Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Left the house late because I couldn't find my shirt. I had put it in different place than usual, I can't remember why, I can't remember doing it, but it was in a cat-inaccessible place so I can't blame it on Perrine. I did not get out early enough to stop at my mother's house. (Well it turned out that I could have, but I was behind schedule when I left so I didn't know I would make up that much time until I arrived ... it would not have been a very log visit anyhow, so it's just as well.) One of my car windows -- right rear -- got off its track on one edge for part of its run; it looked like it was rolled up all the way, but it sounded as though the door were ajar (and felt like that when I reached a hand back there). Trying to re-close the door, I busted the acrylic on one nail and bruised my fingertip under the nail. I had to find a wider spot to pull over than the first I'd tried, and go around the car to find out what the real problem was. (Pretty unnerving at *mumble* miles per hour.) By the time I got off the shoulder of the Baltimore Beltway I was half an hour behind.

I made up the time. Between the distance being just a bit shorter than I'd thought, driving at I-hope-no-cops-are-reading-this speeds, and postponing stopping for gas despite the nervous orange light on my dashboard, I arrived about fifteen minutes ahead of schedule.

We cobbled together a sound system out of smaller systems and spares, because most of John's gear is with our regular soundman, who wasn't able to be there today. (Gotta say, I feel a lot more comfortable when he's there.) Bill and Becky (who perform under the name "Peat & Barley") were already playing, having been booked for the first few hours as a duo (the rest of the band wasn't scheduled to start until 21:00), so we had to try to be the least disruptive we could be while sorting out the sound gear. We had to be rather more obtrusive than I would have liked.

I'm getting good at the "gang two mixers together to act like a larger mixer" trick. (Even short one person (two instruments) we use a lot of channels. Eleven tonight, usually thirteen, occasionally more. Most of them XLR inputs. John's 12-channel mixer only has four XLR jacks. My mixer only has eight channels. Together, they're enough.) Actually, we used three mixers, because we used Bill & Becky's four-channel powered mixer as the mains amp (and my big bass guitar amp for a monitor) but that doesn't count since we only really used it as an amplifier. Hmm. While writing the longish rest of this paragraph which I've since deleted for being a prattlesome level of detail (Oh hush), I just figured out a better way to do it than I did tonight. Oh well, it worked.

Toasts ran long (hey, no big deal, and not all that terribly surprising, eh?), so we started playing about 21:30, and I discovered that a second fingertip was bruised. I'm not sure how I injured that one. Playing loudly was ouchy, and how loud counted as loud with regard to finger pain got lower as the night went on. The gig went well on the whole, and wasn't quite as exhausting as usual (except for Bill and Becky who basically had a six-hour gig) because most of us got to rest a bit while Trix taught folks the dances. But I still worked hard enough to perspire a lot and didn't drink enough, so I discovered I was pretty thirsty when I got home. It looked like people were having a lot of fun dancing, which is good, since that was pretty much the point. We stopped playing at midnight, I finally got the car all loaded by a quarter to one, I made it as far as the cheap gas station I'd noticed nearby without running out (though I need to check the manual again to see whether I officially have a 15-gallon tank or a 16-gallon tank ... I pumped in 15.8 gallons), and I drove home much more slowly than I'd driven out -- I set the cruise control at a modest amount over the limit between towns. I passed a lot of law enforcement (both police and sherriff's department) vehicles pulling people over or lying in wait, so I'm glad they weren't out when I was flying down and I'm glad I took my time getting home.

So I'm home, the car is unloaded; my fingers, knees, chest, back, and ribs all hurt; I've taken a painkiller; and I'm going to go invite the cat to curl up next to me on the bed while I sleep.