Gig Report- Week ending 10/9/05

Whooft. That's an expression of exhaustion.
Thursday, I performed a little known trick of "double-dipping"... two gigs in one day. I was on the audio crew with the stagehand union for the load-in and set up of "42nd St", part of the Broadway series at Memorial Auditorium in Chattanooga. Got done there at 1pm, drove as quick as I safely could in the pouring down rain to get back up to Lee University to do another set up in the Dixon Center for the Presidential Concert Series for Rockapella. Finished that show up and drove back to Chattanooga to take out "42nd St", all 4 52' trailers worth.

Saturday, drove to University of the South to do a wierd combination: Oteil and the Peacemakers, and Futureman.
Gigs on CST screw me up, I didn't get home until 4:30am EST and the rest of my Sunday was spent recovering.

I've come home late from a job many times. Awake till the "wee hours of the morning" just goes with territory. But the older I get the more my body hurts the next day. I'm not talking about injuries that happen because of dropped roadcases, falling off a stage (although I did do that one already), or even the occasional knee scrape or finger jam. What I'm talking about is just more of an overall bodyache, those tired headaches you get whenever you get up and you've missed coffee hour and you're disoriented because you're trying to decide what's for breakfast and your wife and kids have already had lunch and are laying down for afternoon nap. Then when they're getting ready for bed that night it only feels like mid-afternoon to you, so you stay up too late and then repeat the whole cycle...blah, blah, blah.

I enjoy being a sound engineer. I love doing the job, and I need the work for extra income. But sometimes I wonder if I have physical limits that will catch up to me. That's why I'm always looking for those "get rich quick" solutions. So I can then do only the stuff that interests me... instead of, you know, a job.

Perhaps I should explain...

Poker is another in a long string of money-making hobbies. A couple of years ago, I broke my knee by falling off of stage. (A whole other story). While laid up around the house for a month, I watched the 2003 World Series of Poker broadcast on ESPN about 12 times in a row. The depiction of Chris Moneymaker, an Everyman from Nashville/Knoxville, was inspiring to thousands, including me, to take up the game that has been around for centuries. I started playing online, and after 6 months of practice parlayed a $1 satellite tournament to a $25 seat, which I won, to the tune of about $1300 in real money. I've been trying to recreate that feat ever since.