It does get a bit old; this up at, to bed at, you know.

Solitary old guy talk, pay no attention.

Anyway, up and out and back from breakfast, noting the gas prices I saw yesterday have held since yesterday afternoon. They were saying an increase within a week after that fire at the Chevron plant of thirty-five cents a gallon, only another twenty-one cents to go. Exploding gas distillation plants and prices, wars being waged on other continents, pretty exciting times, these, I'd say. I could do with a little less of them myself. Seems a mite complicated with all this going on at the same time, each interacting with the others in unsuspected ways. No wonder people duck out and lose themselves in playing video games and such. Keeping journals. Taking pictures.

Time to stop, I'd think, before your ears fall off and all the stuffing falls out.

An appointment with the neurologist in Mountain View at ten-thirty, a good hour's drive followed by a guitar lesson at twelve-thirty here. Should be no problem getting between the two, except my neurologist is notorious for running late. If I miss another guitar lesson? Well, the world will not end quite yet.

Later. My doctor really does run late in his appointments and I was indeed expecting to run into trouble making the guitar lesson at half past twelve, but he was running but fifteen minutes late this morning (something of a record) and I arrived fifteen minutes before the lesson was to start. An easy enough drive both ways, some delay below San Jose that ate up fourteen minutes of my fifteen minute cushion, no great strain involved, but I did mentally fight the whole idea earlier before I set out. Seems odd. Hope it's not too odd and doesn't predict ever more phobia-like episodes in the future.

Whipped through the first blues section of the lesson with no problem, but stumbled on the chords, more because I don't know their names than I don't know how to play them. Well, names. We can learn names more easily than we can learn to play them reliably (up to speed on the beat). I've said this before, but this week we fix it.

A run by the supermarket after the lesson to replenish pretty much everything in the larder. I've been remiss. Out of cottage cheese, out of crackers, out of sake, out of the little cup of noodles things I often substitute for food for dinner. Ah, well. Another guitar lesson in a week, another trip by the supermarket, all is back on plan.

It's after two, no walk yet, we'll see if we can't do something about that, well, later.

Later still. Screw the walks, we are in take the day easy mode. The two bottles of sake have been opened and consumed, the guitar has been played and will continue to be played, we'll watch what we can stomach on television tonight and then get to bed early. Hup! We will.

Later now. My sister posted this on Facebook earlier this evening. I didn't know we had a picture of my parents when they vacationed on St. Johns in the Virgin Islands in the winter of 1968-1969 and spent a week living next to these folks. The photograph was taken by Frank Langella who was starring in Dracula on Broadway that year. Our family's one brush with the world of film. What's interesting is my dad didn't know that Mel Brooks had started as a writer for the Sid Caesar Hour television show, a great favorite of his (ours) and had no idea who his wife Ann Bancroft might be as they had yet to see The Graduate.

They'd invited my parents to visit them at their home in New York City (my parents lived twenty miles north in Yonkers) afterward, but my parents felt they'd be imposing if they were to take them up on it, but still, they were a very nice couple (trio with Mr. Langella). Interesting times. I was in Korea in the army then and my world, not to mention the wider world, was in more than a little turmoil.