"Do You Ever Forget.....

...it happens to me." - Ron White

Another long journey is in the books, and I'm in my hotel room at the Carson Valley Inn again. Before I go to set up and soundcheck, I take a quick mental inventory of my things and find out what I forgot at home. Joy always tells me to make checklists, and while I know I should, I kinda resent that idea. To me, it's kinda like surrendering to my wife's habit of micromanaging (which after her years as a bureaucrat, will likely never fully disappear). But I should start using a checklist. She does have my best interests in mind, after all.

But the fog of war, as Clausewitz described it, is all-powerful. I always manage to forget something, no matter how often I check and recheck things manually. This time around, I forgot my mp3 player. It's nice to have it when I go for a walk, and very useful to kill time while setting up and tearing down. But its' headphones are the most useful for me, as those are used every night onstage, as I use them for my monitors, coming up from my little mixing board. So much better than a big clunky speaker right next to me that can be awfully loud onstage because I absolutely need to hear it over my drums.

But I'm not that worried. I have the Sennheiser over-the-ear-headphone that I use for my computer, they'll do. I prefer in-ear monitoring, but big 'phones are better than nothing at all. That's why I bought them in the first place. But they never fit right on my head, over the Sennheiser headset mic that's finally getting repaired by my old pal Leo at Strait Music in Port Angeles. So I went to earbuds, and the rest is history.

And I need to buy some rice for my foodbox. A small sewing kit, because the front button on my camouflage shorts popped off at a bathroom stall in the Guitar Center in Tacoma. And I seem to have only brought three pair of socks - I coulda sworn I'd thrown more into my duffel bag....

It never ends, does it?