Suitcase:  Packed

Guitar:  Strung and packed

ID, Tickets and Stuff:  Checked and ready

Ride to Airport:  Arranged

Daughter in the House:  Yep

All the essentials are in place for us to head west tomorrow morning to the Blown-Eyed Blodger Tea Party and Ice Cream Social in Austin.  Other than a brief stop at the Dallas (Houston?) airport on the way to Hawaii, this will be my first visit to Texas.  I here it’s bigger than New Jersey.

In order to tune up for the trip we went out to a local Italian Joint and had a few pre-dinner martinis in glasses the size of soup bowls.  Civilized, that.

Play nice while I’m gone for the next couple days.  There are plenty of great things to read over there on the left sidebar.

And, as for you Blown-Eyeds, I’ll see you very soon.

I dragged out the Axe (the one Rob picked out for me and played over the phone) on Sunday to make sure I remembere how to play it.

So, now here I am reading blogs (and now writing this drivel) when I promised myself I would put new strings on Mr. Guitar tonight so they can get all that stretching out of their systems before I get to Austin on Friday.  New strings sound great, but they are a pain in the ass until they get themselves comfortable.

I’m also supposed to be gathering up the duds I want to bring along.  Problem is that neither I nor my “wardrobe” is prepared at this time for “seriously farookin’ hot”.   Shoe suggested that we all bring a lid and some sunscreen.  I have a bunch of lids, which I wear (one at a time, of course) when I go walking in the mornings, which is always followed by a shower, and who cares about hathead in the shower.  I’ll bring one along anyway, potential hathead notwithstanding.  It is, however, a damned shame to cover this great farookin’ hair with a lid.

Speaking of hats, I’m hoping I get to see some folks wearing cowboy hats.  We don’t see much of that in Jersey, and when we do, it just looks dumb.  In Jersey, if you plan on strutting your shit in a cowboy hat, you’d better know how to fight.  Imagine one of Tony Soprano’s crew, say Paulie Walnuts, showing up in the Bada-Bing sporting a cowboy hat?

Truth is, I’d love to wear a cowboy hat, but every time I try one on I look like a Jewish dentist named “Mel” trying pitifully to look like a cowboy.  Besides, I’m a negotiator, not a fighter.

I’m looking forward to seeing some of the reprobates  fine peeps I have met at previous blogmeets and with whom I have become friends over the past couple years.  I am also stoked about meeting some bloggers whose stuff I have been reading for some time, but whom have not yet met.  Finally there will be bloggers there whose sites I have only recently discovered, and I’m looking forward to meeting them too.  Bloggers are real easy to like.

I’ve been to a few of these events now, and one thing is for shit sure.  There are never, ever, ever any awkward moments of silence.  In fact, there is never ANY silence.  Bloggers are, by their nature, blabbermouths.

I had better get busy with those strings**. 

Later.

** For those of you who care about such things, they are Martin Extended Life SP+ Light Gauge, Bronze.  I’ve always used plain old Martin light gauge strings, but Willy (from whom I bought the guitar) recommended these, so I figure they gotta be good.

 

See the post below this one?  And, the post below that one?

See the big, empty space at the bottom?

See the little bit of a vertical line in the big, empty space at the bottom?

What you can’t see is the three times that WordPress zapped my paragraph breaks and printed the final paragraph twice.

 Damned if I know what is going on, and I’m too tired to give much of a damn.

Just thought you might like to know.

As is my custom, I stopped this morning at my local 7-11 to grab a cup of coffee and a pack of smokes. There was only one car in the lot when I pulled in. ”Sweet,” I thought. ”I’ll be outta there in about three minutes!” When I walked into the store, it was even better. The one car in the lot turned out to have been occupied by only one person, and that person was being waited on.

I walked briskly directly to the coffee counter and poured myself a 20 oz. black coffee. I snapped on the lid and was good to go. Money already in hand, I turned to walk to the counter. This was going to be an “in-and-out” record! This is going to be a great day.

No such luck.

It seems that the woman who was driving the one car in the lot and who was the only other person in the store, was in the process of buying an 8×11 sheet of paper full of lottery numbers. As if that wasn’t bad enough, English was not her first language.

It got worse. English was also not the first language of the guy behind the counter punching in the dizzying array of numbers, and his first language was not the same as herr first language.

It got worse yet. The lady buying seemingly every permutation of three-digit numbers (and whose first language was not English) was talking on a cell phone (in a language other than English) throughout the entire gut-wrenching process.