Final party for the job was sad and fun. Lots of tears. I got the pics back this week and they captured a lot of the moment.

Spent this week and the Fourth of July in Kansas. A true Heart of America kind of day. Since I had the free time Mark and I drove up together. Great little town in the corner of the state. Enjoyed barbeque and beer in the afternoon at the home of friends of friends. Shot a potato gun for the first time and I loved the POWER!

Party in the park through the afternoon and blues festival. All fun and good and hot. Most interesting thing about this little town: Fireworks are not illegal within the city limits. Is there any city in the country that still allows fireworks? Big ones were going off in every direction all through the night. Strings of Black Cats exploding ten feet away while bottle rockets zoomed by. Kind of unnerving but fun too. Their city fireworks display was beautiful and huge and, amazingly, did not include "God Bless the USA" by Lee Greenwood.

The glamorous life of the road musicians is not one for me. I've eaten so much fast food in the car this week that I'm sweating grease. Thursday we had to dash down from Kansas to be in Tyler for the gig there. Lots of family on hand, which was nice.

Spent the night there in a "nice" hotel as opposed to just "clean" in Kansas. Wonderful to sleep on good sheets, with good pillows. Wish we could have had more time to enjoy it.

Up early again today to be back in Austin for tonight's gig, which I will pass on. I will recuperate at home.

Uncle Jay is very sick and in the ICU in Oklahoma. It's been a hard week for their family with their boys all trying to come from Africa and south Texas (what a combo) to be by his side. His and Aunt Louie's 50th anniversary was July 4. I heard she bought all the yellow roses the WalMart had and arranged them in his room and celebrated their anniversary. She said "one of us slept through it." How sad to see your husband dying any time but especially on what should be such a joyous day.

Possible job offer on the way this week. I'm not going to get my hopes up.