Friday. A little slow getting up this morning, but up by six, to breakfast and back now that it's eight. I did have sushi and sake last night, at around eight in the evening, the effects of the sake pretty much gone by the time I turned in at ten. Or whenever it was. Much guitar practice, not sure why so much. Am I avoiding something? Life? Communal interaction? Am I worried? No, but I'm watching.

Off to the ocular neurologist's appointment in another fifteen minutes. I'm not sure what kind of maladies an ocular neurologist ministers to. There's something called the eyes and something called the brain tied together with something called nerves, but I suspect there are ways to look at the both of them as one unit. One of them is just, you know, there like a periscope, necessary for it to be apart to provide its function. Is the collective brain in trouble? Double vision? Mistyped words? Flights of fancy? I suspect we'll learn with time, how much time I don't know.

Later. The doctor was running almost two hours late this morning, but what the hell, nothing you can do about it. We went over the MRI scans, she saying they were very clean, nothing to worry about, me nodding my head. I couldn't tell if they were the pictures of a healthy adult or a two year old corpse. Another follow-up appointment in six months to see how this double vision thing is going. Better? Worse? Six months to find out.

Otherwise now back at the apartment and hungry. What's for lunch? What can I get down? I'm due to meet two of the usual crew in Rockridge at five to go into the city, so we'll have to balance what we eat now with what we'll consume then. Guinness mostly, is my guess. They'll want dinner so I'll allow for eating something. Maybe a piece of Guinness pie or a Guinness ice cream cone.

Now, now.

Running to flat, I'll admit. Maybe a nap after all that waiting on the doctor this morning. At least she was smart and quite attractive, albeit too young for me to be saying such.

Later still. Time on the guitar (not to be confused with doing time), then an hour's nap before heading off to drive to the Rockridge BART station to meet Mr. E and Mr. S for this sojourn into the city. One often wonders how these things will turn out.

We headed out to 24th and Mission where, just around the block, we found (actually, Mr. S had recently found) Clooney's Irish Pub, a local neighborhood pub that serves pickled eggs (and, of course, Guinness) of great distinction. Neighborhood in the sense all of the dozen or so people there at six on an early Friday evening were locals not adverse to saying hello to check out the newly arrived outlanders. The Sharks game was playing on the flat panel television screens up near the ceiling and the quite attractive bartender was wearing her Shark's jacket.

So, we started the evening, I watching my consumption, keeping it to Guinness, none of this mixing with hard liquor made in foreign countries stuff my younger companions were attempting, on from Clooney's to The House of Shields to meet up with Mr. Y.

We haven't been to The House of Shields since it has been taken over by new management and, I'm afraid, we were somewhat critical. Perhaps a new session with a new pub we definitely liked deserves a critical examination of an old pub we've always liked, but is now under new management, tends to make us look for, well, problems. We found problems. Whether they're real or not, who knows? Time will tell and then we'll tell.

So, a single Guinness at The House of Shields, a walk then to another watering hole of some kind with bar tenders who were doing interpretations of Tom Cruise's character in Cocktail before heading across the street to Mooney's to wind up the evening. By the time we got to Mooney's I was drinking water, I'd had my Guinness for the evening, felt tired but otherwise pretty good by the time we left before eleven. Home now at eleven (or so), looking forward to the weekend. Well, looking forward to bed, we're tired.