Current?

We hold out hope it's not forever. Naps are OK on top of a good night's sleep, but not so OK I'm thinking, if they're around because we've chronically under-slept, so we'll hold out hope for a change for the better. Current as in “temporary”. Hup.

Hope seems overdone after the last election.

Bite your tongue.

Later. I spaced out again a number of times while playing at the lesson, forgetting what came next in riffs I've practiced many times. I'd taken an hour's nap before heading out, I was tired, but I wasn't feeling all that tired or out of sorts at the lesson itself. So, well, I guess that's just the way it was. Are we getting ding(ier)? Is this a progression? We'll know one of these days soon enough if we're still conscious enough then to notice.

Are you worried?

Not really, it doesn't have any (oh, lord, it's coming) qualities about it from the experience, but I'll be interesting to see if I continue to repeat these episodes in the coming weeks.

Other than that, as mentioned, it's been raining on and off, a very light rain, but rain none the less. Clouds overhead, rain clouds, we'll see if this lasts through the weekend. The weather site says “partly cloudy” through Tuesday where it changes to “fog”, so we'll see. The weather fix has been in for California for centuries, so I'm suspecting the sun will return before too long unless it doesn't.

You're as dingy here as you were at the lesson.

Well, no. Not quite, we're just, you know, a little scattered.

Later still. A bus downtown to have a dessert crêpe in the City Center and then, the crêpe consumed, a walk over to another café for coffee, again out at a table. Overcast, but no rain. A walk then down Broadway around on Grand Avenue, passing this line of cormorants on the lake. I couldn't fit all of them into one picture.

Anyway, home and to bed for another sort of a nap, the upper palate aching and the head feeling like crap. Back to Oakland after no effects in Pasadena and now we're having whatever these things are start up again? I'm going to test what I've been having for breakfast, maybe they're cooking with something my system can no longer handle. Well, hell, I could add noxious gases emitted by the apartment, the price of celery at Safeway and any number of other possible suspects lurking in the waters of Lake Merritt. I need a vacation.

I'm listening to music at the moment, not willing to face another analysis of last night's debate. As I've gotten older I've begun to realize how much chance plays in determining our collective fate. I was listening to the radio earlier where they were talking about a recently published book on the Cuban missile crisis with new information gleaned from Russian archives.

We were damned lucky - and it was luck, not intelligence - we didn't go to nuclear war with the Russians. Would your life have been a little different if we had? Indeed. What kind of luck are we having these days with our with candidates and governments? You only really learn how close the edge when something blows up. No way to know if luck is on your side this day and all will work out or if the Russians are coming and your dinner plans for later have become more problematic.

You're still dingy. This is meandering all over the place.

I'm feeling better, as I usually do in the later afternoon, but you're right. No value in going over the past. It's just, well, I suspect I've been very lucky to be born in the U.S. when I did, all the bombs, bullets and bubonic plague were working themselves out in other areas.

Still, I do remember the Cuban missile crisis at the age of something like twenty, not really thinking how life might change (assuming Seattle was still standing) with the push of a button. Interesting times. Maybe best to have been dumb to the reality.

You've made my case for dingy.

Evening. A bit of Jack Daniels to see if it might ease the evening along. It has. It always does and I was in the mood to shake the head (just a bit) to hear the rocks rattle.

What does that mean?

We'll see how the day goes tomorrow, starting with a very plain vanilla breakfast - waffles with fruit, no butter, no syrup - little chance for interesting ingredients to add to the day's flavor.