Wednesday. To bed last night at ten to look through a couple of magazines received that afternoon, to sleep before eleven, up and back from breakfast under a rising sun by eight to work over yesterday's entry. Too much time spent out shooting photographs, maybe, not enough on the writing. Such is life. Probably could have used more time on the guitar too, but still enough I'd think. More than enough to become a rock star in another six months. If one keeps one's priorities straight.

Another four cent rise in the price of gas across from the café. Eight cents in two days? Again, it would be nice to know (one day) what really drives this thing. Is it just this one station or do they all (between the major chains) raise them in tandem? Is there an order involved? You go first, I'll follow three days later? Eight cents times the number of gallons drawn on any given day is a lot of money, not that I'm doing more than noting it here. Not camping out in front of the City Hall, anyway; some pictures yes, but no camping out this late in the game.

Off to the guitar lesson in another half hour. Be interested to see how I manage. I spend more time writing about playing than I actually spend playing. Just kidding. No really, honest.

Later. I won't talk about this morning's lesson if you won't. We've been working on Jimi Hendrix's The Wind Cries Mary and it's a really nice song, the chords needing to be struck correctly and delicately to bolster the melody and the sound. My instructor will play it and I'll think, yes, I know that song; and I'll play it and I'll think what is this discordant disaster? Still, something to work on this coming week as I worked on it over this last week. Over and over, let there be progress. Please.

Later. A walk down the way along the lake to the usual place taking a camera with a 270mm (equivalent) lens. If I was going to run into a Pelican I wanted to be ready, too bad if a large crowd of angry demonstrators should suddenly appear and I didn't have the needed camera to cover it properly. A single shot to start with, just because it's one that requires this particular lens to capture (without making the effort to get closer).

And there were Pelicans, although they were at a distance out on the boom with the Cormorants. I suspect Cormorants aren't nearly as common in other places, but here they hold conventions and form up into conga lines. This female Black Crested Night Heron was sitting along the edge of the lake, I could have gotten a picture with pretty much any kind of a lens. They don't seem to have a fright reaction when you pass closely by. I doubt it's trust, just, I don't know, maybe the bird equivalent of an American cowboy, a nod of the head and three laconic words is a year's supply.

Only one photograph that would have been better with a shorter lens, but no loss, I'll get it on another day, probably tomorrow. Otherwise an apple turnover and a cup of coffee out on the patio at the breakfast café, a picture of a band promotional poster (how could a beginning guitar player not stop in his tracks?), back now as it approaches one in the afternoon thinking maybe a nap, some more guitar and then head downtown around four to see what the Occupation might be up to on this Wednesday in Oakland.

Later still. Maybe half an hour of something close to sleep. Doesn't seem like much, but it restarted the engine. A bit of time on the guitar, a news program running in the background, a bus then to the City Hall to see what the local Occupy Wall Street encampment was up to, two cameras in tow this time leaving nothing to chance. We are, after all - hup! hup! - an old camera guy approaching his target!

Cool your jets.

Well, the encampment has grown larger, what an informal internal camp administration of some kind seems to smoothly function - a media tent, after all - a food line feeding anyone who's hungry, a production line silk screening posters (I wonder if any of these have shown up yet on ebay - if I were a collector I'd have gotten my hands on one). People seemed relaxed and into the day to day, hour to hour reality of camp life. One does not spend one's hours camping out for days on end doing nothing but shouting.

An hour plus of walking and shooting, a bus then back to have sushi and sake at Coach down at the bottom of my hill, up then to the apartment to work on the photographs I'd taken, watch the Korean soap that runs during the week starting a quarter after seven while playing guitar. Another section for artandlife I think, maybe two. Nothing quite as good as Monday's session, but still, better than what came out of Tuesday's lot. I'm up for tomorrow, after more time on the guitar (hup! hup!).

Let us not hup! hup! ourselves to the point we go up chuck.

I was thinking that myself.