Seems as if I just got home--and here I am packing for the first half of my next trip! This time I'm spending some quality time in New Orleans with my sweetie, though I am playing a few songs as I sit in with Gina Forsyth this Fri. night at Neutral Ground. (I get to see her play with the Bruce Daigrepont Band on Sunday---I don't know what's more exciting: seeing her play, seeing that band, or finally going to Tipitina's! No way would I DARE to sit in there)! This will be a fun but challenging week--so many restaurants, so little time, and I hope my knees are up to the task of the exercise necessary to avoid packing on more pounds. I suspect making the rounds of the Exhibit Hall at the ACC convention will keep me walking. (I only hope Bob's willing to share dishes so that I don't have to clean my plate each time). Hope my sinuses & TMJ don't make my toothaches flare up. (Yes, I had that cavity filled).
Then home for one day to do laundry, get my nails in shape for playing, repack and hit the road for the Great Plains with Steve--Iowa City, Columbia, MO, Omaha--and River City Folk!!!--and Hays, KS. We're going to have to exercise some routing ingenuity, what with gas prices skyrocketing. At least the cheaper gas prices further from Chicago offer some measure of consolation. My last fillup, last week in Beloit, WI, was $3.45/gal. It's up to four bucks here by now. (People ask me why I travel so much for my music--I only half-jokingly reply that it's for the cheaper gas). Then catch my breath, do Passover, and head down to Sparta, IL the next weekend for our concert at the library. Spending time with our hosts the Gordons will make it feel more like a friendly respite than like work, though we will of course bring our "A" game.
Meanwhile, I have "gotten religion" when it comes to guitar humidification. To my horror, Terry at Guitar Works found a couple of nascent cracks in my Voyage-Air dread (I'd brought it in for a fret-buzz correction after I got my pickup installation in my Gramann tweaked to correct a strange resonance in the B & G strings--turns out the pickup wires needed to be harnessed). He had it spend a few days "in the schvitz" (atop a small room humidifier) and stabilized the cracks. But I am taking no more chances. I had been using Planet Waves clay-filled soundhole humidifiers for the past couple of years but had gotten behind in refilling them with distilled water, so I'd switched to dampened sponges in vented Baggies. Not good enough, I found out--especially in those semi-hard cases that Voyage-Airs come in or in padded rigid gig bags, both of which are porous. So I got a bunch of Oasis soundhole humidifiers--that's all Terry uses in his house, which like mine has radiators but no ductwork for a furnace humidifier--and a gallon of distilled water. I put them in my guitar cases, supplementing them with the re-hydrated clay-filled units, and I check them every other day. Of course, every soundhole humidifier comes with a plastic syringe--and I saved the syringes from the old clay-filled ones that I had to discard when they developed mildew & mineral dust from using tap water. My bathroom is full of plastic syringes (the ones with the skinny tips are good for refilling fountain pen cartridges too); should there be a police raid I'd have some 'splainin' to do.....