Tuesday. A bit overcast, but it looks like it's going to be a reasonably decent day. Up at six, to breakfast and back by eight, the papers read, the head in place. The guitar lesson tomorrow. I've been getting in more practice this week than I have in the past, the thing seems to be taking on a life of its own, which is good, but am I any better with these chords and scales than I was last week? I suspect. Progress is being made, don't fret. Just play the damned thing and shut up.

For whatever reason I bought a new lens that arrived yesterday. One rationale was it wasn't very expensive for a Nikon lens. A nice one, as it turns out, a 35mm f 1.8 DX, designed to be used with the less than full frame cameras, giving them the equivalent of a 50mm lens on a film camera or a full frame digital. Well, technically 52.5mm, but close enough for camera work. Anything up to 55mm seems to be called a standard 50 of the kind you had on any right out of the box film camera last century. Or something like that.

Anyway it's nice, this lens. I shot my first picture with it early in the evening yesterday (under the logo above) when it came late in the day and plan to use it today mounted on the D2Xs. Which means nothing to anyone unless they know something about Nikons and even then so what? The pictures are what counts. We are babbling, I think, but we're up for getting outside with a camera in hand. Any day is a good day when you feel up for getting outside with a camera in hand, doesn't much matter which camera or which lens. In Oakland.

Later. A bus downtown, a dogleg to the ATM before heading for the coffee shop in the Rotunda Building across from City Hall. It was cold, it was, and I wanted something hot and settled in with a mocha coffee and a mocha pastry of some kind. A bit too much chocolate, I'd say, another thing I'm supposed to avoid, but it was filling, tasty and warm.

Onward to the transit office to buy a bus pass for next month. One of these days they'll add it to the Clipper card, as they've done with the San Francisco pass, and I can stop this monthly visit, but not this month and not today. Still cold out there, cold for a California day anyway, off down Broadway to Grand and another bus back to the apartment.

I admit the trip downtown wasn't done with an altogether clear head and went to bed when I got home, a metallic taste in the mouth, and one of those bright little puddles starting to form when you close the eyes. A low grade optical migraine, up now after an hour, feeling better. I've eaten enough for a day after a large breakfast and the mocha coffee, mocha pastry, but we'll see how it feels later.

I've been getting hungry more often lately. I'm under one sixty, just barely, but that's a pound or so lighter than the target, so I'm not worrying about eating something more if I get hungry, just take it in stride and try to eat something halfway healthful. Halfway is more than enough. Don't have to go nuts over this stuff.

That chocolate mocha lunch caused the migraine?

It was well on its way by the time I had lunch, could have helped it along of course, but these things make me wonder if it could be related to something I'm eating. For breakfast, for instance. At the same place every day. Different entries, but similar meals, choices that you'd think wouldn't be good from, say, a cholesterol standpoint, although the cholesterol test I got back last week was stellar.

Stellar?

I originally wrote “really good”, but I use that phrase too often, probably because I'm projecting (hup! hup!). You “repeat a phrase often enough and it will become true” is rattling around somewhere in the back of my brain along with “wishing on a star” and “rock and roll is here to stay” as well as a number of hopeless others. Fantasies and wishes. And fishes. And.... Well, we've lost it.

Later still. OK, better. Laid back, but reasonably clear headed, feeling reasonably good given the way the day started. Get on the guitar, prepare for tomorrow, make it a total of seven days of good practice, see how it goes in the morning.

And don't go down to the sushi restaurant at the bottom of the hill and have any sake, now. Don't do that. I know you've been thinking about it. Try the pasta place next door. Good pasta, get some of it to take out, skip the wine bar next door. Either that or shut up. We really won't want to hear about it.