No need to push. Take time to zone out and stare off into the distance. Plenty of other extraneous stuff keeping the insanity pumped. No need to add to the confusion. Make time to turn off the brain and breathe, think or not, write or not, as life goes stumbling into the Twenty First Century.

No wonder the Muslims are freaked as they're dragged kicking and screaming (and killing) from their nice little Dark Age hidey hole (no stops, hang on tight, this is the light speed Internet no turning back new world express) into the New Millenium (some high notes here, trumpet blasts: think Victory! or God!). God is good, God is great and God will provide, but you'd better get up before six, strap on that seat belt and run, run, run, never a backward glance at the bastards closing in from behind.

Just jitters, I suspect. Went to bed around ten, but then woke up at midnight and stared at at the ceiling for an hour. Went over yesterday's entry. Wuss had decided to sleep in the living room on one of his chairs. The night was warm, the sliding balcony door open, the bedroom window open, the fan turned on low. Still too warm to sleep, too many hours screwing around with the move for the mind to settle down. Working on the journal helps. Turns the old brain to mush as I change one word and then another. Rhythm and rime, sound and meaning. Writing sucks, but it seems to make the passing time worthwhile. That's important, you know. Making the passing time seem worthwhile.

Ten thirty five. The tire is now repaired, the car is sitting in the garage and I am sitting here at the computer thinking OK, this is going well. Now to look at the new suit and see what twenty or thirty pounds does for the fit. I think it should be OK. It didn't have an eighth of an inch to spare the last time I wore it, maybe it will just feel a bit, you know, roomy, but without that hopeless excess sad sack sagging you see sometimes, a guy in his tent.

It's a good suit. I've worn it once. Another twenty pounds and maybe I'll buy something really spectacular, if I still have a job, one of those things that will hang in the closet forever if I gain it all back (comfort food binges in the unemployment line, potato chip stains, tears and Ben and Jerry blotches on the help wanted page). Hang in the closet like the two Halston velvet jackets that have been hanging there now for twenty years. Those two jackets from my rock and roll days, when a crushed black velvet jacket, a custom made wide brimmed pull down over the eyes Borsalino hat and a pair of faded blue jeans was as good as it got for a well dressed ersatz hippie freak member of the underground press going out for a night. (There's a longer story to those two jackets, both of which are just starting to fit. I still have the Borsalino hat. I doubt, though, that I'd survive one of those old nights on the town. None of my friends did.)

So, the sun is hot, the weather almost too warm (not unusual for the bay area in the spring and fall - sorry the weather wasn't better when you and BF were passing through San Francisco, Polly) and there's a wedding to go to tonight. In San Francisco. Moan.

Later still. The wedding reception was one hell of a wedding reception. The top floor of a Chinese restaurant located on Broadway near Columbus in San Francisco where North Beach meets Chinatown. Close to two hundred people. A many course meal. A professional photographer and his assistant shooting the room, one with a standard Hasselblad Stroboframe setup, the assistant with a Canon and strobe.

I went over and introduced myself, told him I was a guest who'd been asked by the bride to shoot some pictures and that I'd stay out of his way when he was posing his groups. OK. We talked later. He asked if we'd met before. I thought he was familiar too. Neither one of us had any idea where we'd met or why. Interesting dinner. Two Chinese dragons did a dragon dance before things got started, maybe twenty people in their troupe, speeches, pictures, everyone dressed to the nines, traditional outbreaks of tinkling glasses to signal the bride and groom to kiss before the assembled crowd.