Monday. Somehow I managed to stay up and watch that historical soap again last night (it really isn't all that good, but there I was and there it was and I was watching). Bumped into it, really, as half of it was over when I finished up a Scandinavian police procedural on another channel and remembered it was running.

Not sure what I was thinking, but I seem to have just done it without particular remorse, just did it and was done with it. To sleep right away, though, and up with the alarm. Feel pretty good, not tired, the sun breaking through the clouds as I was finishing breakfast, but we'll see what the attitude is later and whether there's a nap or two involved.

Later. Well, maybe twenty minutes on the guitar before heading out to catch a bus downtown, the impetus (rationale) for which was to buy an October bus pass and then maybe walk over to the lake to take more pictures for the lake project. The ongoing (the forever ongoing?) lake project.

Waiting on the bus I noticed a meter man ticketing cars along Euclid. The street was parked solid under signs that said (not too obvious signs, but readable if you happen to look) no parking on the second and fourth Mondays of the month for street sweeping. So I took a picture. That double parked white truck is the meter man's vehicle and he's going right up the line. Most of them were gone, maybe three or four cars parked in total when I returned, so quite a few people got a ticket. What the hell, I guess, it's the environment, not useful to get too upset. Maybe watch those signs more closely, though, given the parking situation in this town.

I did get an October bus sticker followed by a walk over to the Rotunda building for coffee and a raspberry shortcake cookie. Not sure I wanted the cookie in that I wasn't hungry, but get a cookie I did. Not an overly large breakfast this morning, a plain waffle with sliced fruit on top, so there was room for the cookie, but eaten out of habit rather than anything else. It happens. Just noting it here in this new lower weight world of mine.

Gettin’ a little old now, though, is it not? Eat this, eat that?

Maybe so. Still novel though, even after a couple of years, this thinner me.

A walk up Broadway and a bus back on Grand, a brief thought in passing of walking over to the lake, but decided it was farther than I wanted to walk from the downtown and went for the cookie instead. So it's before noon, the sun is out and it's getting warm, taking off the long sleeve shirt when I got inside the apartment, sitting here now in a t-shirt under the fan at the computer. An afternoon ahead, the day still open, who knows where the mind might go? I do and I don't, here in Oakland.

Later still. Some time on the guitar. Not a lot of time, but it adds up.

Out the door to walk down to the morning restaurant for an iced tea and something else, whatever else seemed to appeal. I passed by these bike racks, normally metal painted black like their sisters across the walk, but today wrapped in a knitted comforter. A bike rack wrapped in knitted wool? There's a kind of sub-graffiti, sub-perishable street art movement going on where lamp posts and other common street fixtures find themselves wrapped in knitted garments. It seems to have visited Lake Merritt, probably sometime last night. Interesting times, these.

So, on to the morning café passing by the book store. Not hard to tell they're an Oakland book store or, maybe, a book store anywhere these days anymore, so few of them still left. Liked something about it enough to take a photograph. Then, ambling (and I really mean ambling, not a lick of speed about it) back I wanted to check again to see how the knitted wool had been affixed and saw this fellow facing the sun. With the cormorants. Not sure I quite nailed it, but I didn't have much time and took what shots I could. Nice though, a short outing along a well worn path with a little different (just a little different) photograph coming out of it.

Back now in the late afternoon. I'd passed by the postman down the street, so I'll go downstairs and see what may have arrived. The excitement for the day? Well, no, the photographs were more than enough for that.

Evening. It's been a good day for what little sleep I had last night. Not tired, not fuzzy headed (not as fuzzy headed). I'm realizing, looking back, there was a period there of a number of months where I felt I really was inside a box of some kind, the fuzzy headed in addition to everything else making life different and more difficult. That seems to have passed, eased off, gone into hibernation for the coming winter. Then again, how many times have I thought and said exactly this in the past? Cross our fingers, don't tempt the fates.