High pressure moved east today, but inland heat meant clouds got lit in interesting ways around sundown. Traffic seemed busy far away or slow-to-stuck several times. I drew a quieter shift than expected, my calls and emails notwithstanding, and a key worked until a replacement lands later this week.

A barefoot in T-shirt and jeans day, padding back and forth between desk chair and couch and perhaps the sun splashed balcony with just enough breeze to keep the bugs and the heat moving right along. Cans of cold beverages, a plate of fine meats, song demos to tinker with and maybe a movie later on.

There’s water in Walnut Creek in mid-July, low but steady, and a parking cop to shoo me away from a perfectly good space I saw someone take ten minutes later. But he was on the clock: Me, it was my day off and I was on my way to a massage and a shoeshine before going home with groceries in my trunk.

Tomorrow I’ll have lived nineteen thousand days on this planet. Someone I follow on Mastodon made it to twenty thousand, a double myriad, so I looked it up and there was the round number, right around the corner, another wonder and mercy, as much as tonight’s window view of the setting evening star.

I hadn’t set foot inside a church in a minute but an 8 a.m. service was already underway at Saint Gregory of Nyssa on De Haro Street when I walked over from the newsroom, underdressed in a jean jacket, and passed an orange tent outside to go up the steps and listen to a murmur of prayer from inside.

Lots of long shots, people watching and walking around today, with even more stops and double-backs than Sunday’s demands. Less traffic in the city, but plenty once I got back to the East Bay so I got reacquainted with San Pablo Avenue through Emeryville and Berkeley before passing this on a day-of.

I shouldn’t have skipped lunch, but I was busy, too busy taking care to take care of what needed to be taken care of. No, not that kind of take care, the other kind. I should’ve also gotten up and stretched more, but here we are, sore and finally fed, grouchy but productive, caught up but regretful.

When it’s a long day, and things you get to write about are hard and frustrating, the calls and emails and quotes you get back have to make up for the unreturned ones, and you have to feel some gratitude for the help that came, the folks who accompanied you, and that distant skyline on the way home.

Playing well requires practice, or willingness to meet people where they are. If you show up, you lean in when you can, sit out when you can’t, and figure what everyone can play (Beatles) or get close on (Elton John, Stones, Hall & Oates) or admire distant peaks (Billy Joel, Steely Dan) as seen.