(Or, One From the Road, Seven)

So, I'm driving to the bus call this afternoon when I get a call from Chris Timmons. Apparently, another semi-well-known tour is looking for a lighting person (the details I have are sketchy) starting at the end of October through December. That would work out great for me since the Terri Clark tour is scheduled to end October 25th...but they're talking about adding more dates, so it may not jive. If it does work with my current tour schedule, I'll go for it. I've actually heard of this person - she's an amazing piano player and she puts on a great show. In addition, it would be really great to not go back to Bandit when I'm done. Not that Bandit is bad, of course, it's just that I'm doing exactly what it is that I want to do - living on the road, livin' the dream, and the though of having to go back to the shop every day to fix moving lights is not as interesting as waking up in the Next City to face a day of new and interesting challenges.

So, to keep touring is want I want.

And it is also...not what I want.

Tour is a great life. All your meals are provided, you have a place to sleep, a consistent job, time off, and almost never a dull day. On the other hand, you spend your time with the same group of people day in and day out. I get along great with everybody that I'm out on tour with, but I long for time with other people as well - my friends from Nashville. And, as my friend Pixel well knows, I'm interested in getting know a certain girl who lives there in Nashville. (Henceforth referred to as 'Girlbert') I haven't yet had time to sit down and talk with her at all, but I'm at least making an effort to sit down and have a cup of coffee and talk for a while. But Girlbert aside, I want time to spend with my friends from Nashville, and have relationships beyond the superficial. Tour is sort of incompatible with those goals. Maybe my mind will be made for me and the tours will dry up and I'll have to go back to work at Bandit and side jobs with Crew One or some other local company. I hope that doesn't happen, but it would solve the problem of never seeing anybody back home. I remain ambivalent about both staying at home and being on tour. It's as if I'm torn between what I want to do and who I want to be with. It's different when you already have friends that you're close to. I have really good acquaintances at home, but I feel like I'll never get the time to spend with them to develop anything less superficial if I'm always out of town.

All this might make it sound like I'm depressed, but I'm really not. I'm enjoying this tour (and the distinct possibility of future tours) immensely, and I really can't say anything negative about my job. (Well, sometimes I have to use Avolites consoles, but life is full of these little disappointments. ;))

In other news, I finally finished the electronics of the LED desk lamp that I started working on last year. (Pictures soon) I had originally built the LEDs into an ABS template that I made for them, but soldering them was turning into a nightmare. To work around this, I went and grabbed a generic PCB from the local electronics store and soldered all my LEDs to that, three rows of 10 in series. Now I just need to grab the parts to build a housing and a power supply / potentiometer to knock the voltage down and function as a dimmer. I was planning on buying an articulating arm to mount the head to, but every arm that I've found online has either been ridiculously expensive or not what I needed. (I thought about buying an Armatron off eBay, but I would probably end up playing with it instead of tearing it apart. My dad had a friend who owned one of these when I was younger and I couldn't keep my hands off it.) Building one doesn't seem likely, at least not for less than one I could steal from a store-bought desk lamp. I might try FreeCycle for an old desk lamp.

I'm seriously considering moving in the near future. I have a few weeks off coming up and I plan on using it to find a roommate and get the heck out of my current apartment. It's just too dang expensive, especially when I'm there so infrequently. It would also be nice to have someone around and an actual house to live in in a nicer area of town. My subdivision isn't bad, but I end up driving quite a ways to get to the places that I frequent. Living downtown would be ideal, though I doubt that I'll be able to afford it.

Exit, stage left. Sparks