Sense has intervened. We've done this before. The list is obvious. The day, as I mentioned, is bright. Let's see what comes to surprise us in three or four paragraphs.

That's pretty jumbled.

Old folks in the city: scattered, incoherent but happy enough for all that. One does not scoff at “happy enough” in what for many are troubling times. Incoherence is just life telling you you're slowing down.

Later. In listening to an interview with the author of one of the current better selling books on the financial meltdown, he mentioned that Wells Fargo had been a better player who'd not contributed all that much to the mess, while Bank of America, my bank, had done its best to add to the problem. I've been with Band of America for thirty years but today I opened an account with Wells Fargo.

Better a smaller locally owned bank, I'm familiar with the current push to deny the too big to fail banks our business, but Wells is at least local, has ATM's within walking distance (an important point) and I can check another item off my old and crippled things to do list. And they don't charge me what BofA charges me for a checking account. (The truth of the matter comes out.) Good idea or not, it's done.

They admitted (at the end of the process, probably best they didn't mention it at the beginning) it normally takes six months to issue a new credit card, in my case three months (maybe) because I seem to have decent credit given my current BofA limit. Three months? Six months? I still get credit card offers in the mail - sign today, card tomorrow - but obviously I must now be getting them from desperate institutions scrambling like mad gamblers betting against the approaching black forces that, if they can add but one more obscenely profitable stream of payments (at twenty-six plus percent) to their list of victims, it may bail them out of this pit they find themselves in. Banking has changed. Six months.

Anyway, a walk downtown, a walk back, the head in a bubble, the sinus-upper palate acting up, but otherwise the world is spinning on its axis and the sun is out, two indications the day is right.

The world spinning on its axis?

One would imagine problems were it not.

Later. Walking this morning I passed a nearby Lakeside Park sign and noticed the wooden soldier. Where did it come from? How long has that been there? A wooden soldier? Since Christmas? Am I just noticing it now? How long before it disappears? I mean we're talking Oakland here. Exciting discovery for a Monday morning was my thought. I'll keep an eye on it and take a picture when it's no longer there, see how long it lasts.

Later still. A nap and now it's three in the afternoon. I've taken my second and last dose of the day pain management medication so maybe things will brighten a bit. There seems to be a cycle to it: a good morning, particularly over breakfast, but early afternoons often become, well, problematic. Unpleasant. The sinus-palate at issue, the head in a “bubble” (think how you feel with a severe head cold, but without the runny noses and the sneezes and such) but then the day will often open as evening arrives.

The pain medication? I take the stuff, it seems to help but, like aspirin or Tylenol, you're never quite sure. I figured at the very least anyone on pain meds was a dope fiend in the making, thought it best to not talk about it when I started, but it doesn't seem to be addicting and it does occasionally work, so the hell with it. Let it all hang out. So maybe that's it, that second pill kicking in, deflating the bubble. That and a Korean soap after six seems to be the trick. Strange, though, this life.