Tuesday. To bed last night just after nine, to sleep by ten, up this morning at six-thirty after shutting off the alarm at five forty-five, so we did indeed get some sleep. Felt fine yesterday after getting what I thought was too little sleep the night before, slept like a log last night and up today just like regular folks to greet a clear blue sky. To breakfast and back in the usual routine, sitting here now well after nine contemplating my navel computer. Other than the necessary guitar practice, nothing is on the plate (or in the navel) for later. Not today anyway, here, perched above the vast sandy Oakland desert. Or is that dessert? Hard to tell after so much sleep.

Later. A walk down the way to the morning café for coffee, a need evidently to sit somewhere outside in or out of the sun, given the number of times I managed to stop and sit on a public bench or chair along the route. Nice to live by the lake as they have many such things scattered about. All those people walking and running and huffing and puffing; some of us just like to sit.

Took a few pictures - none of them particularly good - but I was enjoying the outing. Sometimes you shoot something and it works, sometimes it doesn't. Such is the photographer's experience.

An email to Mr. P outlining my thoughts on upgrading the indexes on artandlife. Might as well get that going, see if he has the time and is up for the project. I mentioned here I'd looked at it from a fresh direction the other day on the laptop - it happens, but not very often, this fresh direction stuff - and realized I had no idea what parades and such it might contain other than the few listed on the front, so a redesign is in order. I haven't looked to see how many photographs I've posted by now, but there's a few over these years, more than a few.

Later still. Well, maybe one or two of the pictures I took earlier are somewhat more interesting to me than I thought. I saw something when I took them, I'm pretty good about not shooting when there's nothing there. I don't shoot a lot of pictures compared to what a professional photographer does in any given year, but I shoot quite a few and processing and managing the ones I do now takes enough time as it is, no need to photograph something I know will (most probably) be a dud. I don't delete many pictures that I take, even though I probably should, so I guess what I'm saying is enough is enough.

That's a bit opaque, don't you think? Are you sure you don't miss more than you think?

Yeah, but that's the process. I'm going through a reshuffling of how I see my images and that's confusing enough.

Anyway, a good walk, a brief attempt at a nap, some time on the guitar and then some more time on the guitar. I've been memorizing the variations in While My Guitar Gently Weeps. It repeats the same sequence of notes, but with minor variations, and it's been hard for me to keep them in mind. Playing is not the problem, playing them accurately from memory has, however, and I've been working at it.

Which means I've been spending time on the song and not on the lesson, although I've been spending quite a bit of time on the lesson. That change in chords, moving from a C barre chord to a D minor barre chord, has been both impossible and instructive. Impossible in that my fingers don't seem to bend as they must and instructive to see them very slowly actually begin to do it, get closer to where they need to be, and to experience the various little “aha!” moments as I see them progress. If that sounds opaque, it is, but the little “aha!” moments seem to make it worthwhile. Hup, hup.

Evening. I'd like to go down the hill and have some sushi and sake, but I'm not at all hungry, so I'll not. Usually I'd say that and then turn around and do it without a bit of embarrassment, but that was then, this is now. Won't comment on the future. Might be hungry in the future.

More guitar, more struggling with that chord change. Seems to be coming along. I've been through a few of these now, struggling with this or that movement from one chord to another, but it seems to come around with practice. It's called learning the guitar I'd guess.