IT WAS A nothing-to-say day yesterday. Today I've got lots to say, starting with nothing-to-say yesterday and no one to say it to, which would have been a perfect day for wandering around town and hanging out in coffeehouses. Except that I had to stay home all day to let in the roofers. Who never came. I spent a lot of time, a little too much time yesterday, staring out the window at and over other people's roofs.

I did not see a single horse. I saw birds, some brown leaves on an old dead tree, and a yellow cat on the fire escape, but no horses. It's very rare to see horses in the sky over San Francisco, even on a cloudy day, and yesterday was no exception to this rarity.

If I had seen a horse, I might have had something to say. (Ex. "Jesus Christ! Is that a horse?!") Or else maybe the goddamn motherfucking roofers would have showed, riding on good omens.

Or maybe horses in the sky are bad omens. I'm trying, as we speak, to remember the words to that song ... "Cowboy, change your ways today, or with us you will ride, trying to catch the devil's herd, across these endless skies."

Yeah, yippee-aye-ay, yippee-aye ... Oh, there's another song too. Shit, there are so many songs. It's hard to know what to think.

And eventually it got dark. Then I knew I could leave, because roofers don't roof after dark. I know this, and I don't need no song to tell me about it. Roofers in the Sky. Saturday Night's All Right for Roofin'.

We're gonna roof, roof, roof around the clock tonight.

Tomorrow it's supposed to rain. Today's OK, but I'm waiting again, and again these roofers ain't showing. Well, at least I've got something to talk about: how I left last night, finally, and went and got a burrito.

Do things happen for a reason?

I went to Bayshore Boulevard, to that taquería there you always see but never stop at. It's next to the store, before you get to the Silver Crest Diner, same side of the street. Now you know what I'm talking about?

Taquería El Potrillo. I don't know why I went there. I didn't mean to. I just had a car for a change, and felt like leaving the neighborhood. That was where I wound up, and no, I don't speak Spanish. If I did, I would have thought the word for horse was caballo.

It is. Potrillo is colt.

This, in nothing like a nutshell, explains the big horse-head mural which dominates one wall of the place. Even if you weren't thinking about horses all day, it's going to haunt you clear to the nub of your burrito.

The carnitas were very good, but the burrito itself was unremarkable, thanks to El Blando brand salsa in there. Bad time of year for tomatoes.

But I'm eating alone, right, and there's not even nobody else in the place. All I've got is this horse, and he's looking at me, staring, glaring at me, all half-eyed, like, You motherfucker. What are you trying to pull, motherfucker?

"I'm not trying to pull nothing. What? I've been cooped up all day. I'm stretching out into this burrito. Leave me alone."

Then I notice behind the horse, rising out of what looks like a river, there's this big round wheel of images encircling a peanut head in the center, and the peanut head is sticking its tongue out. Of the other vaguely animalistic images around the wheel, the only other one I can make anything out of, heads or tails, is a frog.

So we got a huge horse's head, a frog, and some other things orbiting a little peanut head sticking its tongue out, something that looks like the pyramids or something on the other bank of the river, and then, off the mural, on the wall, there's a silver-and-black sombrero and a heart-shaped wreath of garlic.

OK, fine, I can live with these things, atmospherically. I can live with the fake brick walls and plastic flowers. In fact, I like these kinds of touches, and if you don't, you can always sit outside. They've got a sort of wrap-around sidewalk seating area, in case Bayshore Boulevard traffic is your better idea of atmosphere.

But try breakfast. They serve breakfast now starting at six a.m. (except Sundays). And I think they have birria and menudo too. The burritos ... I brought one home for Crawdad, and she agreed about the salsa: el blando.

More cilantro! More onions! Better tomatoes, lots and lots of roofing materials, and a higher degree of accountability on the part of roofers in general.

Who you looking at, horsey?

Taquería El Potrillo. 300A Bayshore Blvd. (at Oakdale), S.F. (415) 642-1612. Mon.-Sat., 6 a.m.-8 p.m.; Sun., 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Takeout available. Beer. No credit cards. Wheelchair accessible.