Wednesday... blah.

Wednesday started as a day without much promise. Cold, raining, and just... blah.

This morning's walk with the dogs wasn't much better, as the two of them made it quite clear that they didn't want to be outside either. The fact that it's still dark here at seven A.M. until we turn the clocks back (November 1st this year) made this morning even more gloomy.

We did a quick five blocks, and returned to the relative warmth of home, where I made a pot of coffee, and suddenly realized that I was out of sugar.

Damn.

I was getting ready to slog down to Cub Foods when the phone rang. It was Jessica, telling me that Stephen had seen me walk by their house a few minutes earlier, and did I want to go downtown and have coffee with them. I quickly agreed, figuring that I would ask them to stop on the way back so I could get a bag of sugar from one of the multitude of bodegas between our neighborhood and downtown.

Sugar emergency averted.

A few minutes later a car horn sounded outside, I grabbed the beat-up government-issue A-2 black leather jacket that I wore during my days as a member of the U.S. State Department's Diplomatic Security Service in Europe after the 1st Gulf War, and in the mid-'90's during my days as a U.S. Marshal assigned to a Fugitive Apprehension and Warrant Service Team in Chicago and headed out the door.

It dawned on me that I've been wearing that jacket a lot lately. While I've kept it around for "sentimental" reasons, I haven't worn it regularly since 1997 or so... mainly because I always considered it "battle gear" as it's intentionally cut to be roomy enough to wear body armor underneath. What I thought was interesting is the fact that I was unconsciously bypassing my other leather jackets, that are in MUCH better condition in favor of the old warhorse.

I was startled out of my jacket introspection by Stephen telling me to grab my camera and bring it along. (He and Jessica are both amateur photographers like myself) Apparently, they were in an artsy kind of mood this morning and planned on doing some shooting as we traveled to and from downtown. I didn't feel much like shooting myself, as is evidenced by the lone photo I took through the rain-streaked window above. I put absolutely no effort whatsoever into it, I used the "automatic" setting on my camera, pointed it at the window, pressed the button activating the shutter, and turned the camera off.

"What did you just shoot?" Jessica asked.

"That building."

"Through the glass?" Stephen said.

"Yeah."

They both looked at me, waiting for some "artistic" explanation of why I had taken a single exposure, through a raindrop-flecked window of a rather ragged looking building.

I said: "It's a blah day, so I wanted a blah photo... if I see something that really catches my attention, rest assured, I'll become my normal psycho self, and take 200 exposures of it from every angle and with every manual setting I can, but for now. I'm just going to let that be it, and use it on my blog later regardless of what comes out."

"You know," Jessica said, "I really don't feel like shooting today either. We talked about it last night, but I'm just not feeling it today."

"That's funny," Stephen added, "I really didn't even want to leave the house today, but I felt obligated to for some reason..."

We sat there in silence for a moment, and I started laughing.

"So what the fuck are we doing out here then?" I asked.

The two of them started laughing as well and Jessica said, "Well as long as we're out here, we might as well go someplace and eat."

We ended up at Hell's Kitchen, where we downed three bowls of my old standby, Manohmin Porridge, and the three of us split two orders of bacon. We stopped at a Caribou Coffee to get another caffeine jolt for the ride home, and returned to our neighborhood. The only photograph that was taken between the three of us is the one at the top of this entry.

A blah photograph for a blah day.

But a blah day isn't necessarily a bad day.

I even forgot to ask them to stop so I could get sugar.

Motivation to get my butt out of the house first thing tomorrow morning is how I'm going to look at it.

Still not sure why I keep unconsciously wearing the old government-issue jacket, but I'll figure it out.

See you tomorrow.