As of right now this minute, as I sit here on the laptop, all four of us are crammed into Jason's office at Skid, working out the last details of the technology side of communication for the band on this tour. We have a twitter account now. We can each post to it, with our initials I guess. So, if you guys REALLY want to know exactly how drunk Mike and Jason get when we're on tour, you can read up on it. Don't mind me, I'll stick to laptops.

Mike says not to advertise his semi-alcoholic ways. Heh.

We have our first show on Saturday and hit the road on Monday. Skid is ... well lets just say that while I know Craig hasn't bitten off more than he can chew, I've never seen more musicians looking like ... we wish that corporate execs handled the business side of things. It's not how it works here, but still. We're all a little glassy-eyed. The guys in Sinful rolled into town tonight and we all went to dinner. A bunch of aging musicians sitting around a crappy tex-mex place, all joking that maybe we should have gone into accounting.

Seriously, we all love our jobs. The respect we get from our record company I think fuels respect for one another. But we're all a little bit shell shocked right now. We've all done festival tours but ...

... okay, I'm repeating myself.

But seriously, as I'm sitting here and only paying half attention to decisions that are being made for me (what did I just agree to do?) I can't help but just worry.

My oldest son's health has never been ideal. While in remission, his doctors have warned his mother and me that we should never get too comfortable, that the leukemia could come back at any time. So leaving him for an extended period of time freaks me the hell out. All I need is one text message from my wife telling me that Jo's had a bloody nose and I go nuts. And we're on tour most of the summer and then hitting South America and Europe and Asia and possibly even parts of the Middle East in the fall and then probably some small series of dates throughout the winter. (That's still do be decided.) I can't help but worry. Incessantly.

(I think I just agreed to something else ...)

But I'm looking forward to this tour. When not doing festival dates, we've got side trips planned. This album is doing SO well and people are reacting just wonderfully to it. They love that we've gone heavy again, they love that we're screaming our lungs out again. I think, almost seven years after losing Marc, the fans have finally, really accepted that we continued on. They're truly embracing Phil, which is good for ALL of us. The last set of dates we did were fantastic. Packed houses, venues that begged us to move so they could accommodate more people, and more young kids than ever before staring up at us. It's nice knowing we're still relevant. At the last show of the last leg of this 2009 series of tours, this kid, no more than fifteen came up to me and told me that "We meant more to his metal world than Metallica." Being good friends with the guys whose fans used to threaten to beat us up if we didn't get off the stage so their gods could perform .... I was humbled. Very humbled. And then called them to brag. ;-)

Okay, I think I'd better log off this thing before I agree to one more thing that I just won't remember tomorrow.

Someone remind me to stock up on aspirin and red bull, would ya?