I’ve been doing a lot of last-minute shopping and errand-running and gathering all my crap for the tour.  Went a little crazy buying *even more* Eagle Creek Pack-It accessories — shit, I am the worst addict for that junk.  An Eagle Creek Freak!!  I started buying their stuff maybe five years ago, and now with this new stuff I have probably ten different items.  I use them all constantly, and I love them, and it’s so stupid for me to talk about that here, but oh well.  The first bag-thing I ever bought from them is almost indiscernable from the ones I bought yesterday, other than a new logo and a couple of design tweaks. That’s rugged!!  I mean, don’t you hate shitty bags?  My biggest pet peeve in bags is a crappy zipper that gets stuck, or a strap that comes loose all the time.  Or a bag that takes ten minutes to get open and shut.  Or one that’s always coming open and spilling your tampons all over the floor.  Or a bag that can’t be soaked with beer and then washed with all your clothes, etc. etc.  You know.  Better just to spend the extra few bucks and get something that’ll outlive you.

I also got a couple of gadgets to tie all my technologies together.  The best is a USB charger cable for the PalmPilot — it means I won’t have to lug that bulky-ass Palm cradle on tour with me anymore.  I already have the data cable and serial/USB adaptor too, and even an ancient PalmModem that still works, so I’m all set in the Palm department.  (I’d love to be able to trade up my IIIc for one of those sleek ‘n’ slenderized color machines, but I have so much invested in all these accessories!!) I also got an auto charger for the laptop, which is going to be very very necessary on those long-ass drives, and a data cable that runs between my cellphone and laptop.  It’s supposed to let me connect to my Earthlink account using my cellphone (so I can check my mail right there in the van!!!!) but I can’t yet figure out how on earth to get it to work.  Maybe it’s because of OS X, or maybe it’s because I don’t know what I’m doing, but I can’t figure out how to install the stupid modem driver that Verizon wants you to use.  I hope this doesn’t turn into one of those seemingly simple tasks that ends up taking for-freakin’-ever to research and fix.

I met with my old schoolmate Nanette the other night… I almost fucked it up completely!  It was bad.  Me and John had this enormous Thai-food dinner around 5:30.  I was tired and I wasn’t supposed to meet her until 8:30, so I laid down for a disco-nap.  John had to leave at 8:00 to load some gear with his band; I asked him to wake me up before he left.  Which he did, but I guess I didn’t really wake up because at 8:50 the phone woke me up.  But of course I didn’t catch the call, it went to voicemail, and of course it was Nanette wondering where the hell I was.  The funny thing was, she had gotten to the bar late, so she thought she was the one who fucked up!  Tee hee!!  But anyway, I finally talked to her and she ended up just coming over to my apartment, and we had beers right here.  John came home and got to meet her too, it was cool.  She looks almost no different from how I remembered her… just the adult version of how she looked in grade school.  She says I look the same too, which is funny ‘cuz I’ve gone through 50 different hairstyles since those days!