It’s been a week. Not an awful week, aside from a couple of long work days and one bout of near crippling insomnia the night before I had an important meeting in DC (still nailed it, btw), but a week, largely dedicated to stacking the deck to make the next couple of weeks flow more smoothly in lots of different areas. Could’ve been worse, all told.

Friday’s a work from home day this week, which is nice, given the weather – I don’t expect this tropical storm to seriously derail us, but it’s raining an awful lot, and that makes the commute a pain. Already had a couple of rainy ones this week, and I wasn’t looking forward to another.

One thing that made the week’s driving go more smoothly though was my choice of soundtrack. I’d blown through my audiobooks, and the local library branch was totally picked over when I hit it this week, so I plugged my mp3 player into the dash (I can do that now, thanks to my new head unit…yay) and caught up with several hours of Mikey Mason’s Beer Powered Time Machine podcast. Mikey characterizes it as “a celebration of good beer, storytelling, and personal histories”, which it certainly is. On one of the social networks this week, I described my experience with it as follows:

so, I finally started really catching up with Mikey Mason’s “Beer Powered Time Machine” podcast this week, and I’m wondering what the hell took me so long. It’s a celebration of storytelling – with beer – and perfectly captures the comfortable feeling of sitting around a table or up against the brass rail with friends, old and new, sharing experiences – it’s the best lubrication for getting the wheels of nostalgia and memory turning short of actually being there – it filled yesterday’s time behind the wheel with lots of pleasant memories. Thanks, Mikey – keep ’em coming!

And I stand by that description. It had me laughing, thinking, reflecting, and creating a list of “beers I gotta try” all week, and I look forward to more. I highly recommend it.

Otherwise – nothing pressing this weekend. There’s talk of music tonight, maybe, and there’s potential music tomorrow if driving a little ways seems like I good idea, and music early on Sunday morning. Otherwise, I’ll probably do laundry, make kids clean up messes, take care of the shopping, and maybe finish Arrested Development. But for now, tunes:

1. “Classy Girls” – The Lumineers
2. “Hey Jude” – The Beatles
3. “Feeling The Pull” – The Swell Season
4. “Horse To Water” – REM
5. “Lay Your Hands On Me” – Bon Jovi
6. “A Different Kind of Fun” – Earth To Bob
7. “Cantina” – Voltaire
8. “That’s Just What You Are” – Aimee Mann
9. “Let’s go Crazy” – Prince + The Revolution
10. “White Highway” – Saraya

And in case none of those struck your fancy, here’s a bird singing the theme to My Neighbor Totoro:

Also, you should totally check out today’s xkcd…