Thursday. I did have the sushi last night, finishing up with a sliver of their green tea cheese cake - one of life's little pleasures - and a flask of their hot sake. Just enough to get a buzz without doing damage to other than any ambition I might have had to resolve the world's ills for the rest of the evening. Oh, the world's ills and a decision not to get up on a chair and move the Internet wireless unit to a better location. Best to get up on chairs when the head is more solid.

They're saying rain today and it was indeed raining when I awoke this morning about thirty minutes later than usual, having gotten to bed at a good hour last night. Breakfast at the usual place, back now to take up the day's excitement where I left off last night. More straightening up, more cataloguing of negatives. I was able to eliminate one of the cardboard storage boxes yesterday through better packing and tossing out crap. Could have thrown out more but didn't feel the need to be more thorough. We're not a pack rat (he said), just the usual “it still works, I could conceivably (in another world) use it”, but we're on a three day tear here and we're not going to worry ourselves over it. Honest and true, doodle-dee-do.

It's not raining now, as it was earlier, but overcast and dark. They're saying a good weekend, high sixties and low seventies, so there's hope. Nothing I'm aware of happening over the weekend, but that just means I need to be creative. No excuses. There's an annual Dickens Christmas Fair playing at the Cow Palace I've been threatening to photograph, all those costumes and such, maybe the time has come to do something about it. For now we'll see what can be done around here at the apartment. (hup, hup)

Later. I set out later this morning without a particular destination in mind, ended up walking the two miles downtown and back, stopping at the music store on Broadway to pick up a package of music notation paper. I'm going to convert the guitar tablature I've been practicing from to hand written notes. I started in grade school on piano and later in grade school and junior high school on clarinet reading music (the norm for those instruments) and I'm determined to be able to read printed music for guitar as well. This thing they call tablature works well, in many ways has advantages when you're learning, but for now I can't see any reason not to learn both. So there. Now let's see if I do it.

I took a camera, I don't ever think of leaving the apartment without one, but didn't find much of interest. I passed the local tattoo parlor (The Old Crow Tattoo Art Gallery) and stepped inside to check out what they'd done with their large gallery sized entrance room. I've looked in through their windows many times, but I've never really gone in and looked around.

The reception area is a gallery with various sized pieces on the walls, put together by someone with a good eye. I walked through an archway to the back, where there were a number of additional works up on the walls, but also their tattooing area where a young woman who'd been looking at the entrance painting was now standing in her bra (and upper body and arm tattoos) getting ready, I assumed, to add more and I figured it wasn't open to the public. Not a camera toting public. Still, many steps up from what you'd imagine a tattoo parlor is like. What I'd imagined, or once imagined anyway.

Otherwise I seem to have some sort of fascination with this thing, another picture, they're free, and then a photograph of a mural that's been put up recently on an empty store front on Broadway. It's competently done, but nothing to write home about, and half messing with it didn't produce a particularly notable picture. Walking back I noticed a change in my tree stump and took another picture. I should put together a series of prints by date, I should, just to see what they might look like.

Back now, guitar ahead. The five mile or so walk has tuckered me out. Probably best to play the guitar before I set out, before and after for all that, but we'll get our practice in today and maybe write out some of those notes.