On my mind

I just spent a few minutes re-stringing my guitar (or guit-fiddle as some call it). More on that in moment…but first (in TV talk, that’s the beginning of what we call an umbrella lead)…why I procrastinate.

I’ve discovered, I let things go longer than I should. My grass hasn’t been cut in three and half weeks. Until I wandered into the Regency Barber Shop this morning (best $10 hair cut in town) I had gone about a month and half since my last cut. And while I try to treat my guitar with the greatest of care, I hadn’t re-strung it in months. In short, my lawn looks horrible, I had grown sideburns (not quite mutton-chops, but people were starting to give me that…”you aren’t Brandon or Dylan” look), and my guitar sounded like an old man who just wanted some more soup and was going to mumble and whine until he got some.

Maybe you call me lazy. But after almost three decades on this planet, I’ve got it figured out. I let things go until they look really bad, so they’ll look/sound a thousand times better when I finally get around to my responsibilties. My hair looks better and (getting back to the other half of the umbrella lead) my guitar has that perfectly wooden-metal sound. When I drag it up the mountain Thursday (to plug in the five-song jukebox and annoy that lady in the tent who can scream “It’s 1 o’clock in the morning!!!” much lounder than I’ve ever played) it will sound great.

On that note…I came home to a great message on my machine tonight.

“Hi, guys, it’s Janice and Brett and Mary. We’re coming to LEAF!”

Last time I saw the couple and their baby they were shaking off a perfectly terrible rear-end collision. Some drunk guy in a Porsche ran up under their pick-up on Tybee Island. His accelerator locked up and he hit them again. Baby Mary was in the cab and everybody was worried about them. But they were troopers. now I’ll be seeing them on Friday. Fantastic.

A couple other things of note…

The good folks over at what I appreciatively abbreviate as The Casbah have provided us with a different kind of link (I think she got it from somebody else, but I’ll give her credit for tonight). Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Belief-O-Matic. Not so sure about your faith? Or maybe you’d like to test yourself. Just log and take a five minute quiz and it will give you a list of about two dozen religions that fit closest to your beliefs. I won’t tell you how I came out, but I will say that I wasn’t surprised and anybody who kows me wouldn’t be either.

And then there’s this…

I have this very vague recollection of sitting in a house when I was a kid. I can’t even remember whose house it was. I was in the kitchen with this guy. We were writing together. He’d write a paragraph, then I’d write a paragraph. I can’t remember what the story was about, but it was a bit macabre and I remember describing a Mobil Gas sign…or mabye it was Exxon. Don’t know.

I didn’t have an older brother and probably would never have wanted one. Nevertheless, as a youth I looked up to that one particular guy who took the time to write a story with me and who seems to be a regular reader of RER (at least, he…unlike SOME PEOPLE!! uses the reality check section). I won’t name him because his responses to my ramblings have been in private e-mails. Nevertheless, he was the guy that made me want to write…who encouraged my guitar playing…and who has built a family like I someday hope to (sorry about that preposition there). What’s neat…I hadn’t seen him or talked to him in years until he showed up at our wedding in 2000. Since then we’ve e-mailed back and forth. Now he reads RER and sends back these amazing responses. Like he reads every word I write, thinks about it, has the courage to tell me when I’m wrong, and the courtesy to tell me when I’m right. Thanks to Susuannah I’m keeping this on-line journal. Now, I sort of feel like I’m back in that kitchen or dining room again. It’s pretty neat. Maybe he should consider starting up a blog…hmmmm.

Now it’s time to pick up the old guit-fiddle and strum a bit before people in the house start getting sleepy.

You know it’s strange…I’ve written more for myself in the last month and half than I have in the last five years combined.