hey hey, a Non-Gig Day

this has been a very normal non-gig day, so here's a snapshot:

today involved delicous eggs & sausage & coffee, NPR, emailing for a few hours, locating a bank of america, locating a place to park tonight, checking the weather for the next few (heavy driving) days, paying bills, finalizing lyrics for the first song on the new EP, practicing Hedwig songs for Saturday's show, driving to Atlanta, brick & mortar banking, turkey sandwiches, some booking, a couple of phone calls, practicing new LF songs, acquainting myself with new Facebook homepage, and finally more coffee, so we can stay up for about 24 hours to get on track for the next few days of shows. (our sleep schedule gets so whacky on non-gig days, like we stay up way too long and then sleep way too long, in normal proportions, but just for much longer durations. it's partly luxuriously freeing and partly annoying.)

here's a good glimpse into the world of RV living via a few of our homepages:

1) Bank of America locations - we operate on a cash economy, playing bars and clubs and small venues at night and turning around and immediately finding a bank into which to put this cash. we need a bank that has locations everywhere we go and discovered quickly that our old regional bank was insufficient for this task, so we've been chasing down Banks of America ever since. (Chase isn't in the south, National City/PNC isn't lots of places, US Bank is around but often in podunk towns off the beaten path that costs us money to track down. etc. So, Bank of America it is.)

2) Google Maps - this is useful for everything from finding clubs and flying j's for propane/dump stations to calculating mileage between shows to zooming in on the satellite image of a location to check out the parking situation. this has saved us a few headaches. so after we find the bank, we make sure we can park there, which we usually can't, so we often have to find the nearest parking lot with 5 empty spaces in a row, which isn't always easy. But it is always fun.

3) Post Office locations - we mail tour posters from the road, in addition to CDs, so we're always hunting for blue collection boxes. even when you have an address, it's often like finding a needle in a haystack (or a blue box nestled somewhere along a sprawling shopping mall).

4) NOAA weather - always always always checking for 3 things: 1) temps below freezing? 2) precipitation? 3) wind direction and speed? Wind is a huge deal in an RV. Gas mileage is affected strongly by head wind vs. tail wind (will we get 10 mpg or 7 mpg?). and it can definitely get worse. our first winter, wind ripped the awning off the side of the RV while we were driving down the highway, and lifted it over the RV, acting like a huge god-awful sail and bashing our A/C cover to pieces until we could pull over onto the crusty ice-covered emergency lane so that David could climb onto the roof and saw off the remainder in a sub-zero blustery death swirl of an afternoon.

5) email - duh. booking shows is 80% of my life.