Friday. Another eight hours of sleep last night, up at six-thirty, to breakfast and back before nine. A decent night's sleep (I thought) night before last followed by two naps totaling just over four hours yesterday and now another eight hours of sleep last night. I don't think I'll feel like napping later but I no longer have a clue about that.

Pretty much overcast this morning, I'm looking forward to some lower temperatures today and through the weekend (reading the weather reports on the web). This is good. There's something going on Sunday in San Francisco I intend to attend, but nothing so far for today and tomorrow. Let's see what I can find. The street festival season isn't quite over yet (I say this with nothing to back it up), so something's going on out there, and with this much sleep I'm ready to go forth! Hup! Hup! Diddly-dup.

That approaches nausea.

“Approaches”, one hopes, is the operative verb.

Later. So ambition struck. I packed the long 70-200mm lens and camera in the backpack with the idea of heading over to San Francisco to photograph the local (San Francisco) Wall Street demonstration which originated and is still running on Wall Street in New York. Got to the bus stop. The bus was late. I stood there thinking the weather was perfect, the sun perfect, a cool breeze that was perfect, a long sleeved shirt and t-shirt the perfect combination for whatever this temperature was.

Then I got to thinking I was hungry and I didn't want to go to San Francisco to photograph whatever number of people who may be demonstrating in front of the Bank of America although I sympathized with their complaints. Of course I could do that tomorrow, they're demonstrating every day for the next number of days. I could do that.

So I went back to the apartment, got rid of the two cameras I normally carry to these events, one in the backpack, one over the shoulder or in hand, picked up the D2Xs (with a 1.5 magnification factor) still mounted with the 180mm lens I used yesterday and set out again. The bus was passing just as I turned the corner at the bottom of my street some hundred feet in the distance. Didn't even blink.

Well, OK, I wasn't thinking of going downtown, knew that, no sweat. A walk then along the lake taking a picture or two, again testing this longer lens to see how it changed my way of looking at the world. The framing here was the attraction, not sure that anything is in focus. This guy was standing close by looking me over. Another proof of why it's hard to resolve their heads and eyes at any distance.

So a walk farther on to the white columns and then beyond to the morning café for an apple turnover and coffee. I'd had a light breakfast and I was indeed hungry. A walk then back taking this one for no reason whatsoever. Hand held at f 5.6 so there was some movement at ISO 100. A reason to go with the newer high ISO cameras or drop the f stop down to 2.8 and kick the shutter speed up.

Walking back I passed by the sushi place and it called out my name. “Come inside” it said. And I did. Not sure why, but I'm sitting up here now in the apartment feeling a bit fuzzy, clear headed but fuzzy, and thinking maybe a short lie down for a while, some guitar and then something else. I've been experiencing an increasing number of urges lately to continue with one or another project, maybe start something new. Refine one or the other. This is a positive sign, right, all this need for sleep aside?

We'll see. Life continues, the attitude is better, the unending bitching about this and about that approaching something it's calling a light at the end of the tunnel. An oncoming train? Could be, life can be mischievous at times, and this getting older business does have its chuckles, head-ons with trains and such.

Later still. My little lunch at the sushi place doesn't seem to have thrown me for a loop. A little fuzzy as one often is for an hour or so after a flask of sake, but that was about it. Some time on the guitar, a lie down for a while to listen to the radio - no urge to doze off - back now for more guitar (we will get those chords corralled and docile yet) and watch a Korean soap (which shall remain nameless and I didn't really say I was watching a Korean soap, just a slip of the tongue).

The day, the breeze, the temperature has been nice. We're entering October, the month in which I assume the weather will change and the heat will cease. October. At the end of October I'll be entering my fourteenth year of keeping an online journal. Technically I posted my first entry in January, 1998, but the journal, when I found out there were such things as online journals (now called blogs) and joined something called a journal ring, started on October 28th. It's probably trying to tell me something, this keeping of a journal, but if it is I have yet to figure it out.