Another achy, headachy day. Bleah. Bit of excitement last night ... heard sirens, heard them stop nearby instead of trailing off into the distance, grabbed a long lens and went to the window to look for smoke and estimate how many blocks away it was ... and saw this when I opened the window:

(The camera didn't capture the full effect of black smoke against a night sky, of course, but this still gives an idea.)

At first I feared that either the church on the corner or the vacant house at the end of my row was burning, though I did wonder a bit at not seeing more fire engines. I threw on some clothes, went out on the sidewalk, and found a car-b-cue just around the corner.

Other than some photo editing and chasing a fly around with a camera (fortunately, Perrine declined to tell me how silly I looked), I haven't done much today. Lack the attention/coherence to get into tricky sysadmin stuff, important decisions, figuring out how I managed to wind up overdrawn with a debit card (shouldn't the transaction in question simply have been refused? -- more importantly, where was my miscalculation or record-keeping glitch that got me there?), or arguing with beaurocrats. I want my brain back. ("Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most.")

More photos to post and/or link to later, but not much verbal data to add except for more whining about pain.