Wednesday. Lights out by ten. I listened to the last half of the ninth inning of the Giants game on the radio, the game tied, but the Giants scoring a run on a pop up fly to win. Awoke at ten to six and so again took my time getting ready to head to breakfast on an overcast and cool morning, the East Bay Times having arrived when I set out at six thirty-five. So far, so good.

The plain waffle with sliced bananas and strawberries, fruit cup and coffee for breakfast. Weighed in on the scale at a pound over the target this morning and so we had a “lighter” breakfast. Walked home, again with the small V 1 camera under the light weight jacket. I don't mind walking, don't mind taking buses, gets me out and about, but you don't think of “crime” out there and how it might alter your life until you get a hands on introduction. You get older, but you don't stop having new “experiences” and learning new things.

You've lived a sheltered life and have no complaints: straighten up!

True. Maybe it's best I wasn't able to dodge a touch of reality here and there along the way and should be thankful it was just a touch and not a hammer.

The monthly Protime blood thinner test is due today, we'll pack a camera in the backpack and set out after noon.

Later. Well, hell. Decided to head out the door without a camera altogether, catching the bus to Broadway and then walking along Broadway to the lab as I've done in the past. A good walk, but it would have been nicer to document the progress of the construction sites at the corner of 27th Street and across from the lab on Webster, but such is life. The “automatic car” (I think that's what the sign said on the side of the car) would have made an interesting picture too, with its exotic cameras and such rack mounted on top, but, again, such is life.

Hardly something to complain about.

It was interesting to see my reaction walking along without the camera: nothing in the right hand, no odd shaped lump under the coat being balanced with the left hand in the jacket pocket. So true: life won't end without a snapshot of an “automatic car”. I suspect.

The sinuses and upper palate had been acting up throughout the day and so another dose of the pain meds when I got home. A good walk, the day remaining overcast and cool, but now we'll hunker down, listen to the news and chill out to descriptions of earthquake victims and people drowning in a storm. For starters. And hope the meds kick in as good meds should.

Later still. That second dose of the pain meds hasn't seemed to have had any effect, although I can never be sure it didn't knock some of the edge off the discomfort, and so I keep trying. Nine times out of ten just in the mornings with the rest of the prescribed medications and the pain meds taken in the morning do seem to have an effect. You can go around in circles forever with this. I've discovered. And rediscovered again. And again.

Evening. Some time spent watching a series on the tablet, some time reading more of the LeCarré book and maybe half an hour watching the next of The Vietnam War episodes on PBS before bailing for bed. Very real, those times, but also part of a distant past. Another world, another person, another reality best remembered, but also in many ways, one we'd like to forget.