Home now after ten, the Fruitvale district Dia de los Muertos street fair tomorrow just off the Fruitvale BART station, so we're still seeing opportunities for photographs this “season”. Does the “season” never end? Maybe not, if I think about it right. Click!

Later. Well who knows what drives the nose, whether out the door and downtown on a bus, out the door and over toward the farmers market and the morning (more accurately the morning and the afternoon) café? For whatever reason I took the bus downtown to walk into the City Center for a strawberry and whipped cream crêpe (they were out of ice cream) and then over to the bagel shop for a small cup of coffee out at one of their tables. A walk then by the City Hall to see they'd put up the fences again around the grass, a lone security guy confirming it was in reaction to the Occupy demonstration on Thursday as they'd evidently trampled along some of the edges. Wondered about that.

A walk farther on to the bus stop across from the Madrid Café. I haven't been in there for a while (like in a year or two) and see they've evidently gone out of business, as their space is up for lease. They say things are going better in Oakland, this area of Oakland anyway, but evidently not for the Madrid. Similarly with the building hosting the old Oaksterdam University now posted as up for sale after an uninvited visit by the feds.

So what to do? A bus home wondering if this was it or if I'd walk down the way later for another outing. Maybe another try at a nap. Maybe even pick up the guitar. A really nice t-shirt weather day out there, I'd have to say so, maybe yes and maybe not, for the walk.

Later still. A brief nap - not really a nap, but a lie down and space out for a while recharge the batteries sort of attempt - listening to the last half of this weekend's Moyers & Company conversation on NPR. I suspect programs like these put many people to sleep, me it makes a little crazy, pumps the energy up.

They were talking about the too big to fail banks, how they're so much bigger than they were the last time they put us into the ditch, how probably the only way we're ever going to get our hands around them again is when they run us over the next ever so much deeper cliff.

The one existential problem I'm seeing from my standpoint is I could easily still be around when it happens, we're not talking very many years here (the concensus seemed to be they were doing their very best to bring it on) and I should be secreting gold in flower pots out on the balcony, storing large bags of rice at the bottom of the closets and such. Just in case. Maybe I'll have a couple of drinks later, clear this stuff out of my head. Where's the fuzziness when it's needed?

You are stopping now, right?

Indeed. I wonder, though, if there's a place around here where you can buy flower pots?

Evening. Well, of course the baseball game, we are watching the game and futzing with the guitar. We're starting on a finger picking technique for the first time, using the fingers instead of a pick, plucking two strings at a time. A very different way to play a guitar. It will take some time to get my head around it, figure out if it's something I can pick up fairly quickly or we're talking years. What am I saying? Years. But interesting years.

I have been thinking about these sinuses of mine. They're there, they make sure I know they're there, and evidently the problems I'm having come from that jaw operation where he got up into my nasal passages and to some degree screwed things up. How much of this carping about old age maladies has really been due to the sinues? How much to allergies?

I've seen differences lately, seen how stuffed up the sinuses are when I get up, how they clear out once it's possible to blow my nose a couple of times. Drives you crazy this self diagnosis after a while (well, moderately crazy, we're not totally submerged in the subject), gives you a glimpse of what it must be like to be a doctor diagnosing so many causes known and unknown for all the various aches, pains, strange eruptions and similar problems. At least the cause and solution to a broken arm is relatively obvious. Arm:, broken. Set, cast.

Where did that come from?

The nose, mostly, on up there in the sinuses.