Thanksgiving and so my morning café is closed. A quick look through the papers after separating out the advertising sections and reducing their bulk by well over half. The Times remained pretty much whole, but the local Chronicle and Tribune were monsters, well over what you'd usually see in the Sunday editions. I'm not their target audience and so into the (recycle) bin, there's a camera company that pretty much owns my monthly check.

A bit slow getting up, a bit slow getting the head started, a long hot bath if only because the usual sequence of events had been broken. What to do for breakfast when nothing other than a convenience store will probably be open? Certainly I wouldn't, you know, for breakfast, walk down the way to pick up say, a pint of ice cream?

Certainly not. An ice cream cone, perhaps, but even for you a pint would be too over the top.

Exactly. The sun is out, although there are plenty of scattered clouds, and so a walk to the local 7-11 look-alike for an ice cream cone, eating it on the way back to the apartment. Very little traffic, a few people walking the lake and out on the sidewalks. The Korean restaurant was open as well as the Pakistani - Indonesian restaurant that replaced the old dim sum place, but little else. A bar was open with one customer visible through the open front door on this late Thanksgiving morning.

I've been moving files between the external network backup drives in preparation for adding the new drive and discovered a “recovery” folder had appeared on one of the old drives at the root and the old file structure was now below it. What happened there?

Have I lost photographs? We shall worry about that today as we figure it out, call the manufacturer tomorrow or Monday, if necessary, as the support section on their web site doesn't mention anything about it. We shall not freak, we shall only mildly freak and see what's what.

Nothing has been planned for the day, no shopping was done to prepare anything special for dinner, a call to the sister later to see what she's been up to and that's about it. Everyone has their traditions and I guess I'm following mine. Fortunately they don't include any visits to bars at eleven in the morning or, for that matter, at eleven at night.

Later. A walk over to the lake taking one or two photographs (I too was guessing a Santa suit) as I was passing and then on to the theater and around to Lakeshore where I had another one of the yogurt cups and a small coffee out at a sidewalk table in front of the bagel shop.

Light traffic, the parking meters not being enforced through the end of the month, not much of anything open other than Starbucks, Peet's, the bagel shop (where I had my yogurt and coffee) and a donut shop. A Subway along with a few gift shops, one or two restaurants, the Gap and a liquor store or two. Or three. A walk by the ATM when I was finished thinking might as well as I'm there.

Back directly to the lake along Lakeshore this time rather than around by the theater taking one or two pictures. People about, not many, but enough and some not small number of mothers and fathers pushing their baby carriages, walking the lake seems a favorite outing, Thanksgiving or not.

I did take a picture of this fellow as I was passing. He's almost always there in the same spot, never seen him interact with passers by, and he was busy under that plastic cover studiously oblivious putting something together with a plastic material taken off a narrow roll dispenser. Thanksgiving brings the homeless closer to home.

Later still. Something happened to the computer. Ran an update of DxO Viewpoint, a photo editing program, and I thought for a good long while I may have hosed the operating system. It would boot in safe mode, but I had to go back two full restore points before it finally came around and even then I'm not sure what is was that did the trick. They eat our time and our wits, they do, these devices.

Evening. Nothing on television other than football and I'm not certain I'm up for football. A game for another time and another place. We'll see. We may get desperate.

Feeling better, the head now screwed on reasonably tight, an extra dose of the pain meds may have had something to do with it. They have an effect, but not much of an effect, maybe more psychological than physical, but that seems to be enough.

A conversation with my sister and a message from Mr. D who says his kids really like a photograph I took of him some years ago when he and his wife were in San Francisco and the kids display it prominently with other family pictures on their living room walls. That's nice. It's a good picture. You take enough of them and eventually one of them will turn out.

It occurred to me (at eight this evening) it was a Thursday and Elementary will be playing later at ten. From ten to eleven. The morning restaurant opens an hour and a half later than usual tomorrow at seven-thirty and they're not enforcing parking through the end of the month, so I can sleep in and park. And throw my schedule off. I skipped it last week and watched it the next day on the computer. Maybe do it again today? Watch it tomorrow as well?

Heavy stuff, making a decision like this.

Don't you know it. These holidays can stress you out.