Or was it? (Yes, I just checked after writing that: created for the British newspaper The Times in 1931. I take my snarky comment back with apologies to The (old) Grey Lady.)

Evening. Rain through the day, thunder in the distance now that it approaches ten. A day of puttering around and then finally watching a Netflix movie, most of one and now the beginning of another, the first about graffiti, the artist Banksy by his wacko videographer. Too long. Interesting, but I bailed before it was over. The second I'll finish tomorrow, a Leonardo DiCaprio movie Shutter Island, which I'm finding weirdly depressing. Still, I like DiCaprio, his father one of the old underground cartoonists.

The idea was to bed by ten and it's ten in another minute. I'll finish this in the morning.