My guitar lesson in another hour. I'll get in some last minute practice with the chords. Still need work on the chords. Beautiful day out there, by the way, a good day for a guitar lesson in the morning followed by something later. But what? Ever the existential what.

Later. Ten in the morning is a good time, evidently, to find a parking space near the music instructor's house, something I'll remember for next week's lesson. A good half hour that went quickly. I learned one or two things about chords and positioning the fingers and moving up and down the neck I hadn't quite understood; things to practice this week. We'll leave it at that. Being retired allows me to practice in the mornings, in the afternoons, in the evenings, whenever and wherever I can. Probably the early evenings with the news bleating in the background. Pretty exciting I'd say.

Later still. They cut back on bus service November 1st: dropped lines, added lines, changed and cut schedules. I briefly looked at their list, but didn't see any changes to my local number 12, so I let it slide. Then yesterday I noticed a 58L bus passing by on Grand. Where'd that come from? Where does it go? New? So I checked. It runs to the Amtrack station beside Jack London Square. Ah. That's good. No more changing buses to get to Jack London Square. So I got on the 58L this morning to check it out. Let me off at the Amtrack station, it did.

So I picked up the Portland tickets I'd ordered over the web last week, took a picture or two, and walked over to the other side of the Square to Ben & Jerry's for a waffle cone special. I'm partial to the waffle cone special. And I was hungry. And I hadn't had a large breakfast. And it was noon. Still, ice cream. Halloween candy. More ice cream. Maybe not good? Maybe not good.

The Square is pretty much deserted during the week, so I walked back up Broadway to pick up another bottle of the vitamins I'd run out of this morning, stopped to have a real lunch at a Japanese restaurant in the Rotunda building, most of which I was able to get down and then walked on to Grand where I caught the bus home. A number twelve. Which, surprisingly, not only arrived, but arrived on time.

It's now very late in the afternoon and I'm, I don't know, tired. Probably feeling some side effects from the pill prescribed by the neurologist. I say that, side effects, it's probably true, but they're not all that strong and they may well go away once I've been on them for a while, so let's just watch and see. And if they don't clear up or they get worse I'll stop taking the medication. The half doses of the allergy meds have worked out quite well - no coughing, no congestion - a meeting with the pulmonary doctor coming up this month where I'll mention what I've done.

Best to eventually mention such things to one's doctor. Doctor, I changed the dosage on the meds you prescribed, substituting M&M's for the little pills with the odd name I can never remember. Didn't like their color. Made my face break out. Killed my cat when she ate the one that fell on the floor. Poor cat. Silly cat. No problem with my doing that, right? Doctor? Doctor? Mr. M.D.?