Generally, if I find myself commencing a blog entry late in the evening…something is off. Or something is up. Something is something, for sure.

The entire day was knocked off balance from the start. Shortly before awakening, I was planning a defensive shoot out in a barbershop. By the way, this “defensive” part is not even very clear. But when the bad guys went for their guns…and even that isn’t clear…I opened fire and killed a surprising number. Thanks to my automatic pistol, if that is the term of art. Anyway, it was quite a blazing guns moment. The barbershop thing? I don’t know, except that I remember staying in a hotel on Seventh Avenue in the late 1950s were some New York mobster had been gunned down getting a shave. I didn’t wake up in the usual way. And the hangover hung over the rest of the day. Of course, going to San Francisco and swirling amidst the fog and cold only added it to the general gray effect.

Note that despite the London weather, San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhoods give every impression of boom time. Restaurants are packed with young techie workers. How do I know they are techie? Just listen to the banter. And it’s hard not to hear with so many of them crowding the available eateries. Of which there do not seem to be enough. Incredible. I would like to believe that the nation’s recession is somehow over, but this is not the case. It means that the tech biz has rebounded in and around my small world. As for winter, it has rebounded also. In Its famous way, San Francisco’s infamous maritime cold has returned. Spring had sprung into summer for a week or two. Now it has receded. In my light wool pullover I was quite cold.

On the way home I made it a point to stop off at the old medical factory. The Palo Alto clinic was ready for me, it seemed. I’m glad I didn’t put off my test for prostate-cancer related chemicals in the blood. PSA. The last reading had crept up. So this test was, well, just to see if there was any more creeping. I’m glad I got it over with. There is a theme to the week, it is getting practical matters done.

So now I await the PSA test results. Whatever they are, this is a good lesson in being alive. Sooner or later some test result is going to look awfully bad. What will I do when this happens? First, what will I do if this happens tomorrow? This is no abstract consideration, course. It is staring me in the face. I am trying, really trying, to accept. Accept the fact that I am 66 years old. And more to accept, to cheer my miraculous survival. Not just my shooting at age 21. But all the decades since. Here’s to that.