Ah, well. Such were the thoughts as we headed off to breakfast. They're saying a high of over ninety here in Oakland and I believe it. Set out in just a long sleeved shirt without the light weight jacket. A picture of the pandorea flowers blooming now on the second of their two pandorea vines, a trip by the supermarket to pick up milk, cereal, cottage cheese and sake. This evening we'll drink some sake.

Not tired, feel pretty good. More blood pressure readings to follow. Be nice if I could get rid of the blood pressure meds altogether. I'm already been taking half their smallest dose, cutting the capsule shaped pills in half when I take them. Probably not going to happen. Maybe the new generics are somewhat stronger, we were having problems on occasion with the brand name meds as it was. Maybe the weight loss, the five pounds I've lost over these last three months, one fifty-five again this morning? At least it keeps the mind active (when the pressure's up), paying attention to our surroundings.

Later. A walk over to the construction site (where else?), a picture or two to show they're still working, digging deeper along that far wall. A woman who was passing while I was taking a picture commented that she lived in the apartment house behind all this and they were smelling gas in their building from time to time and the construction people hadn't been warning them when it occurred. Hmm. How much gas? Is that normal? Could be. A piece of information filed away for future reference.

Back home to take a nap. And I did get some sleep this time. The blood pressure reading one-oh-one over seventy-one, the top number still too low. I'd been thinking, as I was putting on the cuff, I should be glad it was blood pressure, something that can be adjusted since many another thing might be, well, permanent. Lasting. Whatever.

It's now afternoon, it's warm out there and I have a guitar lesson coming up in another couple of hours. I didn't get in any real practice yesterday, so let's at least tune up the guitar, limber the fingers.

Later still. Well, no way I was going to get on a bus lugging a guitar, so I sent a last minute email to my teacher and crawled into bed for a nap. Felt crappy. Tired. Done.

Up after an hour or so to pick up the mail to find the new Glenn Greenwald book No Place To Hide had arrived. Amazon ships them so they arrive on the release date and so I read the first fifty pages or so before stopping to listen to Democracy Now at five-thirty (where they were interviewing Greenwald on the book). Old ACLU'ers with some history in the early underground press are interested in these things and I've been reading Greenwald since his days at Salon.

The last blood pressure reading, after getting out of bed, was one-eighteen over seventy-eight, so the pressure is back to where it should, the head feeling better, none (or very little) of the tired thing going on. I have some pills left when we tried a different dose a year or so ago, I'm thinking of taking one of those tomorrow after I check the pressure. Maybe I can get away with taking them and not have to cut the current smallest dose they offer into thirds. Or something similarly impossible.

Evening. So far, so good. The Democracy Now interview was the first of two parts, the second airing tomorrow. Maybe we'll have the book read by then. Greenwald made an interesting comment on another snippet I saw today on a web site, that he was working on an article that would see light in four to six weeks that "would snap these last ten months of revelations into clear context for the American people" and I got the idea he was going to reveal what political/business/blogger/whatever groups they've been following and messing with. OK. I can wait.

To bed early. We'll see if we sleep better this night, see if we get up feeling better, see what the blood pressure has done overnight. Be nice to not take the stuff altogether, but that's too much to hope for. Realistically hope for (with our fingers crossed).