Tuesday. Another decent night's sleep, awake fifteen minutes before the alarm was set to go off, out the door and back from breakfast at the usual hour in the middle of a fairly heavy fog. Two days now of low lying fog. Still, the attitude is good and the head is clear, as clear as it ever is anymore in these declining years. (hup! hup!)

Enough!

Indeed. Still, it's a sign of energy and other good stuff, these hup, hups.

I've followed the morbid happenings with the Euro these last few months and, through my reading, have gotten pretty negative on what's going to happen, what we're in the middle of at the moment. Interestingly though, I'm realizing one odd little piece of information probably has as much, if not a greater effect than all the depressing news reports and blog posts. Gas prices at my station dropped another four cents yesterday afternoon (they'd been $3.71 yesterday morning at breakfast).

I have this firm conviction the gas companies would never allow prices to drop unless demand absolutely dictated they drop and world wide demand is what the economy is lacking at the moment. So are we screwed? Well, probably, but we'll leave it at that. The world as described by gas pricing at a station across the street. As good a guru as any, I suppose. The Joker in the mix, up to its tricks.

Later. A brief nap as noon approached as I'd hit the not uncommon late morning wall. Not a big wall, a low wall with softer than usual arrangement of bricks, so a thirty minute nap was all that was required to make it right. I'd read there was something going on in front of City Hall at noon, a reintroduction of tents was the comment on the Occupy Facebook site and, given my ongoing habit of avoiding street battles, I figured I'd go by, but later, well after noon, say about one. Diddle-dee-done.

A bit more press than there's been in past days, more security, more police today than private security guards, all crowded together over to the side of the plaza where Mr. RunningWolf, down from his tree, was trying to erect what looked to be tent poles, discussing this at length with the surrounding police and protesters, all of them almost outnumbered (both Mr. RunningWolf and security) by news people with their cameras and microphones. The war of the words! Infinitely better than bullets. And truncheons. And gas.

Do you have any experience with any of that stuff?

Bullets, truncheons and gas? Hell no. I've been avoiding them as I believe I've mentioned. Something I learned to avoid when I was much younger.

Well, back to earth. A bunch of pictures, a light cold chicken salad at Genji's in the Rotunda Building, back then to the plaza for more pictures. I was more interested in the crowd that surrounded the speakers than the speakers themselves. Mr. RunningWolf I recognized from his previous life perched in the tree, but there were others holding forth.

One fellow with a gas mask and a bullhorn made me wish I'd brought a digital recorder, must remember to bring it next time, I'd have liked to have had an accurate quote. I'd say the affair was thirty percent serious, seventy percent circus, I suspect all of it useful to the news people, a little circus helps boost the ratings. Oh, and at least one older photographer in a white Panama hat carrying a Nikon was prowling about. Walking about, not prowling about.

Home before three feeling good, immediately sitting down and processing the photographs over the next couple of hours. I have enough for two sections if I really stretch them out, probably best I keep it to one and axe the lesser stuff. There's a fair amount of lesser stuff. A decent outing as I came back with more than I thought I might when I set out.

Later still. OK, the section is posted. Some thoughts on improving the shooting for the next time around, most of them similar to thoughts I've had in the past and then promptly forgotten. Good thing I'm not being graded on this.

Guitar now and then bed, my lesson in the morning and then another Protime blood test later to see if the thinner is behaving. And then, and then.... Well, you can tell it's been a long day. A good day, but again: guitar and bed.