Overcast this morning, the air quite cool in the fifties, they're saying sun later when the clouds burn off, but fall has definitely entered and we'll be sleeping under blankets soon. Which is good. The blood pressure has been normal these last many days with the new combination of pills, so that too is good. Take that off the list of broken things. The dose is now a quarter of what it was a year ago and, although I'm not sure why, I suspect the weight loss is part of it. That continues at its usual slow but steady pace, by the way. No complaints.

I was a bit testy going to the lab. Interesting to watch. I didn't do anything particularly to show it, consciously adding a “thank you” for the hospital clerk at a point she was noticing my, um, reticence. I was careful at the supermarket albeit, in thinking about it now, less careful in the driving. Testy for me translates to more aggressive driving and there's nothing good about that. We're not talking cutting people off and such, but more aggressive than I like leading, should I do it long enough, to fender benders and worse. I wonder if it's a function of age or, well, what? Helps you keep an edge, though: the mind sharp, ready to pounce. And maybe to snap. (Yap. Yap.)

Later. A walk works well with “testy” under an overcast sky. A bus ride downtown, no problem talking myself into the proposition (after losing the argument yesterday for some reason), a walk about the area taking one or two pictures, a Pumpkin latte at a coffee shop to see what a Pumpkin latte was about, best I ordered the medium and not the large. I've decided I'm a small not quite medium Pumpkin latte guy. I walked along a couple of streets I haven't walked for a while and noted the number of abandoned store fronts. Many of them you'd think, OK: a marginal art gallery and the like you can understand, but one or two of the stores had been tenants in their buildings for years. A small grocery I'd occasionally visit gone, one that made me stand there and think.

I took it easy with the walking, strolling, stumbling along; the camera strap wrapped tight around the wrist because it feels more secure I guess, assuming on faith nobody will be aggressive enough to remove the camera-strap-wrist all in one piece. Silly thought. Something to keep in mind, but just enough in mind to remember, not enough to fret. He said.

Later still. An hour's nap, floating a bit now as the News Hour comes on in the background. I've mentioned before I listen to too much news, read too much news and surf for too much news on the internet and now I've mentioned it again.

This morning I watched the eighty-first and what I discovered final episode of my Wednesday-Thursday morning Korean soap. An historical soap, as it happens, that ended bam! My, my. Just like that. Eighty-one one hour episodes, remember, that followed these people step by step, month by (often excruciating) month for twenty years of their lives and suddenly it stops. An epilogue said the hero's son went on to do this, the grandson that, his wife (the queen) succeeded in her plan to open lands to the south, her two sons successful in doing this and doing that and everything, evidently, turning out swell. The hero eventually died at the age of forty, quite a fellow in Korean history. Another Wednesday-Thursday morning soap coming to replace it next week I assume. Maybe check it with a more jaundiced eye. I mentioned my difficulty with the overly melodramatic parts, melodrama evidently preferred by today's Korean audiences. I'm not sure I can really put up with another eighty-one episodes of that.

I believe The Guiding Light ended recently after continuously broadcasting for over seventy years.

Now I'm embarrassed. Ending with The Guiding Light.