Ok, so all of my utility services are set up to be stopped after I leave and I will spend the day packing up everything to load in the car and drive away from Los Angeles to Kansas City at about 6:30am (about first light) Friday March 27, arriving on Monday March 30. I will leave exactly as I came, with all of my "essentials of life" stuff packed in my car - well, OK, all my OTHER HOUSE FULL O' STUFF is in a POD waiting to ship to KC after I find a house - and this time my dog Django will travel with me. "Essentials" on this trip are about 5-6 of my main guitars, a small Marshall combo 30 watt amp, a Bogner Goldfinger amp head, a KK Audio 1x12 speaker cabinet, a flatscreen TV, an iMac computer, a rolling lawyer style book bin, a brief case, a suitcase and a clothes bag with "work clothes" including a tuxedo - more sophisticated than last time, but pretty much the same "what you need to work" thing. That makes sense, as I am going to a new town to do exactly what I did as a 22 year old kid coming into LA years ago.

On my way to meeting my niece Laura for lunch yesterday I headed down Hollywood Blvd by the old (but now updated) Snow White Coffee Shop where I - and probably so many other MI students - had their first meal in LA waiting to get into the school. I must have screamed "I'm from out of town" all over me because some guy there said "So, when did you get to town", and after telling him everything I was going to do here, he said "Yeah, you'll get laid back like everyone else here" - actually, that never really happened, my external "Mr. Intense" persona did dial down a bit but under the hood the drive to do things never went away.

I remember that on my way to LA, just as I was driving across the desert as the sun was setting (where I found out "for purple mountains majesty" was not just the lyrics of a song), this song came on my crappy AM radio in my beat up Ford Maverick, "Deacon Blues", supposedly Steely Dan's treatise on LA life - "Learn to work the saxophone, I'll play just what I feel" - that was what I was coming to do on my instrument, and I did accomplish that purpose and met and played with some of the best of the best musicians in the world. Ernie Watts' sax solos still totally get me, and this is prefect cruising music with the little "popping" single note guitar parts at the end:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52EeVLOeM0w

One of my dad's old jokes seems to apply: As the monkey said when he got his tail caught in the lawnmower, “It won’t be long now” - so fair thee well all, 

This is (I think) a comma and not a period on LA for me, but I am sure that when I do come back, I will be changed and for the better.