Back home. Didn’t do any shooting with the camera, but I’ll do that later today. For now … a nap. That drive is just long enough to make me sleepy. Unfortunately, I’ll have to open up the windows in my room [it's almost 70F here today], because my roommate decided to run the heat way, way up while I was gone. In fact, when I got upstairs, it was 30C. Ummmm … hot.

Well, I went over 1,000 miles on the odometer very early in yesterday’s trip. [Round trip mileage: 436.2 miles from the Sonic in Madison where I thought to hit the trip meter to my driveway. I'll eat the 1.5 miles or so from my house to there.] There were a couple of times—notably, pulling into leaving-Auburn-because-the-Tigers-got-whupped traffic on US 280—when I had to drop the hammer on Rita’s accelerator.

Ohmigosh.

I must say, yesterday was the easiest 8+-hour work day of the last three-and-a-half months.

Well, tomorrow promises to be fun. The last of the three massive proposals that I’ve worked since August [with one week of a "break" in between ... said break consisting of delivering one RFQ resposne and two ROM responses] finished printing [paper copies] and burning [CD-ROM] this afternoon, so we put one set into the hands of an overnight shipping company and another into my hands. Why me? Well, my Houston-based boss is an Auburn alum, and he drove over today to go to the game tomorrow. I’ll leave here around an hour before kickoff tomorrow [so as to miss all game-related traffic] and arrive around the middle of the third quarter or so with the proposal. I’ll cool my heels until the game is over, and then I’ll meet up with the boss and physically hand him the box-o’-proposal.

[We don't mess around. Another option was putting me on a plane to deliver it in person; I'd carry the proposal on and check any baggage; the proposal is more important than any clothes I might lose, y'know?]

But really … I will get paid [time and mileage] to … drive my brand new car 500 miles. Said car is not supposed to be driven aggressively for the first 1,000 miles so as to allow time for the engine to wear normally before you drop the hammer with the turbocharger and hit 6,000 RPM in second gear getting up to speed on the on-ramp. [I mean, I won't speed, but I'll get up to speed quickly.]

Oh, break my heart. You want to pay me to drive the car that I’ve not had the time or energy to drive much since two weekends ago? Oh, okay. You have to twist my arm really, really hard …
On Sunday, I’ve got church stuff, and after that’s done, I’m heading to Nashville to see MPJ and Sandra play at The Rutledge and also catch up with Joe Bassett. I rather doubt that any of my local people [that is, Rick or Jonathan] would want to go to a Sunday night show, but I’ll take riders if they want to come along.
Of course, I have to hit the ground running back on Monday. But I’m ready to cut loose a little and get out of town. My little car hasn’t left Madison County yet!

What a day.

Woke up, went to hit Pancake Pantry with Andy O. Can’t raise Andy on the phone. [No big.] See the Sunday-morning-level line outside, decide to bolt. Hit Cracker Barrel at, amusingly, the exit right by Osenga’s house. Fuel up on Southern breakfast, hit the road.

Now, the truck had been a little hard to start the last couple of days, and I was also hearing some belt squeal—but only very, very intermittently and for very short periods. No worries, really.

Around mile marker 30 on I-65 southbound, any additional current draw—such as running my wipers—drops off the XM Radio. My brain starts to think, “Alternator issues,” as I’d just had those back in August. I say to Bryan, “Okay, we’re going to take a detour on our way down. We have plenty of time, and I want to get this checked out.” He agrees, as we do have lots of time.

