Monday. Lights out not long after nine to awaken but once in the night and then get up at six-thirty, so another good night's sleep. From the feel of it at least. Out the door to walk to breakfast, a low lying fog blocking the sun. A plain waffle with sliced bananas and strawberries for breakfast (along with the mixed fruit cup and coffee), the usual fare. For some reason the thought of eating an omelet or something with fried meat no longer appeals, hasn't now in years. No particular moral judgments here, just, it no long makes sense. A change, believe me, compared to earlier years.

A walk home with the camera in hand, but no pictures. The pandorea vine is without flowers. There another vine in one of the planters that is still flowering, maybe take at least one picture and then check to see what they are. That's how I identified the pandoreas, a posting of one of the pictures to Facebook and an almost immediate response. There are indeed people who track such things, who know what they're talking about.

Still the low lying fog at nine-thirty, still quite a few pictures to process to put together that one section of Oakland Price Street Festival photographs, so I suspect we know how this day will go. And Latham Square. After yesterday's walk by the construction area I realize I'm falling behind.

Later. A morning and early afternoon putting the Oakland Pride pictures together and posting them. They're better than I originally thought, but there aren't enough of them to really describe more than a thin slice of the festival, not that it's high on my list. I wouldn't mind pushing, but I suspect I don't have the energy or the desire to do what would be required. We'll just stick with the candid portraits.

Still overcast at one-thirty. I should at least take pictures at the apartment house construction site and pick up one or two things at the 7-11 look-alike, if not heading downtown to Latham Square. We'll see. I need to photograph the Square, but then there are many things I need to do in this life, construction sites but one of them.

Later still. A walk to the 7-11 look-alike for the Diet Coke and an ice cream bar to discover they still didn't have the two liter bottles in stock and so settled for the one liter bottles instead. If I ever get the car together I'll buy a bunch of them at the supermarket, the Diet Coke anyway, and skip this higher priced convenience store stuff.

I wasn't sure I'd take pictures at the construction site, but detoured up behind the project and took pictures. What the hell. Didn't take more than five minutes and they have indeed made progress. Back to the apartment, the sun coming out at two in the afternoon as I was returning and so now sitting here with the fan on for the first time.

And, of course, I've been following the fire north of Napa in the Lake district. I've driven highway 29 many times, been through Middletown, the town that's lost most of its houses and buildings, but haven't driven this route north of Napa now for more than a decade. Still, it makes the place seem distant, something happening in another state/country/continent, but it isn't and I shouldn't. They say this is the worst drought California has experienced in five hundred years.

I do remember driving by the entrance to Harbin Hot Springs along Highway 29. I've never been inside, but recall the entrance, the area shadowed by the overhanging branches of the surrounding forest, the hot springs themselves relatively famous as a kind of New Age, clothes optional, rekindle the spirit destination. Whatever the the place itself, the tree shrouded entranceway, so memorable in passing, is evidently now skeleton trees, ashes and dust.

Evening. Nothing on television. Again, don't cotton to Father Brown or Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, my problem, not theirs. And so to bed and the tablet. I have three or four things I've been watching, new seasons added to prior seasons I've enjoyed in the past, and when I burn out on one (usually in about ten minutes) I turn and continue with another. And so the evenings go, here in Oakland.