Cue the usual refrain: “It’s been a hell of a week”. Yeah, I know, I always say that. This time, my extenuating circumstances include the previously alluded to financial stresses (thankfully abated now), the lack of a washing machine for most of the week (now also corrected), and the lingering not-quite-sick layover after having a […]

Today, based on the fact that all my regular meetings are cancelled and my email box is full of reminders, I am working through all my annual online refresher training modules; all part of life in the public sector. First on the docket is the annual anti-terrorism refresher training, which remains pretty much the same […]

To all you folks who marched all over the country (and perhaps the world – I think my net might actually cast that far these day) this weekend, I just want to say how proud and honored I am to know and love you. You’re good people. We chose not to appear in person this […]

Good morning, such as it is. Hasn’t really been so far, except that it hasn’t killed me yet, despite at least one earnest attempt. Stay tuned. I originally said I wasn’t going to belabor the issue of what’s happening today a couple of hours north of me. I then proceeded to add my couple of […]

So, that’s another Marscon down. As always, I had a good time, catching up with friends, making music, and generally engaging in the nerd love-in for a couple of days. the energy this year was, according to pretty much all concerned, weird, though no unified theory as to why really emerged. For the second year […]

Once again, since I’ll be busy packing and traveling for the regional nerd social event of the year tomorrow, here’s the playlist a day early. It’s been a weird week; started out covered by seven inches of snow, but with temperatures in the 60s the last two days, it’s all gone. The kids go back […]

Okay folks, this weekend is kind of the weekend I live for every year. Marscon, a weekend celebration of sci-fi, fantasy, general nerd stuff, and, as has become the tradition of the last half-decade or so, music. Once again, for the fourth year running, I’m playing bass with The Blibbering Humdingers all weekend. Back in […]

I’m not entirely sure what it is, though I’m having serious doubts today. Not to get too specific, but work is especially frustrating, and not just in the “why the hell don’t they plow my parking lot” kind of way. For the last year, my team’s been analyzing the shit out of things and generating […]

So I spent most of the weekend hanging about the house thanks to the seven or so inches of snow that blanketed the RVA over the weekend. It was kinda nice, mostly. I ventured out on Sunday afternoon for a necessary trek to obtain prescription depression medication, tampons, chocolate and Pamprin, to which the pleasant […]

All told, it’s been as tolerable a first week back in the real world as one could reasonably expect. There were, as there always are, challenges (figuring out where the hell we left off at the office), weirdness (kitchen fixtures showing up in decidedly not kitchen places, for example), non-sequitir (I have been served so […]