11:58. We past Exit 22 at Pulaski, TN. My battery light comes on. “Alternator issues, I say.” I crest the ridge past the exit. I glance at my temperature gauge. Holy shit! I hit the heater and crack my window, slowing the vehicle. It continues to spike, I pull onto the shoulder. I shut down the engine, come to a stop, and … GOOSH! Steam. Not knowing that it’s only steam, I tell Bryan to grab everything valuable and throw it in the bed of the truck, and we do. After a minute or two, it’s clearly coolant containment loss. :sigh:

I call my insurance company to have them get me a wrecker. The wrecker comes after a half-hour wait, and we get to his shop. Hearing my symptoms, the mechanic checks … no alternator belt. It clearly broke off without us noticing, which caused all the issues. How is this related to the coolant? The same belt also turns the water pump. No circ, no activce cooling, and … BLAMMO. Mechanic fixes belt, thinking that this is the only issue, and it’s just and overflow or something. [Given how it spouted steam, I thought that perhaps a hose let go.] After more work, he finds the culprit … a crack in the radiator, one that has clearly grown significantly as it has cooled. Bryan has photos.

So, when it was the belt, I thought I was home free … I’d get it fixed, take the bill to the people who just did that work 60 days ago, and demand an explanation and compensation. I’ll still be doing that, but …

New tires.
New battery.
New alternator.
New radiator.

This truck is wearing out.

I’m fixing the truck to improve its resale value [a running truck beats a non-running truck], and … I expect to not drive it more than 7-10 days longer.

The radiator wasn’t in stock in Pulaski, so the truck is there, and we rented a car and came on to Birmingham. We’re now in Cullman, having driven most of the way home so that we can have it easy in the morning. I’ll drive Bry to the airport, head in to the office, do a few things, then head back to Pulaski and settle up on the truck and get it back to Huntsville [and the rental back in under 24 hours].

:sigh: Good show, though.

Well, it’s been a fun day so far. We got out of town late [not gonna talk about that, because it's boring and confidential anyway]. Got to Nashville a little after 1:00 p.m., hit up the Osenga, met up with him, Randall Goodgame, and Jeremy Casella for lunch at Monell’s. Frankly, it’s ten hours later and I’m really not that hungry. It was … AWESOME. Family-style dining, and really good Southern food. [Thankfully, my cardiologist doesn't read this blog. And yes, Mom, I ate plenty of veggies.]

The afternoon was spent with the lovely Katy Bowser, where I shot some photos that she might end up using on her site. Good times.

After that, Bry and I met up with Casella again at Bongo Java East and shot the breeze over some coffee. I would love to encapsulate that conversation, but it was so wide-ranging that I’d never attempt it. Afterwards, Jer played some of his new disc, which is gonna own. Seriously. This is not the music that you expect from Casella.

We’ve driven around a while, but now we’ve landed at a Nashville spot for a beer with Mr. Webb. Enjoying the wireless and the company, although Derek just busted me for blogging instead of talking. [But to be fair, it was him and Bry talking until Erica called.] Crazy day, and the night is still young!

I’m fairly sure that this will be the last overnight trip I do anywhere in 2006 outside of the holidays, so I’m looking forward to it. Despite running [caedmonscall.net] for four years [and working for the band for a few months, Bryan has never been to Nashville. For shame! So, we are rectifying that situmation, heading up to Nashvegas today and down to Birmingham tomorrow to cause trouble when Derek Webb and Don Miller get together. We have the most tentative of plans, and we’re just gonna roll with it and have a great time.

Okay, time to get moving this morning…

0142 EDT, 12-Oct-2006: [mumbled] “Yeah, I’ll wake up in six hours or less, just because that’s the way my body is.”
0748 EDT, 12-Oct-2006: “Of course I’m awake. One of the few days that I’m not expected to be up early and moving, and I am.”

So I think I’m going to take a quick shower, throw my stuff together, and see if I can make it in to the 0900 teleconference that I had been given permission to skip this morning.

Well, I’m at a Ramada west of Chattanooga, most of the way back home from the ATL. Did I expect to get this far? Nope. I pulled off at three separate exits on 75 to stop, but never found anyplace open. And heck, I think this is the only hotel of the six at this exit on I-24 that had any vacancies. No matter … they have a bed, a bath, a TV, and an open wireless network.

