We'll see my grandmother and more importantly she'll see her great grandson.  He says her name on our weekly iChat sessions and already knows to ask her to "fix fried cheeken!  so so 'liscious!"  It makes her light up when he does that.  The kid can work the old ladies.  No clue where he got that.

Time with my mom will be good too.  Her visits to our place are great, but it's injecting the visit into my normal routine.  It'll be nice to break out of that and talk a bit.  Good stuff.

The downside will be the roughly three hour flight each way.  The Dude is two and he's proud to show it.  He's the kid I don't want to sit near on the airplane.  But he looks like me.  It will be three stressful hours of making sure Elmo plays on my laptop and keeping things from being thrown all over the fucking place.  Then again, it's something new and he might mellow out for that.  Point is, I hate flying and that's bad enough.  Now we have a wild card.  Meh.  I'll live.

I'm also hoping that a week off will reduce the level of char currently coating my psyche.  I've been a little too close to the fire lately and probably needed a week off a month ago.  Such is life.

Getting ready to force a pile of tunes on the world.  Watch this space for more.

Cooler weather means the return of garage time and instrument building.  I will finish a guitar before the end of the year.  Hopefully, it won't suck.  Hey, on that topic, am I the only one who likes a really minimalist guitar looks-wise?  In an acoustic guitar, I'd like something mellow on the headstock, a simple woodgrain rosette, and that's about it.  I don't like inlays on the fretboard or any kind of position markers.  Simple, simple, simple.  Reading my guitar porn of choice (The Fretboard Journal) makes me feel like I'm the only one in the world who doesn't want an instrument that draws more eyes than ears.

And that's all we have time for today...