Dude, I Got A Dell!

And it's about fucking time.

First off, please allow me to apologize for the long time since my last post. What has it been, six or seven weeks? As usual, things have just been weird for me. And every time that I thought I was getting close to getting the laptop I really needed (hey, you schlep around a desktop in a big ol' plastic container from gig to gig and find out how much fun it is), only for circumstances to change and something more important to come along, something that needed to be paid for right there and now.

And for this last trip I've been on, It had seemed to me that I was on the same old road. Three nights at the CVI, then a few days with my friends Jeremy and Alison. Then a week at Carson Station, followed by a week staying at the Nugget in Sparks, starting with Christmas Day, while playing New Year's Eve at Casino Fandango in Carson City. Then I found myself a sudden lack of options all of a sudden. My father had been calling me, telling me that he wanted to come down to Reno for a visit after New Year's Eve, and that he wanted me to stay with him while he was there. Then he got the urge to replace the futon in his living room with a proper couch, and I was left out in the cold - literally.

My only other option was to call my stepdaughter Michelle, and set up my old pop-up trailer, which had been sitting behind her house in Sun Valley. I had propane for a small heater, and was able to string along enough cords to be able to run some electricity into the trailer for a TV and my Xbox 360. And it turned out to not be such a bad idea. It never really got that cold - it's been a very, very mild winter in Reno, so much so that I actually found myself sweating in my trailer during the days.

And then there was the hunt for a laptop. Michelle recommended to me a place called New2U Computers in Sparks. My first visit there was only productive in that I found out what day they normally got laptops in, which was today. So this morning, I got up early, broke down the trailer as fast as I could, then got over to Sparks ASAFP to see what New2U had. Five minutes and $115 later, I had a Dell Inspiron 6100 laptop in my possession. It's nowhere near new (it runs XP Pro, for fuck's sake), but it actually has more horsepower than Joy's laptop (2GB vs. 1GB on Joy's), though the 80GB hard-drive is positively dinky these days. But it's what I needed, and I'm more than happy with it so far.

And now the trip is officially winding down. As I write this, I'm ensconced in my hotel room at Boomtown in the town of Verdi, just west of Reno by a few miles. It's not on the California border, but I can see it from my window. And there's a Cabela's just down the street from here, which is always good for a visit, and maybe a purchase or two, depending on what kind of outdoorsy stuff I might need. Boomtown is just a weekender, and it's my first time playing here. I'll be giving it my best, and hopefully they'll want us back again, and hopefully for more than just two nights....