This is not news, of course, we've all had this thought in passing, nothing new here, but when seen through an ocular migraine it became one of those truths contained in our very DNA realizations that make you think of throwing it all up and journeying forth to take the Lotus position and meditate in the desert. Hi, ho. Life as a joke.

Still, to bed early, to sleep early, awake before the alarm but staying in bed awakening comfortably and slowly. Off to breakfast and back (yes, the day is clear, we'll get some sun today before the rains come again later this evening), home now futzing with this before finishing up the marathon photographs. And in a good mood. Maybe I've not mentioned that yet.

Later. A late morning and early afternoon working on the marathon photographs, posting them to ArtAndLife with a duplicate set to HereInOakland. A mistake or two on my part - I keep track, comparing them with similar errors made in earlier sessions: am I getting worse, getting better? - but otherwise it all seems to have work as planned. A marathon, after all: pictures of people running.

You could have interspersed them with clever group shots and pictures of kids to give some variety.

Faces, my man. Candid faces. It's the main reason I go out and shoot. Tootle-tee-toot.

Lunch to take a break from the photo session at the morning café, a scone and a cup of coffee, my waitress giving me two pieces of cake in a small paper bag to take home with me again. I feel it would be rude to refuse - a gift after all, how to do it nicely? - as I really don't need any more cake in my diet. What with the ice cream and the rest. But we stumble on, paper bag in hand.

Later still. A good start on the guitar after doing little or nothing yesterday. The six o'clock police procedural is another Italian thing I'm not able to watch, so we'll rock on with Cinnamon Girl. Well, I'm not sure anyone else listening to me practice would use the term “rock on”, but this is ultimately an upbeat enterprise. We didn't set out to fail. And besides, the power chords are starting to sound like power chords, as many as one out of two. Or three. We're making progress.

I futzed with some more of the marathon pictures going back to see if I'd missed any. Often some cropping will change their whole nature and getting them up to a decent size so you can see them makes the difference. I found I'd placed the faces pretty much smack dab in the middle of each frame, often cutting off the runners’ legs. Probably not an approach to take if you're photographing runners. Live and learn, not that I'll make changes.

I also downloaded the newly released CS6 beta version of Adobe Photoshop from the Adobe site. I usually avoid beta versions if I'm not having any trouble with the current version, but for some reason I downloaded the thing, all 1.7 gigabytes. Took over an hour. Still, so far, so good. They've changed the white working space to a black working space and that's slowed me down a little, although I seem to be getting used to it. I haven't tried any of the new features, just using it as I've been using the earlier versions, although they've added at least two new RAW file adjustment sliders that are nice. So we're happy enough futzing around with the toys at the moment.

Good for you, little boy. What else did you get for your birthday?

A photograph imprinted coffee cup, actually. Came today, ordered through the Kodak Gallery web site. I was thinking, well, Kodak: located in upper New York state. It will take some time to arrive once it's done and shipped. Turns out they're located in Emeryville ten miles north of here, came the next day after they'd completed the cup. Nice. I like it, although it costs a fair much.