Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I made it out to the Anne Arundel Scottish Festival more or less on time (a little later than I'd planned, but early enough to be able to take my time unpacking and tuning and such). First set went well. Second set was better in some ways, worse in others -- we had a HUGE audience for the second set, which is always a good thing, and we had lots of energy on stage ... and the battery box for my microphone fell off my 12-string as I put the guitar over my head, the battery fell out, the mcrophone flew out of its soundhole clip, and I hastily switched guitars because I figured that'd be faster than reassembling it all in the middle of a tune. Then I managed to pull the cord for the pickup in the 6-string out of the adaptor that hooks it to the mic cable as I moved around on stage, and in the next tune I broke my B string. It was like I was falling apart.

Third set was a smaller audience, but still good. In between, we got to listen to The Highland Airs, and Bonnie Rideout -- always a pleasure. Sold a bunch of CDs. Afterwards we packed up in a hurry, and I went to Bowie to visit Mom and deal with house-buying-related paperwork. She got annoyed at my making those little involuntary "it hurts when I move" noises. (Sorry, Mom, but my body hurts. I had fun, we put on a good show, but I wore myself out and I ache.) I think we figured some stuff out. And I figured out why I wasn't able to send her mail at her AOL account while "everybody" else could do so: she had spam-filtering turned on, and one of the rules was to deny anything coming from *.net. She doesn't recall having set that up or turning it on, so presumably the list is some sort of default one ... but to deny *.net?? Anyhow, we turned it off and now I can send her mail on the weekends as well as during the week (mail to her work address works fine).

Came home, noticed that my paycheck had hit my credit union, spent a while figuring out which overdue bills I could afford to pay, winced at the new HMO premium (Kaiser just increased their rates to about half of my salary when Karl does have work for me), wrote a bunch of checks, and went out to mail them (wanted to drop them right at a Post Orifice 'cause a couple of them really need to get where they're going sooner than is possible), and bought gas so I can make it out to the Eastern Shore for a wedding gig fourteen or fifteen hours from now. (I need to check MapQuest to get an idea how much travel time to allow myself.)

And that was my day. Mostly. Oh, Spandox (not the name I'm used to calling him, but it's the name on his blog -- anyhow, it was really good to see him) was helping Allon with sound, and he had his wee little computer with him with a wee little camera for it, and he had fun showing us how quickly he could add a photo to his blog from the field. Nifty. I want one. I don't need one, I can't afford one, I'm not going to get one, but I'm allowed to want one.