Rip!

So last night I was downstairs putting the finishing touches on the long-procrastinated reskinning of Nancy’s drum. The new ring weld held up fine, and retying the ring loops turned to be much easier than I’d expected. There really wasn’t much left to do with it; I’ve already got it tuned up, and it sounds pretty good — mostly I was just tidying up as an excuse to admire my own work, and feeling pretty good about things in general.

Then I turned around and saw my own drum on the other side of the room. You know, the brand new one I just got, the professional quality one that after years of learning I finally decided I was worthy of. The one I’ve played maybe a dozen times so far; it’s that new. Yep, that’s a big ol’ tear right across the head. Must have been tuned too high, or the skin was flawed, or there’s been enough temperature variation in the room overnight to cause the skin to snap in half.

If this is the universe trying to tell me something, I don’t think I like the message.