Ugh. Day two of on-again-off-again headache. Feeling a little better now after taking a hydrocodone and having a snack.

Dave and I forgot to go out and look for meteors last night, which was predicted to be the peak night for the Perseids. But now it looks like tonight may be even more active than last night. People in parts of the earth that are dark right now are seeing a much higher rate of meteors than anyone saw last night, so we’re hoping that that will still be true by sunset tonight. We’re going to rent a car from City CarShare and drive up into the Berkeley Hills and look at the sky for an hour or so. Moonrise is around 10:30, so early evening should be good.

Later:I reserved a car from City CarShare for two hours, and so after a nice dinner at May Flower (one of our favorite restaurants in downtown Berkeley), Dave and I walked over to pick up the car and go look for meteors.

We reached Inspiration Point about 9:30. Great spot, pretty dark, lots of benches. There was quite a gathering already there, as we expected, but we found a bench to share with another couple. But then the cops came by around 20 minutes later to warn us that Tilden Park closes at ten and people who didn’t leave by then could be cited. Spoilsports.

We tried a few other spots, including the parking lot of the science museum, without success. Then Dave suggested the Berkeley Rose Garden.

When we got there we found several other meteor seekers there. The Rose Garden is fenced and locked up at night (as much to keep out deer as unscrupulous florists) but we found an empty bench outside and we sat and looked up. At first it seemed like there was too much ambient light, and we talked about giving up and heading back a little early. But then we saw three meteors in about a minute and a half. So we stayed there another 15 minutes or so and saw a few more. Then it was time to return the car and head home to bed.

There’s a chance now that we’re going to be forced to move soon. I’m feeling devastated and hopeless; the move here just a year and a half ago exhausted me severely, much worse than I was expecting, physically and financially and spiritually, and the thought of going through all that again so soon fills me with dread. Since learning about this two days ago, I have been agitated and sick to my stomach pretty much constantly, and only getting any sleep at night due to pills.

This morning I threw the coins for the Yijing, as I often do when I’m troubled or trying to work something out in my head. I threw this (using the Wilhelm/Baynes translation and commentary):

Fire on the mountain:
The image of THE WANDERER.
Thus the superior man
Is clear-minded and cautious
In imposing penalties,
And protracts no lawsuits.

When grass on a mountain takes fire, there is bright light. However, the fire does not linger in one place, but travels on to new fuel. It is a phenomenon of short duration. This is what penalties and lawsuits should be like. They should be a quickly passing matter, and must not be dragged out indefinitely. Prisons ought to be places where people are lodged only temporarily, as guests are. They must not become dwelling places.

Fuck. Not what I want you to tell me.

Fourth line moving:

Nine in the fourth place means:
The wanderer rests in a shelter.
He obtains his property and an ax.
My heart is not glad.

This describes a wanderer who knows how to limit his desires outwardly, though he is inwardly strong and aspiring. Therefore he finds at least a place of shelter in which he can stay. He also succeeds in acquiring property, but even with this he is not secure. He must be always on guard, ready to defend himself with arms. Hence he is not at ease. He is persistently conscious of being a stranger in a strange land.

No, no, no, this is way more truth than I am prepared to cope with this morning.

The moving line changes the hexagram to mountain over mountain:

Mountains standing close together:
The image of KEEPING STILL.
Thus the superior man
Does not permit his thoughts
To go beyond his situation.

The heart thinks constantly. This cannot be changed, but the movements of the heart — that is, a man’s thoughts — should restrict themselves to the immediate situation. All thinking that goes beyond this only makes the heart sore.

Front page article a week or so ago in the Contra Costa Times about a woman who has lived five years without a car. Hey, for me this August marks 25 years of not owning a car. And I now commute 40 miles each way to and from work five days a week.

So I figure they owe me five front-page articles, at least.

I save so much money and so much trouble in exchange for a little mild inconvenience now and then that, frankly, I can’t imagine why so many people own cars who don’t really need to. They aren’t car buffs who enjoy caring for their cars. They live in the Bay Area which has pretty darned good public transit in spite of the annoyingly frequent problems. They don’t have commutes that would be impossible otherwise, or even very difficult — I know lots of people who drive into San Francisco every day for work when they don’t live all that far from a BART station; I have coworkers who live either near a Caltrain station or a short bus ride away from here, yet drive every day to our offices.

Things have gotten quite a bit easier for us now that we’ve joined City CarShare a few months ago, and we rent a car for a few hours on a Saturday or Sunday once or twice a month now, where before we might rent a car for a weekend only three or four times a year. That’s a great convenience and all the more reason not to bother with actually owning one of the damn things.

