Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"A simple misunderstanding gets a lot less simple once you add choppers and a SWAT team." -- Earl Hickey (played by Jason Lee), on the television show, My Name Is Earl (episode "Boogeyman", aired 2006-03-30)

Health

After my digestive problems a couple of weeks ago, I was put on a different combo-drug, one with a smaller amount of the component most likely to have been causing me problems. To minimize the risk to my ability to perform, I waited until after my last gig for a while to start taking it -- missing Balticon (see below) would be a bummer, but missing a gig would bother me more. The last problem almost kept me out of the performance at the Green Man Festival, so I didn't want to risk screwing up getting to the Maryland Faerie Festival.

After my last clinic visit, I'd started to wonder whether what I'd thought was a stomach bug made worse by the drug was actually all due to the drug. The way I've felt since yesterday evening provides additional support for that hypothesis. Ugh. I'm keeping food down (but being careful what foods I attempt), but I'm quite uncomfortable and not sure which direction this is going. Feh.

And my knees are hurting very, very badly again. Right on the edge between need-codeine and can-make-do-with-Ultram levels (since I don't need to be very active today, I'm going with the Ultram and limiting my trips up and down the stairs).

Guitar Repair

Repair on the guitar that broke during a gig is progressing slowly. The new nut is shaped and the slots are positioned, but I don't have the slots the right depths yet. It's currently at the stage where the possibility of screwing things up abruptly is greatest: making the tiny adjustments now required without going that wee bit too far is ... making me nervous.

As maugorn had pointed out, finding tools to cut the slots for the first two strings was a challenge (the exact right tools exist but I don't have them). For the G, D, A, and E slots I could use my needle files, which was easy enough once I got each started in the right place (the low E-string slot isn't quite the right shape but it's close and I think I can fix it). It turns out that the e-string slot in the old nut is the same width as the sharp edge of an X-Acto knife blade (the blade just about everyone has, the one that a new handle usually has in it when you buy it -- I think it's "#11 Classic"?), and the B-string slot is the same width as the back of the same blade. Trying to cut a groove in a piece of bone with an X-Acto knife didn't work very well, so I sacrificed a blade to the cause and turned it into a double-sided saw blade: I used the Dremmel and a cut-off wheel to add serrations to both sides of the X-Acto blade, then used that improvised saw to cut the two narrowest slots in the nut.

(X-Acto does make saw blades as well, which might be thin enough and are certainly cheaper than the precision nut-saws I linked to above, but I got to those slots in the middle of the night and improvising my own tools seemed to make more sense than looking for an all-night craft-supplies store, at the time.)

So now I've got a nut which does hold the strings in place even when I strum very hard, but all six strings are just a teensy bit too high (I can feel it at the first fret, but from the second fret on it feels okay to my fingers), the intonation isn't quite right (the octave harmonic of each string is just a smidgen off from the pitch fretted at the twelfth fret), and the B string buzzes badly (when played open).

Almost done. Almost. Just that little bit of tweaking (a tiny amount of material to remove; a not-so-tiny amount of time to do it right). And one little error will mean starting over from square one.

Stage fright isn't much of a problem for me, but fear of making cuts I can't undo -- whether the material is bone or leather or cloth or stone, whether the project is sewing or carving or modifying a machine -- slows me way down. I'll get past this hesitation and start those final adjustments this afternoon. Let's see how close to perfect I can get the intonation without screwing it all up. I've got the second nut blank handy just in case I do blow it.

Even though it's not finished yet, not right yet, it felt really good to be able to tighten up the strings and let some chords ring out.

Balticon Plans

I can't afford to go to Balticon, really, but I'd hate to miss it entirely. I'm thinking of ghosting the con a couple of days just to catch up with people and maybe make some music, and see whether I can afford a single-day membership for one day of it (it'll be iffy -- money is terribly tight and the day-memberships are a pretty substantial fraction of a full membership, except for Monday) so I can go to the art show (a friend mentioned that she's been working with a new style, and will be displaying art at Balticon) and not feel like a complete cheat.

But whether I get there at all will depend on how I feel, how my gut settles down, how tired I am. It'll also depend on whether I'm starting out from home in Baltimore or from anniemal's house -- we missed each other at the Maryland Faerie Festival because she was too stiff and sore on Saturday from helping with setup on Friday, and I was too exhausted on Sunday from having been out and active so long on Saturday ... and my plan to go visit last night after Thrir Venstri Foetr rehearsal fell apart when I was feeling too ill to go to rehearsal.

So I may or may not get to Balticon, if I do go I don't know how much of the time I'll be there, and I'll probably just be hanging around the lobby. It'll all be last-minute decisions. I'd like to be there and see folks, but time, money, and health all make it a big Maybe.

I'm really hoping I can get to ConCertino in a few weeks, but that's going to be a much bigger challenge financially, especially since I haven't gotten around to doing any planning for it.