Up and out the door and back from breakfast easily enough. There's a Giants homecoming parade kicking off in San Francisco at eleven, some one million spectators along the route are projected, so I think I'll stay inside and take another nap. One needs one's naps on an overcast and slightly rainy morning after a good long night's sleep. I know, weird, but those seem to be the rules - naps no matter the circumstance - so we'll take a nap and maybe a long hot bath and just lay back and say life is good. Why not? Sounds good. A little weird on how we got here maybe, but good.

Later. It is overcast, we can blame some of this up and down business on that, but a bus downtown thinking better downtown than over to the morning café as it was too early for lunch. Not in a bad mood, not in a good mood, just in a flat mood and, in that flat mood, thinking I had no projects underway (at the moment), no immediate plans and I was taking too many rides on the same buses to the same locations. There's a litany here with which everyone is familiar. It leads, if we pay attention, to a change in pace: a vacation, a bottle or two of a favorite beverage, dinner before a movie with a plot and an ending (something other than an Italian police procedural, you understand). Either that or you wander on down the hall that leads to some darker stairs.

Where's this going? Flat is not the same thing as brain dead.

Well, another bus, after poking around in the downtown, to the morning restaurant figuring we'd find a way to rationalize the trip when we arrived. I'd walked by most of the eating places I'm familiar with downtown and couldn't talk myself into entering one for something, anything, to eat so, after a meandering, but good walk that ended halfway back to the apartment, I hopped a bus to the morning café for a turkey and Swiss cheese sandwich, ice cream and coffee out comfortably alone on the patio, the sinuses seemingly getting better and the head coming around.

I thought of a movie, checked out the schedule as I was passing the Grand Lake theater, nothing starting before four. Fine, wasn't really in the mood for a movie, but interested enough to check. Odd to see the attitude pick up as it often does into the afternoon. I'll see if I can't use it to come up with a project or two (photographs of some slightly different subject), think about doing something unusual to keep on an even keel. These are normal ups and downs I suspect, a little too many at the moment for comfort, but no need to look for mood elevators or a train ticket west. Yet.

Later still. So much for upbeat. Up, down, up, down. An hour to lie down and let the world whirl into the late afternoon before getting up with a very dry mouth and some semblance of rationality. OK, a bit of the ocular migraine business there, haven't had any of that in a while, maybe a touch for whatever unknown reason(s). We'll focus on the guitar, watch some lightweight television - the lighter, the better - and see where we flow go from here.

Evening. Back up and running again (the brain, the body) getting in some decent time on the guitar going through the new finger picking exercises. It comes, it goes, it wears you clothes, but doesn't tell you what it's after. Have no idea what any of it means, other than there are times during the day when the head feels like crap and I need a nap, sometimes leading to getting some sleep, and there are times, often at the same times in the day, when it comes back.

They've been running chapters of the same Italian police procedural each day starting Monday of this week. As I mentioned, marginally watchable. I have no excuse. There are movies that can be watched. There are cable series of much better quality available yet I put up with these. It seems to have taken a few years, but maybe I'm figuring it out. I could find something other than entertainment that you watch on a screen. I could. It's been a habit in the past.

You're drifting.

At lease I'm moving, even if it's without a rudder.

A fair amount of time on that picking exercise, the fingertips of my picking hand starting to sting, some discoloration at the tip of the index finger. I should have gotten this far along over the weekend. Still, seems to be going well, the head is better, we'll get to bed before ten. Nothing on television, no interest in alcohol, the mood relatively good.

You didn't sound all that good earlier.

The, um, zonking out for an hour with some of the ocular migraine symptoms is always a little strange, although I guess you get used to them, but otherwise the day goes along half well. We're in a bit of a rut, but at the beginning of a rut, just need to make some minor adjustments. It's the holidays, there will be trips up the coast and more running around with a camera. It just occasionally goes a little more slowly, maybe too often, but it doesn't last.