Okay, I acknowledge that I am peculiarly neurotic about not wanting to stand in the flow of any foot traffic. (I was regularly bullied and picked on as a child, and once I was deliberately knocked down and trampled on by about 15 or 20 other children going the other way down a school hallway; it was one of the scariest things that has ever happened to me, and to this day, seeing that I’m in the way of a flow of people can bring on flashbacks to the terror I felt.)

But even allowing for the fact that I know I am hypersensitive about this and do not expect others to participate in my phobia, still, what on earth are you people thinking when you decide that smack in front of the bottom step of that stairway is a fine place to stop and have a conversation with your companion or check your Blackberry or make a call on your cell phone??? Seems like I have been having to say excuse me please to you folks two or three times a month for just about ever. Often, when that stairway is in fact a crowded down escalator and you have stopped at the bottom just a foot or so in front of me, I have been inexorably propelled into you from behind. And yet you keep stopping there. Why have you not figured out by now that when you reach the bottom of the stairs you need to walk forward a few more feet before you stop???

Dave and I spent part of Sunday at the California Academy of Sciences. On our previous visits we’d never gotten there early enough to get planetarium passes, but the Academy is open an hour early on Sundays for members, so this time we made an effort to get there early and got passes for the first show. I thought the show was fun but rambling, like it couldn’t quite settle on what it was going to be about.

Afterward we spent time on the Living Roof, in the Africa Hall (great fun to watch kids and penguins interacting with each other through the glass wall of the tank), and other stuff, but the rain forest and the aquarium were very busy and we skipped those this time.

Dave and I and our friend Doug spent the day hiking at Point Reyes. We had originally planned to hike somewhere else more inland, but when we saw this morning how hot it was going to be, how hot it already was by 8:30 a.m. or so, we changed our plans and decided to go someplace along the coast instead. So we took Sir Francis Drake Boulevard out to Point Reyes — a quick stop in Inverness for some provisions — and when we got to the information center in Point Reyes and looked over the maps, we decided on the eight-mile hike to Sunset Beach and back.

It was still hot, but nowhere near as hot as it got inland (it was over 100°F where we had been planning to go) and we had a breeze nearly the whole time. Most of the trail has a view of the estuary, and on our walk out it was low tide. We saw a lot of egrets and white pelicans flying low over the shallow areas looking for food. We didn’t see a whole lot of other wildlife, but there’s a remarkable variety of plant life along the way. The whole hike took us a little under four hours. I think I got a little sunburn on the back of my neck and the little toe on my right foot got sore, but otherwise I came back in better shape and better spirits than I set out.

Stopped for dinner on the way back at Sol Food in San Rafael, a terrific if noisy Puerto Rican restaurant. My ensalada con bistec (a salad with thinly sliced steak and grilled onions) was good sized even though I ordered the small, and tasty.

For the last sixteen or seventeen years (and even much longer in Dave’s case) Dave and I have spent all of Pride Weekend, both Saturday and Sunday, working our butts off as volunteers. This year we didn’t, and we didn’t go anywhere near the parade. Nice change of pace.

Now it’s time for a hot soak in the bathtub with a glass of wine, and to bed.

An odd sort of flu came over me this weekend. I started to feel a bit achy, not badly, just a little, on Saturday evening, and still felt that way Sunday morning. No fever, though, so I didn’t worry too much about it. On Sunday Dave and I did shopping in the morning and visited the Oakland Museum in the afternoon, and the mild achiness persisted. Then in the evening the fever came, and the achiness became more than just mild.

Fever gone again as of this morning, but still very achy. Called in sick today and haven’t moved from bed for very long all day. I’ve been taking a lot of vitamin C since yesterday; that usually chases off a flu pretty quickly for me, but it’s early evening now and I’m not really feeling any better than this morning.

I have more things to do today than I have time to do them, and they are all supposed to be top priority. I’ve been told I’m being assigned three new books to develop with a new author, on top of all my other new books that need editing, some of which are quite a few months behind schedule. And as soon as my lunch break is over I will be taking time out of my day to give a couple of interviews, because that’s top priority, too.

(To be fair, the new books are all with the same author, so they will by necessity be dealt with one at a time. But still.)

I’m drinking a large iced tea at Peet’s while I work on my blog, but something a bit stronger would go down well right at the moment. Oh well.

Announcement on BART this morning: “The situation has been resolved and regular service will be restored momentarily.”