Still, a good morning. A drive downtown around 8:30 after breakfast at the usual place, a parking spot across the street from my office just, as it happens, where the parade itself was forming up; lock the extra equipment I was packing upstairs in my desk, go back down to the street with two film cameras and begin shooting. Not too crowded, not too many other photographers around, everybody laid back helping one another put together their costumes. I shot as much, maybe more film than I did yesterday in San Francisco. No digital shots this time, although I took the digital camera along in case. In case of what I don't know. I used my trusty 135mm f2.0 and doddered through the crowd.

This week should mark a change (he said). The sixth week since the hernia operation began today, six weeks the time they tell you to take it easy. Tomorrow I walk to work. Tomorrow I sign up for a series of web classes. The company pays for these classes, I'm crazy not to take them. I said I was going to do my homework and learn the digital camera, how they're used, how they're managed. I'm doing a chapter in my digital photography book tonight (he said, gripping the edge of his desk). God never meant her Techies to read the fucking manual except as a last resort. This is the last resort, located here, near a lake, in Oakland.

You do go on.

Yes I do.

Note (added later): About an hour after the Carijama festival was over, violence broke out (again) in the downtown area. Tear gas was used by the police, some shots were fired (no one was hurt, but shots, after all, are shots) and there were fights between teenagers. A fight broke out between two women in front of the local Wendy's and one of them was pushed through Wendy's plate glass window. So Carijama is in trouble. Here in Oakland.