Last night I drank the two small bottles of sake I'd bought at the supermarket that morning. I'd only gotten two. They were on sale at a very good price and I'd thought at the time (briefly) maybe best to pick up half a dozen bottles, keep some for later sessions, but realized the danger. Two was fine last night, felt good, no after effects, but I realized when I'd finished them I might have very easily given in and had another (and then another) had it been available.

Up this overcast morning with the alarm, off to breakfast by way of the ATM on Lakeshore, back now to await the techie's arrival. Maybe do a little dusting by the DSL modem to, you know, not be too embarrassed. Where'd it all this dust come from?

Let us not be coy. It's not that it wasn't obvious.

Later. The techie arrived and spent the next three hours troubleshooting the line from my apartment to the network closet in the basement. Another AT&T techie was then called to work on the line from the network closet to whatever pole or device it connects to out on the street after determining there was a “tap” or “crossed line” somewhere on the outside connecting line that was causing the problem.

Got out the door finally at one in the afternoon to take the bus (because it arrived just as I was passing by the stop) to the morning café where I had a cheeseburger (Swiss ersatz cheese food rather than ersatz cheddar), potato salad (they make a good potato salad) and coffee, the day overcast, but no sign of rain. A sprinkle or two earlier I'm informed by a fellow resident.

The AT&T techie was still out there somewhere working on the line when I returned, so no Internet. Life, as it is now forming in this twenty-first century, struggles on, unconnected.

The horror! The horror!

Finally we can agree on something.

Later still. And so the Internet is back and up to speed again at four in the afternoon and all is well in Dingle Dell so I (of course) watched that eighth and last episode of Les Revenants, (“The Returned”, as in “from the dead”) on Netflix on what is again a fast network. A weird offshoot or “take” on the current (been going on too long) zombie fixation? Or is that old hat and we're now in a vampire renaissance?

I haven't been interested in a zombie movie since the Night Of The Living Dead and one or two others that followed during that era, but this one was different enough, farther off the wall enough, strange enough, to keep me watching. Which is good. For me, anyway. I'd say.

More guitar now, the guitar lesson tomorrow, such is the speed at which a week now flashes passes as one progresses into one's eighth decade.

Evening. A new Korean series started this evening and, although I missed the beginning of the episode dialing in toward the end, I found it not overly depressing. We'll check episode two out tomorrow evening, see if we can't get our head around it, something to watch after Democracy Now that winds up just as Charlie Rose is starting.

This evening he had John McCain on as a guest to talk about Russia and the Crimea. I don't need to hear John McCain's ideas on what we should be doing about Russia in the Crimea. Some lines need to be drawn.

To bed by nine to start Mike Lofgren's The Party Is Over (How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted) that arrived yesterday in the mail. You can see it fits my mind set from the title, a Republican staffer who became disenchanted with the way our current government has been heading in these last thirty years.