What then to do for the day? I have been making progress with backing up the images, burning them to DVD's and printing labels on this infernal CD printer I've had now for three years. Or however many years, at least three, I can no longer remember. I'm able to get it to print, but only after much trial and error, a Rube Goldberg series of steps. OK, not so bad, dues paid, it works. They're not very expensive, but then again there are many things that aren't so expensive in this world I don't need to replace (right away unless I have a moment of epiphany after a particularly strenuous session). It's those moments of epiphany that cause all the problems. Nikon's announcement (finally after many rumors) of the new D3s, for example. Do I need one? No. Will I buy one? Probably not. I'll tell myself to wait for the one that will follow in another two years, wait for improvements too great to resist and then, and then.... Laughter. Idiot.

You're not thinking about it?

Not unless it turns out to be the best thing since sliced bread. The word will get out. Even I require some level of rationalization that makes sense in a real world, any old real world, not that I necessarily recognize a real world even when I stumble upon it. But we digress. Nice to see they kept the full form factor, though. Interesting to read how much less light it needs to take a decent picture. But again I digress.

Later. A little over an hour's nap, the sun breaking through some threatening looking clouds, so maybe we'll have some sun for a while and maybe we won't, but the option of a walk might be on the table. Maybe a bath to think about it, clear the cobwebs, get a grip. New camera indeed, I haven't figured out yet how to use the old ones.

Later still. Sitting outside on the sidewalk at a table having coffee and a cookie across from a wooded area next to Lake Merritt I found myself examining a group of five trees wondering why they'd caught my eye. Just something a little different that made them stand out? Some small grouping that said something to me at an inner level, but nothing I could put my finger on, nothing I could describe? A small sound in the forest, but nothing deserving attention? An odd set of thoughts, something in the cookie that was off? Still, these are the hooks that get you into this image making business. So I got up - what the hell, I didn't have to explain any of this to the other diners - walked across the street and took a picture. I still can't see why I saw them, these five trees, or if I was seeing anything at all. But then again we're talking an image, here. If it's nothing, life will not end.

Some of that may have come from my going back over the group of pictures I took at the LovEvolution Parade (I still have trouble typing that - LovEvolution - much too cute, much too cloying, much too blatantly commercial maybe?) and ended adding two more to the group. This one maybe because it's a close up - I'm accused to getting too close, exposing pores and such, couldn't I move back a bit? - and this one, not for the gut or emotional reaction, but because it's a lady with a cigarette in one hand, a drink in the other hand who's wearing a pair of black hearts and very little else. A picture, in other words, a lady with her eyes closed, that works on the conscious a plus b plus c side of the head and is not generally what I'm looking for when I shoot. Unless I'm wrong. Which I might. I still prefer the one up top.

Anyway, some walking in today, some thoughts on Art and Life, the afternoon now two hours old. Hot stuff for a Wednesday in Oakland, I'm thinking.