I had off work for a whole week this week, which hasn’t happened in a while. It was nice. I played a bunch of music with friends — Teavolve and Ledbetters open mics on Monday, Jen on Friday afternoon, and Dave Huber today and lots in my living room.

DT Huber and band (including yours truly on the left) playing at the Baltimore Folk Festival.

Dave Huber had some exciting news: His release, Scorched Earth, was named one of City Paper’s Top 10 for 2013. Pretty cool! And I see some names on the list I can really recommend to folk music lovers, too, like June Star, the Kolodners (Brad runs the old time jam in Baltimore), and Her Fantastic Cats. I played mandolin on Scorched Earth, and Dave has really been a pleasure to work with over the past year.

Weeeooooh! I’m a guitar!

I’ve also been designing a new circuit for a friend as part of the secret santa “PIFmas” (PIF = pay it forward) thing on the Build Your Own Clone. The present I got from someone else was seriously cool: A cigar box guitar!

I haven’t actually taken a “vacation” in the past couple years. Most of the time the only reason I take time off work is to record. This year I took two: Lexa and I went to San Francisco in October, and this week was a staycation. Traveling was kind of stressful, but staying at home was pretty nice.

So, onward, I guess. I have a couple projects to finish, and I’m hoping to make some more time for writing soon. February’s just around the corner, and this year’s February project will be extra fun.