Hi. Welcome to Monday morning. It’s not the best Monday morning, though really, I haven’t had a terribly great Monday morning in a while. I think that’s kind of the white-collar working-stiff bureaucrat default, though, so I’m not worried about that.

I am, however, still kind of worried about the shutdown business, even if the media’s kind of clammed up about it. Nothing of substance has happened since I talked about it on Friday, other than a bunch of talking heads on the Sunday morning shows expressing confidence that a shutdown won’t happen (as if they’d say anything else), but nobody’s moved on anything, and nobody, as far as I can tell, has scheduled any votes on anything yet (and as Monday’s traditionally a congresscritter travel day, nothing much is going to happen today except perhaps more bloviating). That leaves them with effectively two days to pass something, which doesn’t inspire much confidence, in either me, or the other of other federal employee acquaintance I’ve spoken to over the weekend while out and about – we’re both girding for at least a couple of days off without pay.

There was nothing on the newscasts this morning; today’s approved “big story” is that stuff at the UN, which is hardly minor, but you’ll forgive me if I’m focusing my attention on the stuff that hits a little closer to home right now. The best I think we can hope for at this point is that Boehner’s last-minute resignation announcement bought a bit of time (the Republicans in congress engineering the possible shutdown really don’t like their more establishment leader); his leaving might have been a compromise to buy a stopgap resolution funding things for a few weeks; kicking the can down the road to December or so, where, if a more conservative type gets the speakership, this crap will all go down again the first week or two of December…Merry Christmas.

So, that brings us to today. I’ve got a heck of a lot of stress built up, both from the uncertainty, plus some extra from paying bills this weekend, with a little extra effort to set things up in case I end up not getting paid for the next month or so, and instituting a few budgetary measures to ride things out (there are things we can do without at least temporarily); hopefully it will be unnecessary, but the Eagle Scout in me still believes in “Be Prepared.”

So, that’s where I am with this. I wish I could just let some things go and not worry so much about it, but that’s the way things go. I’ll get through it, logically I know that, but I kind of hate being a pawn in a political fight. I’ll just keep watching the news, trying not to speculate too much, and just ride this out; there’s really absolutely nothing else I can do.

In the meantime, I’ll enjoy the righteous WTF from wonkette in this piece from Saturday which describes the circumstances of this shutdown business pretty well, using some interestingly crafted colorful language.