Saturday. Up at six, cold without being too cold, raining in earnest. To breakfast with the papers, back now at the usual time, home with the wall heater on, music in the background. No interest in going out in this rain unless it eases up. The little cartoon weather icon yesterday suggested intermittent rain today, so maybe it will stop and life will be fine or maybe it won't. Life won't end if we stay inside and do interesting things.

Interesting things? I take it you're feeling pretty good?

I'd say so. As an old Seattleite I know about making do when it's raining. A good frame of mind makes a rainy day turn out fine, an opportunity to do, well, interesting things. I suspect most hobbies are taken up in the winter, expanded in the spring.

Later. A break in the rain: good. A walk down to the farmer's market across from the theater, one lone guy playing an amplified acoustic guitar to a very sparse crowd. It looks halfway sunny in the photograph, but again, a break in the clouds that soon moved on to the west. Or the north. Hard to say out here in the wilds of Oakland. Dim Sum at one of the tent kiosks, fairly expensive for something that turned out to be so ordinary, but I walked over to a table and listened to the guitarist as I ate, watching how he positioned his hand on the frets.

Not bad, the guitarist. He fingered the notes holding his hand similar to the way I hold mine when I'm told I'm in error. This guy certainly wasn't playing with errors. The guitar teacher said classically trained guitarists tend to hold their hands like this, maybe this guy started playing learning classical guitar. Now that I know a little about playing as he was playing, I no longer think twice about buying the offered CD and so bought his. So much for budgets. So much for sensibility.

It's now two in the afternoon. I'll play this new CD as I practice, if I practice, maybe some of it will rub off.

You are kidding.

Life is too short not to be.

Later still. For all my - hup! hup! - do this, do that, I've managed pretty much nothing, finally deciding to go to the sushi restaurant down the hill for dinner and finish it up with green tea cheese cake, maybe two servings. The cheesecake, served cold, is a kicker. We like a Saturday evening cheese cake kicker. We do.

So guitar, not nearly enough (yet) to qualify as a day's practice (too much hup! hup! here I'm thinkin’). A flask of sake at the restaurant. Almost impossible, given my history there, to avoid, as the owner brings a flask when I enter, often on the house. Still, something to think about, having dinner with sake often as not. Feel good though, no desire to have more if more were to be had. For all that I'm still talking an awful lot about it, am I not?

The advent of the holidays? Psychological blankets and deep seated fears emerging in your December dreams? Mickey Mouse and vampire teeth? Blue moons creeping out from behind black shrouded mountains?

No. Just sake somewhat more often than an old man should be entertaining here in this life. “Somewhat more” getting itself blown all out of proportion methinks, on a Saturday, when there's not much else to talk about.

Now is that truth, or rationalization?