Hey all. So this week after having a great time in Fayetville, we had a day off on Monday, a "golden day" as it's known. This is a day with no show and no travel. Had to enjoy it as it is our last day until the end of the leg where we clearly have all day off to do whatever we like. On that day, I headed up to Walmart and bought the new Star Wars: Battlefront II game, and the new James Bond game, From Russia With Love.

People were going to "On the Border" for dinner and margaritas around 630ish, then seeing Chicken Little. I however, not over my sickness yet, was exhausted. I took some Sudafed and passed out from 6-10pm. This was the worst time ever to do this as we had a really early bus call the next morning and I had napped and would likely be up all night. Well, I was up till 430 and we had a 7am leave, which meant a 630 load time for the bus.

To those who are not familiar with a typical day for me, it goes something like this. Depending on how far the venue is from where we are the night before, we leave anywhere from 7-10am. We stop for lunch in between 11 and 12 for an hour, then back to the road. We usually arrive at the hotel around 2 or 3, have time to shower or whatever, then back on the bus to bring us to the venue around 5ish for soundcheck, fight call, and then, have a little time off, do the show, pack my drums up, get on the bus back to the hotel, sleep, get up, repeat.

That's only when we're at a venue for 1 night. Granted there's alot of nights like this on this tour, we have 3-7 day sitdowns which is nice. Another nice perk for me specifically is that my drums travel with the trucks for the show, and there's someone who has the job of setting up the pit in each city, including my drums. Tonight was the first night that everything was more or less perfect, just a couple tweaking things here and there, but it was great tonight.

Tuesday and Wednesday we played Monroe, LA. Man does that place ever smell! They claimed it was on swampland and that was the reason, but whew! That place was just nasty, nice venue though. Today we drove to Tyler, TX and did a show at the University of Texas. What a beautiful space that is. The hall had amazing acoustics, everything just sounded amazing. 2,000+ seats, we filled them all, and they had a great time. I'm also getting amazingly good at loading out my drums (packing them up). I've discovered that since the book scenes can get a little long, I can pack up any unnecessary percussion instrument that I don't use in the show anymore. By the time the show is really over, I have only half of what I started with in front of me. I got a little self concious of people in the balcony being able to see the drummer packing up equipment DURING the show, but hey, we're only here for 1 night, oh well!

Tomorrow morning, really today as it's 2:45am when I'm writing this, we're driving down to Galveston, TX. BUSH COUNTRY INDEED!!! Ironically, I bought the new Al Franken book today The Truth (with jokes). I plan on putting it on my drums tonight so I might get shot by a curious audience memeber!

So yeah, I don't really WORK that hard on this job. I get driven around to places across the country, have someone set up my gear and transport it for me, play a show that's not terribly hard, and go to Walmart on my days off. Ok, maybe that's just positive thinking as I AM on a bus with 28 other people that I say EVERY day for the next 6 months. I do the SAME show every night, and Walmarts look generally the same. Also, family, friends and Karen are sorely missed. But hey, I'm an optimist.

Once I get more pictures taken, they will be put up. I apologize for my laziness in this matter.