I got an email from Mr. H suggesting anyone who wanted could filter out all my SPAM-like journal entries by blocking some few words and phrases: “Breakfast at the usual place”, BART, coughs, nap, pills, “feed the cat”, “Out of photographs” and “I'm in a rut”. And, of course, he's right. He also suggested a short term remedy that involved a plane flight, rental car and time on the road to explore (with but a single camera and lens). A fair suggestion. So, time to do a reset, time to get on with it and time, of course, to talk about breakfast:

Waffle, coffee, mixed fruit and orange juice this morning over the papers. I suggested to him this part of my day does not need changing as it starts it well and I much enjoy the hour or so it takes. And I often leave the café feeling fairly feisty. Feisty is good, given how things then seem to deteriorate. Coughs! Aching sinus-heads! Blood pressure! You'd think I was falling apart here in the apartment before eight in the morning in Oakland.

How's that any different than anything else you've said these last two years? You could filter this entry using any of Mr. H's words.

Hard to say. Life is a comedy-tragedy acted and easily followed in the bathroom mirror.

Who said that?

Somebody must have said it. I, for one, said it just now.

Later. A walk most of the way downtown starting out reasonably well before - I'm guessing here, but it jibes with experience - the blood pressure either fell or refused to keep up with the walking, so I sat and had a cup of coffee at a coffee shop while waiting on a bus to return home. The discussion with the nurse this morning before I set out resulted in an agreement to continue this half dose business for another week, my stressing to her this has not been playing out all that well now for a number of years and I need to get it fixed if fixed it can be. Deedle-dee-dee. The meter reading when I returned from my walk was in the nineties over the sixties and that's not good. Good from a health standpoint, maybe, but not good if you want to get up and function. IMHO.

My thought, sitting at that coffee shop after the twenty minute walk, was if I wasn't willing to, say, get on a never before taken bus to see where it might lead (I've got a camera with which to chart the adventure) is why Mr. H's perfectly reasonable suggestion I get on a plane to the east and rent a car doesn't register. If I have difficulty imagining myself “stranded” out in one of the local (upscale) neighborhoods, how can I imagine being stranded in, say, New England? This is a conundrum. One that needs fixing.

This is going to lead somewhere I hope?

I promised to stay the course for another week. That was the deal.