Feeling Cloudy

Been stupid busy learning songs for the acoustic act I recently joined, and learning to play this big crazy beast. It's a Breedlove acoustic/electric bass, and a very different animal from what I'm used to. 

Our first show was this weekend, and it went well. 

The side effect is that by brain hurts as much as my fingers. Too many notes...

My joke is that I almost made it 40 years without ever playing a hollow instrument live. 

In fact, at the end of July I'll have been playing solid body electric guitars and basses for 40 years, so the record got shot down with mere weeks to go. 

Since the guitarist in the band bought this bass for me to use, at least I can still say that I haven't owned any acoustic instruments. 

Not that it means anything to anyone. 

Kind of like how I was proud that I hadn't been inside a movie theater for 29 years. 

I'm weird. You don't need to tell me, I've always known.  

After record rainfall the past month, we're finally drying out and getting some sun. 

Lakes that were almost empty are filling up, as is the aquifer we rely upon. The drought we've suffered from over the last few years is over. A wonderful Spring, were it not for the loss of life and devastation of property. 

A bridge we had driven across near the town of Wimberley, on our way to the wedding mentioned in the previous post, was washed away by floodwaters 3 weeks later. As were many houses and families. 

I guess you take the bad with the good, then carry on. 

                                   

On the tail of the storms, we've gotten some weird skies like today's. 

Kinda wish the contrail wasn't there, but I might like it tomorrow. 

Infrared, of course. 

Perfectly captures how I feel.  

In other news... 

For a couple of months I've been dealing with "old house" problems. 

Multiple plumbing issues, two sections of collapsed fence around the back yard, and a bathroom that lost electricity after being suspect since we moved in. 

All fixed but one leaky sink, so I'm feeling like a real man. 

The electrical problem took me a month to nail down, but I just knew that it was something butt-simple and paying an electrician would end up pissing me off. 

Once I got a helpful hint from a friend I was positive where to find the issue, and it ended up taking 5 minutes and a new part that cost exactly 74 cents including tax. 

Pretty sure an electrician would have cost a bit more than that. 

Not too scared of electricity, since I bend it to my will all the time. 

Once I had the "pleasure" of re-wiring an outlet in an old home near Houston. The polarity was reversed, and it was one of only two or 3 outlets available to power an entire rock band for a party. 

Trouble was, there was no time to track down which circuit breaker the outlet was on so I just fixed it with the wires live. What fun!  

Then there was the time I needed to get a freight elevator working again so we could get our gear out of a downtown SA nightclub at 4am. A bit tipsy at the time. 

The car was stuck on the floor above as I dug into the safety interlock mechanism. 

Took a healthy jolt of 120 volt AC, and as I started fading I also started tipping forward. 

Shook it off just in time to keep myself from plunging down the shaft. 

Fixed it. 

I had a bunch of stuff to post for Memorial Day, which I usually don't miss. 

But in thinking about what I was intending to write, a bunch of baggage and sore spots surfaced which led to the realization that I'm always mad as hell on Memorial Day. 

After more thought, the reasons I'm so angry became clear. 

By then it was too late to put it all together in time, so maybe by next year's holiday I'll be able to get it out of my system.  

Yeah, I'm all kinds of cloudy.