Now we’ll see how quickly I wake up … I should be far more tired than I am right now, what with the 5 hours’ sleep of last night combined with the 4 hours’ driving yesterday and more than that today, but … well, I almost drove home in frustration. [Why not? Well, if you've ever driven US 72 between Chattanooga and Huntsville, you know that it's pretty ... rural. On an interstate corridor, I'd have regular opportunities to pull over for caffeine or hotelspace, but not on that road.]

Okay, must go to bed.

Gettin’ kinda excited to see Wilco tomorrow night. I’ve already talked myself out of bootlegging the show—ironic, given how much I trade in Wilco boots—but I know that my equipment just isn’t up to the task. That, and I want to fully enjoy one Wilco show before I start taping all the ones I hit.

I only want to go where my wheels roll … and Tuesday they carry me to Nashville and then Wednesday on to Hotlanta to see the Bruins play the Thrashers—it’s the only time they come down there this year, and well … I’d go another time if they came, given that this week is busy. [Hey Dougal?! Are you going with me or am I calling in the relief goalie? ;)]

Now I know I made a mistake, lining up all this travel at once. Ah well. I’m still under 30.

So, not only did I get a board feed for tonight’s show, but I took … 726 photos. Stunning, yes, but it’s only 2.2GB of data, and I have 8GB of storage on that card.

I think I will put the 8GB storage max to the test at the Americana Folk Festival next month…

For now, sleep. I’ll relate stories of last night’s Sufjan experience and tonight’s awesomeness when I’ve had time for it to all sink in.

[Neener.]

Let me say … I’m looking forward to seeing Sufjan Stevens tonight and Sandra McCracken tomorrow night, but … I’m very glad that I’ll have company both nights.

As soon as my laundry finishes, I’ll be heading to my parents’ house for the weekend. It’s been too long since I’ve been up there for a visit [a fact my mother frequently reminds me of, heh]. Needing something to listen to on the way up there, I’ve selected the following albums for the trip:

• Derek Webb’s Mockingbird, in honor of FREEDerekWebb.com,
• M. Ward’s Transistor Radio, which I have been enjoying this week but need to devote some undivided listening time to, and
• Matthew Perryman Jones’s Throwing Punches in the Dark, which is definitely becoming one of my favorite albums of the year.

If you’re wondering why music and not my XM Radio, well … today is the beginning of college football season, and I pretty much hate college football.

IMG_6307.JPG

Originally uploaded by gfmorris.

I’ve been remiss in posting about photos I’ve taken at concerts recently … I took a whackload of photos on Tuesday night, and these are the ones that I liked enough to post. This is probably one of my favorites: I was seated maybe a foot back from the stage—no really, that’s me with the camera (photo courtesy Andrew Osenga)—so I was able to leverage having an f1.8/50 mm.

Mmmm … depth of field.

[Okay, so all the real photographers who read IJSM are undoubtedly laughing at me and shaking their heads. Dammit, Jim, I'm an engineer, not a photographer!]

Anyhow … been shooting more, having fun doing it, and generally loving it.

Last night was the first in a series of three straight Square Peg Alliance shows at the Radio Cafe in Nashville. Saturday, Caedmon’s plays MSMSMUW, and Rick and I (and maybe Jon!) are going.

I think this trumps last year’s Eight Days of Awesome.

“Your Nissan is really going to hate you.” — Chris, after I told him the trip I had planned.

He was right. I was just 15-20 miles from home when the right front blew on my truck. Someone had absconded with my spare [again! ... time to take action], so I had to call a wrecker. Thankfully, I found one 1) in my area and 2) going my way, so I was towed into Huntsville, where I got four new tires. [I was close on needing new ones, but they looked okay before I left on the trip. I was planning for this trip to be their end-of-life. Heh.] I’ll start calling about a spare tomorrow at the town junkyards.

The total mileage was something over 1070 miles, not counting the 10 miles or so of the tow.

Pardon me, but I need a really long shower and a beer…