Wow. What a difference a day can make. I will get to that, but in the meantime I will start like I was going to on Tuesday but never got around to completing.

Have had 2 weeks to unwind since getting back from the ETB summer tour. A week here at Tim and Tracey's, then spent most of last week in Corpus Christi seeing my family with Triniti. Went camping at the beach, caught a 22" redfish, saw the play 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee which my sister's BF is directing, and I wound up being in -- they have a few people from the crowd fill in as participants. I correctly spelled "Hedonophobia", heh. Tho while down there I felt weirdly distracted and occasionally irritable, it was a really good visit all around.

Got back to Austin and felt OK, so far so good dealing with being back in the civilian world. No hardcore PTSD like few years ago when I got back from 10 weeks on the road with The Mother Truckers and my brain literally could not wrap itself around how long I had been gone. Few days after that a really deep depression sank in that was hard to deal with. But that popped like a bubble when the Truckers went into to the studio to cut a track on break before heading back out again.

So Monday I restrung both of my guitars in prep to work on some Ocean of Stars gigs. That night went to see our friend Ric Furley and my bro Tank (didn't know he was playing as well, and even invited him to the gig, heh!) play with Ric Hornyak (unbeknownst to me, Tank's old Dealers bandmate). But then the fatigue kicked in. Hard. No energy, no motivation, was wondering if I was coming down with something. Felt like I was moving through molasses. Played guitar for several hours on Tuesday, which helped while I was playing, but soon as I stopped the balloon instantly deflated. Finally tried calling the doc to try to schedule an appointment, maybe the tour had taken a bigger toll on my health and should get some bloodwork done just in case... but 12 minutes on hold and I gave up.

Next day Triniti had her weekly Reiki trade with tattoo artist Karen Slafter. Only this time they both did Reiki on me. And holy shit, the effect was immediate and profound. Whatever they did totally situated my energy situation, and soon as they were done I sat up and Karen said "Your eyes look brighter!" Understatement of the year. It was like I was back to my old self, and I felt better than I had before I LEFT on that crazy summer-long tour. We ran out of there, grabbed lunch, and made quick work of the to-do list of errands. We got back and I continued to work, calling DR and talking string endorsement. Then mixed down the second half of "House of Leaves", my crazy 20-minute RPM Challenge epic. Then started editing pics for an EPK to send to DR.

This morning no different. We both woke up and immediately got to work on our computers for several hours. I was looking into online EPK sites, looks like they are all pay-to-use. Looked into CD printing and found some more cost-effective ways to pass on to Magnetic Eye Recs. May be calling them on the way to ETB gig in San Angelo tomorrow.

I'll be spending my birthday this year coming back from Lubbock TX. Last year was in Denmark with The Mother Truckers. Year before that I was in Birmingham AL teching for King's X. Awesome!

Cannot get over how much better I feel. Just, wow.