Thursday. This day I've been tired. Really tired. To bed last night around eight, up this morning at eight. I suspect, if not twelve, there were still a lot of hours of sleep somewhere in there. But again, I'm dragging ass, more so than those many times in the past. Getting up so late I skipped breakfast (not at all hungry, oddly, even after not eating all that much yesterday), diddled around until just before eleven when I headed out down to Palo Alto for my annual cardiovascular stress test where they wire you up to a sonogram and put you on a treadmill: Puff! Puff! Enough!

The doctor says everything looks great, which is nice. The cholesterol is to die for. Excuse me, to live for. The occasional tiredness could be due to the combination of prescriptions I take (bummer), but not to be worried about. Similarly with the foot cramps. Fine, close to two hours at his office with the test and the exam, another hour's drive back home stopping at the morning breakfast place and having (finally) a full breakfast eight hours late.

Interestingly he mentioned he'd once worked with a medical company that was experimenting with non invasive changes to the upper stomach and esophagus to modify eating habits. Evidently the upper stomach has a large influence on hunger and diet and my hiatal hernia operation could very well have had the effect of hosing my appetite and interest in most foods, although no one really knows exactly how it works. OK. I didn't know that. Maybe all this stuff they go through with radical stomach surgery for weight loss could be avoided by doing whatever they eventually find out is necessary in addressing the upper stomach/esophagus. The operation I had isn't done for weight loss, but it sure did help.

So we'll just let the rest of the day peter out, maybe take a nap, see if the tiredness goes away in the morning. It usually does, one day of dragging ass and then three or four days off. It probably has a union contract.

Unions are taking enough crap as it is these days, lay off.

OK, we're tired, maybe the brain is more than a little fuzzed.

Later. Still, we continue to be in something of a train wreck. We'll get in the guitar time, check the Korean soap (I caught the last ten minutes of yesterday's chapter when I returned last night, more than enough time to figure out what had gone on in the thirty minutes before) and then head for bed. What I call “tiredness” often doesn't really let me sleep, but somehow I suspect this one might tonight. Perhaps after a little sake and sushi down the street.

Are you kidding? After that Guinness last night?

Two (and a half) pints of Guinness should not have had this effect. And I believe that. But I too wonder. A flask of sake? Not all that much; less, certainly, than the Guinness last night. Is it because I hadn't had anything to drink in some time? These questions bounce around like pebbles in an empty cup. Empty head, empty cup.

Later still. We settled for spaghetti with clam sauce. Feel better, but still tired. It's now entering evening and I'll wrestle with the guitar practice as best I can. An hour would be more than enough. This tired business fogs the mind and whispers suggestions in my ear: why not just, you know, go into the bedroom and lie down? Evil stuff that applies itself with a light hand.

Night. Or maybe day (as I write). I thought I'd lie down for a bit before my Korean soap started at seven-twenty, listen to the radio and get up when it came on. Evidently I started to fall asleep and fell into an ocular migraine because I remember feeling weird in an odd, but in retrospect, familiar way, getting up and turning on the television set, the soap having already started, finding it difficult to keep up with the subtitles and realizing (the program is really horrible under the influence of an ocular migraine, by the way) what was going on.

OK, seven-forty: turn everything off (you're able to get around and do these tasks well enough under the influence of one of these things) and go to bed. Clunk!

It's now two in the morning after five hours sleep. I'll turn in again after this, I don't want to cut the sleep any shorter than it wants or needs tonight, and I'm glad I'd decided not to go down the hill and have that sushi and sake. I'd have blamed it on the sake. As it is I'd had a plain waffle with a sliced banana and strawberries on top with a side order of toast for the late breakfast and a normal sized serving of spaghetti and clam sauce three hours later for dinner. They say avoid large servings of carbohydrates in a single sitting. Maybe that's it.

Maybe it's a hold over from the Guinness last night. Maybe it's the ocular migraine fairies come to hold an off the cuff convention in my head because the phase of the moon was right. Maybe it's just something that happens (they could be real migraines, the ones that hurt, so let's not complain too much) in one's life and one gets on with it. I'm feeling pretty good as I write, the tiredness gone, let's assume we're through the worst and this new day coming will go well. Maybe take pictures. Couldn't hurt.