Thursday. Yesterday's entry required quite a bit of editing this morning before posting, still needs more, but interesting to see how crappy a first draft. We'll blame it on sloth, not the condition of the brain. The brain can take only so much negative press.

Up with the alarm, to breakfast and back, the sky clear, a nice day ahead. We'll post a little note for UPS saying leave the package with one of the two named neighbors here in the building and not change our schedule to accommodate something like a delivery service unless we indeed do, of course.

I'm seeing how, now that I'm retired, my range of interests is diverging from the folks I used to work with, they exchanging tales of who'd gone to work for whom, which companies are accumulating large numbers of our old company's employees, where one and another of the more notorious brain damaged and destructive managers have now taken up residence and are now aiding and abetting the death spiral of another unsuspecting group. The usual stuff, but not stuff I think about anymore, know about or talk about. So I sit and smile and do my best to not repeat myself in what conversations I still have. Do I tend to retell the same stories to the same people? I'm afraid I do, more often, I suspect, than I know.

Another “deteriorating brain” lament?

Brain, memory, ambition, words, meaning, photographs: they all go to hell at some point I guess, might as well follow their progress, get some fun out of it. I figure we can follow it more closely in these retirement days now that we have such things as spell checkers and moments of morning clarity to write it down.

You've probably gone along more than enough with this.

Indeed. So what's ahead? The day is nice, as mentioned, I have a need to pick up one or two things later in downtown Oakland, so maybe our plan is in place. A bus ride with a camera. A walk back with a camera. If we're really ambitious, some strawberry shortcake at Bakesale Betty's. Excitement as the weekend approaches. Maybe sushi tonight if the ocular migraines behave, if I behave. Or if I don't.

Later. No way to tell, anymore. A walk to a bus stop, feeling fine, the double vision in evidence, but a lightweight double vision that, with a little effort, can be made to focus. A bus downtown, a walk by the pharmacy to pick up a prescription refill, a walk then though the area beside City Hall to see what the Ride to Work Day people might be up to after ten this morning. Messing with bikes, from the look of them. Good things, bikes, wish I was willing to take one out into traffic, lived on one when I was a kid. But that was then. Walking and bussing will have to be the substitute.

A walk home, again feeling fine, the double vision seems to be history, the day bright, the temperature rising. A long sleeved shirt and a light jacket were fine for the morning, we'd achieved t-shirt weather as we approached noon, the warm afternoon still ahead.

I passed this guy walking back. He was playing scales as I passed him on the sidewalk. No, I didn't say hello. I'll keep my practicing to the apartment, amp turned down low, no need to carry a "troubadour guitarist" sign in the crowd. A camera is as much as I want to handle.

Later still. The mouth has been really dry and funky and, as I was sitting here I remembered when it started, I remembered I'd suffered from an unusually funky dry mouth when I'd started on the allergy inhalers some time back. Two days ago I started on them again on the advice of the the pulmonary doctor Monday. Oh. That was the prescription I picked up this morning, more of the same when the inhaler I'd been using ran out. Oh. Maybe best I hadn't. We'll stop taking them right now and see if it makes a difference. I'd be willing to bet yes. Here in Oakland.

At least it means maybe you won't have to take a dry mouth with you to your grave.

A limp attempt at humor, but that would in fact cheer me up. No more inhalers will lead to no more dry mouth? Not even close to being a question, the answer is so obvious.