Monday. Lights out by ten to awaken at quarter after six after what seems to have been a not so bad night's rest. Up easily enough to drive to breakfast in a steady rain to have a safe plain waffle with sliced bananas and strawberries, fruit cup and coffee for breakfast. We're on an upbeat roll here and we would like (really like) to keep on track.

And a plain waffle will do all that?

A plain waffle and maybe burning a little incense beside a recognized religious icon before going to bed.

The rain had stopped by the time I drove home. Some thought to go by the supermarket, but the traffic was such where I'd parked that I blew it off instead. Tomorrow. Make a list. Do it right. We're running low on a couple of necessary items here like soap and toothpaste.

Those two additional photo albums I'd ordered this weekend are due from Amazon today and so we'll continue rearranging the living room and sorting through more photographs. Can't really believe I'm saying, let alone doing, this so ,maybe we've reached another level here. Cross our fingers and burn more incense.

Later. Watched last night's episode of Elementary on the tablet and then got up to discover the pharmacy had left a recorded message that a prescription was ready for pick up. Can't hear the phone while I'm on the tablet using these block out all external sounds ear plugs I acquired to do precisely that. The prescription, added to the fact I need to go by an ATM, made it easy to grab camera and jacket and head out the door.

Walking along the lake I noticed the first Common Goldeneye I've seen this season. Not much of a picture, but you take what you're given. On to the Lakeshore ATM and the pharmacy to return by the Grand Lake Theater, a juvenile Black-Crested Night Heron standing by the curb pretending to ignore me and everyone else passing it on the sidewalk. They're good at projecting indifference, true or not.

Bright sun, but a cold wind in just a long sleeved shirt and sweater. Should have worn a coat over the sweater was the thought setting out, but then it turned warmer walking home.

The post office is evidently delivering the photo albums from Amazon from the look of it, so no worries about having to be here when they arrive, as the mailman (person) has a key to enter the building and I can therefore pretty much head out where I may without missing delivery. I won't take advantage of the fact. Feeling good or not, some things you know you'll do (or not do) from habit.

Habits and ruts you say you want to break.

One at a time, one at a time.

Later still. The photo albums arrived and I assembled and then filled one with photographs from the stack I've accumulated over this last decade, many of the earlier ones obviously in need of better processing with Lightroom and Photoshop. It at least tells me I've improved my skills with them in recent years, the later ones being better. Not as much better as one would like, but it's never as much better as one would like.

Listening to Democracy Now, the entire episode devoted to the death of Fidel Castro. We lived just outside New York City in Yonkers when Castro came to the U.N. and the much younger I remember the television images and newspaper coverage. He had no small part to play in the decades that followed, the missile crisis sitting in school in Seattle and all the rest. It seemed more a movie being watched on a screen rather than real life with consequences at that age. Best the consequences weren't what they might have been. Had similar thoughts as a soldier about Vietnam, albeit more and more real as it drew closer.

Evening. Put together the second album. I think I've finally figured out how to assemble one now, although it's taken assembling five of them to figure that out. The time and work now will be in upgrading older prints that need better processing and including others that will need printing. So eighty more slots to fill and I can do it if I get real and follow through.

So good?

Well, all this babbling is half “yes, it's going to happen” and half the usual “hup! hup! hup!” cheer leader crap, but yes: so far, so good.