The doctor admitted he'd taken out the first one immediately - setting the appointment for the day after the initial exam - because he hadn't liked its looks. Great. Between moles, strange white powders, low flying aircraft, prostate exams (another one is coming up pretty quick), the job and the apartment, there is much to think about. Or not think about. There are only so many worries I can juggle and I think I've pressed up against my limit, my concentration long since having left for Philadelphia. Maybe one day it will invite me to come for a visit. Just me and my mind over afternoon tea in Philadelphia.

This is my afternoon to clean the old apartment bathroom and kitchen and I'm going to put it off until tomorrow. I am tired, I can feel a cold coming (every day for the last week, a real build up to something, but what?) and I want to have a drink and watch the news. I want to go to bed early and get up tomorrow morning and go out and have breakfast and then think about cleaning up the old apartment. There are other things I'd like to do, but they, like true love and returning to the home of my youth, sit somewhere on that line between improbable and forget it, so I learn to make do. Learn as you yearn (and grow older).

OK, somewhat later, lying in bed, watching the news, thinking, man, I'd kinda like to go to sleep, except I can't. Thinking, man, I am hungry. Hungry. Well, yes. Normally I don't have dinner, but hungry is hungry and can be fixed by walking out the door to one of the many food establishments that line Grand Avenue, all of them, unfortunately, selling pizza and burgers and cheap assed Chinese shit. There is also an ersatz Seven Eleven, where I usually buy the Sunday paper, and so that's where I ended up, a tuna sandwich, a bag of Beer Nuts (I know, but they talked to me. They taste like shit, but they made a clever pitch from the shelf.) and a Coca Cola, which I will probably not finish until tomorrow. The excitement of a coming weekend, a Friday night on the town, can be practically debilitating. Here in Oakland.

Later still. Although I've now been here for a week, this feels like my first night in residence. With the exception of the cleanup over at the old place tomorrow, I'm here. I walked down the street for the first time, really, the first time in my new neighborhood, to pick up some comfort food, which may or may not be an auspicious start. There was a newness to everything. I'm writing this at five in the morning, after a night of coughing, but no coughing now, feeling better, as if the cold was finished, packed and heading home. Now for the weekend. And breakfast.