Let's start this again. Breakfast early, arriving at the usual place before seven: three pancakes and a large cup of coffee over The Chronicle. I miss The New York Times on Saturdays but not Sundays. There are probably reasons for this I'd rather not know - too much material to absorb for a less than six cylinder on Sunday after Saturday night mind - so we'll leave it at that: it would be nice to have The Times on Saturdays as well as the five day work week. Critical information to include in your journal.

No reason to read the debate coverage. I watched the debate, no need to have it filtered through the porous heads of the main stream media. There is only so much you can take, so much masochism you want on your plate. The various analyses of the financial crisis are more interesting, the consensus being we're fucked no matter what, although there's some chance if they structure this bail out package properly it might be less severe. “Might be” being the operative words. The pain is coming, the only question is how much and for how long it's going to hurt. A year? Two years? A fitting end to the Bush administration, I would think, something to allow them to look over our shoulders for decades to come. Diddle-dee-dumb.

As I stumble forward I've been thinking of doing some things photographers, if not people in general, do to re-engage with their world, starting a self portrait series, for example, a self portrait taken at the same time every day for as long as it goes, something every photographer eventually does to study the results and learn more about themselves and how they perceive their work.

Nothing too earth shaking, but I'm at a place in my life when I'm changing direction and I've been sitting here for over a year now hunkered down not changing direction - thinking about it more than a bit in the background, I have to admit - but not really doing anything, not taking any of the necessary first steps into the, um, void. Might as well get going, now that summer is over and winter is on the way. Everyone else I know is ahead of me on this particular curve. So self portraits. Seems innocuous enough. Seems like something I could do.

Right. Just like yesterday. And the day before.

Later. A bus ride downtown to the 24-7 newspaper store to buy a copy of The New York Times ($1.50 plus tax), a short walk over to the City Center to have a bagel, a diet Coke and to read the paper out at one of their tables, a walk most of the way back before hopping on a bus to the apartment. My, my. I hadn't thought of doing that when I was writing it would be nice to have a copy of The Times earlier this morning. Maybe I can talk myself into digging out the white fabric portrait background and put it up. Set up a camera on a tripod in front of it. Attach a flash. Maybe not attach a flash. Take that first portrait tomorrow morning, say; the first of how many would you guess? Through the end of the year?