I'm actually sitting here wearing a sweater after coming home from breakfast, an hour and a quarter to read the papers, drink coffee and consume an avocado and cheese omelet. More than I normally consume, but I've been hungry lately and, as I mentioned, the weight seems to be coming off faster than desired. Although it's cool and overcast, I suspect I've overdone with the sweater. Cool out is not that cool out. A haircut scheduled later this morning at ten, an opportunity to get the day's walking in, then on to burning more DVD's and cleaning up the images I have stacked on each and every hard drive attached to this computer. All six of them.

The rest of California is burning at the moment. Nasty fires springing up north and south. They've been following the L.A. fire now for days, over a hundred thousand acres burned, the Mt. Wilson observatory and wireless towers under threat, fifty homes consumed and this morning they reported a few hundred acre fire east of Sacraments that burned fifty houses right out of the gate, who knows how many to follow?

Did I mention it's foggy and overcast here in the bay area? Reality. So hard to know, so hard to recognize, so hard to understand or follow. I don't do cable and I keep saying maybe I shouldn't do television altogether and then I wake up and get my head screwed back on (but not too tightly, now, here in Oakland!). There is a picture of a home burning far away on television and there is the experience of having your home burn with you and your's inside and there's something of a gap between the experiences. Not something you necessarily think about very much, but boy-howdy, I'd think about it more if I lived in a wooded area, say, east of Sacramento. Or in the Oakland hills.

Later. We are back from the downtown, a haircut and a monthly bus pass now in hand, a sweaty t-shirt (the walk for the day is done), a bright sun and, well, what else might you need on a late Tuesday morning verging on noon? Well yes, but you can always use that even when you can't, Q.E.D..

Later still. An hour or so nap, no coughing, just drifting right off. Good. Awake at two, hungry, a drive down to my café for a mushroom cheese steak sandwich with coffee and potato salad. Better, back now listening as The News Hour plays on television in the background. There are a couple of programs coming up on TV early this evening, one of them a Korean soap, I think I'll watch and then turn in early. See if I can catch up on the sleep I lost last night, see if this cough is going to behave.