You'll fill up your living room again with a new wave of dead electronic crap. This is America, where life begins with an “i” as in iLive, iDie, iPhone for an iPizza for an iWake.

Now, now.

Anyway, up without the alarm at seven-thirty, thinking I'd sleep in even though I got to bed early well before ten. I'd have to pay for the parking, yes, but I could then drive on to the Safeway just beyond the cafe with the crap I'd loaded into the car last night, arriving just after they'd opened at nine.

Turns out the Safeway beyond the morning café is the wrong Safeway, but the right Safeway (out in Rockridge) wasn't all that farther along. I'd have taken this road to get there anyway, so the deed is now done: no waiting in line, the two guys manning the truck very helpful in unloading the car.

It's as overcast this morning as it was all day yesterday, so maybe we'll take a crack at a nap. We did the same thing after what was thought to have been a good night's sleep yesterday morning and it seems to have had a positive effect.

Later. We did take a nap of sorts, we'll call it a nap, before heading out along the lake and then over by the farmers market (plenty of people) to have a waffle square with whipped cream (can't say why, I just wanted one), branching then to Lakeshore to go by the ATM. At this point we needed to make an existential decision: walk up over the hill on Mandana or walk back the long way around on the flat from where we'd come and then on to the morning café for lunch? What the hell, we can do it! Mandana and the hill!

I passing by this fellow's rock garden at the top of Mandana, snapping two or three pictures because you pretty much have to when you pass by such carrying a camera.

Lunch was coffee and ice cream (strawberry), taking a snapshot of the one remaining pandorea flower still holding forth on the trellis facing the sidewalk, and then (since the bus wasn't due for another twenty minutes) walking back to sit for a bit by the lake before returning to the apartment. I took this picture. Seemed appropriate. You can never tell at my age anymore when you're crossing a street if you won't meet-up with a bus.

Back now at the apartment. I think we'll try a little guitar. We did good yesterday, we'll see how the guitar fares this first day of the weekend.

Later still. I did lie down, although I can't call it a nap. Still, seems to do some good. The sun is out now, the temperature just right. I've had a bath and the eyes are squinting from the anti-bacterial shampoo the dermatologist recommended (seems to work, no itchy scalp over the last year) and, well, that's enough of an excuse to not go outside. For now. We'll see. Maybe later.

I was listening to the Bill Moyers program on the radio, the last half of the program anyway, and that last half interrupted when the water was turned on while I was soaking away the grime (we old hippies still relish a long hot bath) and decided to find it on television either later today or when it's scheduled at eight tomorrow evening. Interesting program, interesting take on the psychology of the financial politics of the age, the “right games” we all play.

That's as far as we need to go with any political stuff.

True, true, but I'm going to listen to it all the way through from beginning to end (but not in the tub).

Evening. I watched another Beck at six (named for the protagonist Martin Beck), an episode I haven't seen before, so about an hour and a half of playing along on the guitar after having replaced the guitar strings when one snapped during practice earlier. Still takes me about thirty minutes to replace the strings, although I'm getting better and somewhat faster. I suspect I've only done it now about a dozen times as they only break about once or twice a month. Exciting stuff on a Saturday night you'll have to admit, here on the front lines in Oakland.

All of Beck's characters (interestingly, except for the women who seem reasonably sane and settled) are damaged in repressed, distressed and aggressive ways. I have times when I think they work and times when I want to throw something at the screen: a “why did you do that, all these people are idiots” routine. Still, as noted, I watch the damned thing even when it's an episode I've seen before. Even when I remember the ending.

The story lines do almost always eventually call out the characters on their behavior.

True. There's also a kind of droll off the wall humor incorporated in some of the minor characters where you realize the writers are parodying the main characters’ on their hangups. Haven't seen that in American television, not that I know anything about American versions anymore (I can only take so many iterations of the various variations on CSI and its like that seem to populate my limited access, perhaps it's all changed in the interim).

Have you heard of cable?

Yes.

To bed early. I had an urge to go down the hill for sushi and sake, talked it over from various angles, thought about a sake buzz (it didn't seem enticing), thought about chancing an ocular migraine and how it might affect my day tomorrow. There's a Dia de los Muertos exhibition tomorrow at the Oakland California Museum at noon that I've photographed in the past and so I'm planning on going. Without any ill effects from sake and possibly ocular migraine inducing sushi dishes, as I finally (up, coat on, ready to go) convinced myself to stay here inside and practice.

Good for you!

Another gold star to paste up over the mirror in the bathroom.