I've been bouncing off the walls these last many months, which is a pain in the ass unless it eventually leads to some degree of clarity about the future. I realize I've been treading water since long before I retired and I guess I'm assuming, if body and brain remain intact, I'll make a move at some point. But where? Why? Somewhere with more space and less rent? More space and less rent doesn't sound like the Bay Area, but something needs to happen and I need to prepare for the day the realization arrives.

Which is a variation on your monotonous “I need to clean up the apartment and clean out the storage locker” mantra of these last many years, is it not? Be ready for this coming enlightenment?

True. True. But eventually even the terminally dense get off their collective duff and go with whatever it is that comes up.

So, you're pacing around the apartment?

Close, but no urge to put on a coat, get in the car and drive; no urge to walk around the block or put the rest of those framed pictures up on the bedroom wall. No impetus to sit down with a spreadsheet and update the cameras on my insurance policy (something that festers in the back of your mind when you've been putting it off as long as I have, let me tell you). I did add another page of photographs to the Carnaval section on artandlife. That's good, I think. Sitting at the computer and cranking it out. I don't feel like doing much else. It's as if I'd received a shot of energy but not enough to, you know, seize the day.

Later. It is a holiday. I'd forgotten one of the Lone Wolf and Cub movies arrived from Netflix yesterday. Nothing like weird Japanese clan honor, swords and oceans of blood to mellow you out on a holiday afternoon, remind you it's OK to kick back and vegetate. And, of course, I'm saving gas.

I've been wondering how high gas has to go before I blink at the pump. The Element holds fifteen gallons, but since the gas gauge tells you it's empty when you've still got four or so gallons left, I generally pump ten or eleven gallons when I'm filling it up. At four dollars a gallon that's forty-four to forty-eight dollars. Forty some odd dollars every four to six weeks isn't going to cause me to lose any sleep. Still, at five dollars a gallon it goes up to fifty-five. At six dollars a gallon: sixty-six. Seventy, eighty dollars, even if it's only every month, would give me pause. Nine dollars a gallon would put it over a hundred. This is just for gas and it doesn't take into account the fact that everything else that uses petroleum (fertilizer and therefore food come to mind) would cost a bunch. Ten bucks for a Big Mac? For a box of Cheerios? I predict fewer people will commute for hours each day to work.

I would imagine. Clever of you to figure it out.