Last night my band had a gig. I worked all day beforehand because although I have a generous amount of vacation time per year, I don't have enough to take a half day before each Friday night engagement.
When I got home, I was already rather tired. It would help a lot if I'd eat better and get some exercise, but I couldn't turn my entire life around in two hours so I just ate a light-ish dinner and hoped that would give me enough energy to get by.
From the get-go, I had a couple of problems. My mic stand fell over in the parking lot as I was unloading gear and of course it broke. I got through the night with it duct taped, but it's going to have to go in the trash. A new one like it will cost me most of what I earned last night. Grrr.
My second issue was wardrobe-related. The jeans I had on were too loose around the waist and I kept having to hike them up all night. I'm sure it was very noticeable, but there was nothing I could do about it. I actually considered looking to see if I had an instrument cable in my bag that would be short enough to tie around my waist in lieu of a belt, but decided against it.
On the plus side, I was delighted that seven of my Twitter buddies came out to hear us play: @jeffisageek, @kayhaswings, @wrytir, @digitaltiger, @SysAdmKC, @banky and @thundabolt. That made the evening a lot of fun. You can see some of @wrytir's photos here.
It was (theoretically) our last night with my husband on drums and I thought we sounded pretty decent. The only problem was that we were all equally tired and I could feel our energy level dipping from the third set on. It didn't help that a lot of the crowd left toward the end of that set. Once the bar gets kind of empty and you're tired, too, it's hard to maintain much in the way of a show.
Still, we soldiered on and made it through until 1:00 a.m. As always, we packed up our gear quickly and went straight home. I think I was asleep within 15 minutes of walking through the door.
Our next gig (so far) is April 17th, which also happens to be my husband's birthday. He's taken the evening off from his other band so he can come and hang out at our gig. If all goes well with our new drummer, at least he won't have to play.
It's become very obvious to me that I need to get in better shape if I'm going to continue belting out rock songs and hopping around on stage. An extra 25+ pounds of body weight and poor aerobic conditioning make the whole thing much more difficult than it needs to be. Here's hoping I can 30-Day Shred myself into better rock form before summer. Maybe then I'll need a belt for my skinny jeans!
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