I'm having urges to clean the apartment, scrape the tub, put papers in place. Prepare, maybe, for Laguna Seca this coming weekend. I have no idea if I'll stay the full three days - Friday through Sunday - but I will find out. I will return with pictures of more than just cars, although the cars they had at the last one were pretty damned photogenic. Is there something called “Fall Cleaning Fever” similar to “Spring Cleaning Fever” or am I six months behind the curve? I recall a similar feeling in March but it lasted a day, just enough time to note it here in an entry before the fog closed in and now, here in October, I am suffering a “Spring Cleaning Fever” flashback that will undoubtedly pass. Reflective, this Saturday morning just after breakfast, are we not?

Later. “Fall Cleaning” has slipped into the distance. The sun is shining, although it doesn't have the warm muggy quality of these last three weeks. Some thought to get on a bus with a camera and go somewhere to shoot pictures. Or walk around with a camera over my shoulder taking the sun. Better than cleaning the apartment, although not better, come to think of it, than taking a nap, finish watching The Machinist DVD and send it back to Netflix.

I remember counting the movies I was watching when I first subscribed to Netflix - “my, my, so many movies in so short a time, how low the cost” - and now I've not returned a movie in two weeks sitting here in my fog. Probably cheaper to rent them down the street. I once had to pay good money for drugs to put my head in this state. Yes, I'm joking and yes I'm not joking and yes I'm not sure this is a good sign. Then again I've never been this old before and I'm not clear it doesn't come with the territory. Life continuess to surprise.

You should erase this and come back and write something more upbeat or else you'll talk yourself into a snit.

It's all part of a plan. I say this to myself: “it's all part of my plan.” What plan, I know not. Maybe Emmy knows.

Later still. Back from the downtown: a bus in, a walk back. I seem to feel better for that. I remembered a sign on the nurse's union building that I'd always wanted to photograph. I'm not sure the Propositions that Arnold is currently pushing on the coming November ballot will pass, as he's made a consistent series of stupid mistakes. This is a season for stupid mistakes, Arnold just having to stand with the others in what appears to be a never ending line.

s

Boy, but I'd like to hear some articulation of an alternative to this political mess. Most of the positive energy that came to the Civil Rights movement was founded on principles we all learned in school. Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness. Equal treatment before the law, no strange fruit hanging in the forests, no rogue cops running riot in the streets. Some of our parents seemed horrified that we said we actually believed that stuff. Whatever comes, whatever I hope is coming, needs to be rooted in those same basics. If you have the grass to stand up in front of the world and lecture them about democracy and freedom, you'd better not be running an Abu Ghraib.

Arnold was an expression of this discontent with government. He's probably screwed the pooch, frittered away whatever he had, but he's a sign of something more (one hopes) to come, a sign of the times.