Drums

It was a big day for my drum kit yesterday. I went up to Memphis Drum Shop in the morning and got a new hi-hat stand and a new seat (have I mentioned before how much I hate calling it a "throne"?). So finally took care of that set of broken/missing things. Then after Mary Beth and I ran our errands, I took a look at the snare (the switch turning the snares off hadn't worked in a while). I took it apart and found a screw loose inside the casing so I screwed it back in place and I fixed that! Then a little later I fixed the cymbal stand that's been broken for practically forever! (Pretty sure since well before I moved in here, even.) The solution is something that almost doesn't even feel possible. I just switched two of the wing nuts from different sections. But what I think it came down to was a combination of two confounding factors in the place it was broken. I think something is broken in the internal mechanism that clenches it tighter so the hardware just doesn't close in naturally like it's supposed to. Then I think the wing nut is stripped a little bit. I noticed that it tightens just fine if the upper part of the stand is taken out so there's no resistance. But as soon as it's in and it hits the resistance it just starts spinning and not tightening. So putting the slightly stripped wing nut on a section that does get tight like it's supposed to and putting a wing nut that isn't stripped in the part that's kinda broken solves the problem, that's my theory anyway. And yeah, it's fixed for now. So my drums are in the best shape they've been in for a damn long time! I went up to Two Rivers for Heather's birthday thingie. There wasn't anyone else I knew so it was slightly awkward. I mean, not too bad. I was in good form (for me, which means I occasionally broke silence and cracked a joke that people laughed at). Heather gave me a good idea about this upcoming planned show I keep putting off (because I thought I'd like to collaborate with a local sci-fi writer...and of course I don't actually know any). But she made me think of her collection of vintage books, so I ended up buying a few for this: Binary Divine by Jon Hartridge, Tomorrow Is Too Far by James White, and The Transvection Machine by Edward H. Hoch. So let's home these offer some good material for a bleep-accompanied reading (they were all picked based solely on cover and fitting into a nice late-60s early-70s sci-fi aesthetic and the hopes that they'll have some nice technological speak, we shall see). Other than that, sleep and now I'm awake and yeah.