Later. A nap. A nice longer than an hour nap to get up with an improved (less tired, certainly) outlook. A walk over to the lake thinking I might take a bus downtown, one was due in a minute or two, but decided to head on over to the lake and walk the short walk I like to take down to the white pergola and back, sitting for a while on a bench to take in the morning.

Back to the apartment feeling hungry. What was that about a fracking demonstration scheduled downtown at noon? Maybe lunch and a demonstration? Hmm. After another nap?

A bus downtown (after that nap) seeing people forming up in front of the City Hall. Hungry, quite hungry, so a walk to the City Center to try something from Panda Express before I checked them out. I don't normally “try something” from Panda Express, but I was in an odd mood. They served up a dish of fried rice, candied prawns of some kind and beef with mushrooms. A huge pile of food. What was I thinking?

Noon was coming up so I sat at an outside table. A pigeon alighted on the back of the metal chair across from me and gave me the eye. Quite close. He knew what he was doing.

Anyway, feeling guilty, I ate maybe a third of what they'd served and then left for the City Hall and the Global Frackdown demonstration, a pigeon quite happy with the fried rice and such he'd suddenly found down on the pavement below the table, I somewhat guilty about having thrown out most of a meal. You live, you learn and then you learn again.

A fair number of people had arrived by noon. Since BART is on strike I suspect there were many who didn't make it, but still, a fair number and so a quick run around taking a number of pictures. I wasn't thinking I'd get a section for the web, particularly, and had only brought one camera with me, but the photographs were there and now they're up on the web.

I mentioned I hadn't been able to find the 2012 Autumn Lights photographs, but they were indeed up on HereInOakland, but there was not link on the main page to find them, nor were any of the files on my computer. This was the period when I had those two mirrored hard drives fail and lost a number of photographs, these among them. I guess we'll bite the bullet and now send the drive (now a year later) to see if they can be salvaged. Hate to do that, but, well..., we'll just get it done.

Evening. I again assembled tripod, camera and the few needed accessories to photograph the Autumn Lights Festival, put on a jacket and then decided I'd rather finish today's fracking photographs, get in my guitar practice for the day and skip the lights. And save the thirty-five bucks entry fee (that includes a free drink). Well, that's piling it on. There's a festival tomorrow afternoon down the way at Splash Pad Park that I'll photograph. Two events in two days is enough.

Excuses, excuses.

At least there was a decent program on at six, although another woman managed to get herself into an abandoned building looking for a murderer. A cop, but this need to head out alone in the middle of the night to a deserted warehouse/building, no one knows where you're going, is more than dumb the tenth time you've seen it, even if it does add drama to the story.

Ah, well. Spent the rest of the afternoon working on the pictures, we'll finish them up now and see if we can't get to bed before ten.