So, if you’ve talked to me in the last week (don’t worry, there haven’t been many of you), you might have heard me talk about the potential government shutdown. It’s a pain in the ass, dick-measuring contest fighting over where approximately .0037% of the federal government’s spending goes (and it’s over whether women have access to health care for their lady parts, because of course it is) championed by relative handful of grandstanding blowhards who don’t know how government works (several of whom are running for the Republican presidential nomination). I won’t argue that there’s a place to discuss what sort of things ought to get government funding, but that place isn’t a routine procedural vote over whether the government is allowed to pay the bills it’s already committed to paying (one of those bills being my salary for the work I do in pushing federal electrons around).

I was hoping we’d head this business off, but things, at this point, aren’t looking great. A couple of things happened today that have me bracing a bit, and generally being glad I’m not currently behind on any bills:

♦- This morning I got the first official acknowledgement from senior management that this might be happening, including an official memo from the office of my senior-senior management (somebody with “Secretary” in front of their name) talking about contingency plans, and to stay tuned for guidance if this doesn’t settle down in the next couple of days, and…

♦- The surprise headline this morning of Speaker of the House John Boehner abruptly announcing his retirement from both congress and his leadership position.

To elaborate on this a bit: Speaker Boehner and I don’t agree on a lot, but the guy is an old-school public servant, understands the need to balance political grandstanding and reasonable compromise with the other guys to get the actual work of government done, which is an attitude I can respect. He’s been one of the lone voices of reason holding back the complete tidal wave of crazy rolling in from the far right Tea Party types who don’t understand basic civics, and think that shutting down the government (for the second time in three years) over relative pennies is a strong moral victory that will earn them support and power. I’m kind of the opinion that Speaker Boehner, after yesterday finally presiding over a Papal address to a joint session (one of this big bucket list goals), and a private audience with Pope Francis, he finally decided that the stress of governing when your caucus can’t be moved to reason or rational discourse just wasn’t worth it anymore, and decided he’s out.

I think I can respect that move; he did the best with what he had for a long time, and has decided that he’s done dealing with this shit. I hope Mr. Boehner enjoys retirement or interesting speaking gigs and stuff in the future.

Of course, I can’t really see this move as a vote of confidence that a budget will get passed and ratified and I’ll be coming into work on Thursday like usual.

As lukewarm as I am on my job sometimes, I like having the opportunity to do it (my team’s on the verge of affecting some real nuts and bolts savings to the government, maybe more than the kind of money they’re threatening to shut things down over, ammortized over a year or three, which feels good), and get paid for it. Getting locked out of the office for an undetermined amount of time where I won’t get paid (with more uncertainty over whether I might make that money back – even if that’s what usually happens) doesn’t exactly play well with my stress levels. It actually also costs the government billions in waste and idleness, and makes life inconvenient for all kinds of people who depend on public services.

So yeah, I’m not feeling awesome about my immediate future. Here’s hoping things work out better than they did two years ago (although that sorted itself out, kinda).

And because I promised a breakdown (besides the stress one in the previous paragraphs), here’s a “Foggy Mountain” one, brought to you by the Stray Cats, because why the hell not?