I suspect this is kind of the usual refrain here, but this has been a rough week. I think this comes up here more often because feelings of despondence tend to trickle out through my fingers onto the interwebs. If I’m feeling good, I’m less in my head, enjyoing the moment. Anyway, I struggled a bit. I suspect some of it had to do with the birthday, which, for any number of reasons I won’t get into here, was tough. As usual, it was kind of low-key, which I usually appreciate. However, maybe because of the completely arbitrary geek connotations of this particular year, maybe I wanted a bigger to-do and simply didn’t realise it; I dunno. I’ve been a little adrift and feeling lonely lately, and that’s feeding into the funk I’m feeling.

That, and I actually gave up on the “um” count this week after I crossed over 75 instances in the first 20 minutes. Ouch.

Also, I’ve done myself a couple of minor injuries in the last week that have kind of annoyed me. Out for a lunchtime Pokemon walk earlier this week, I tripped over a gap in the sidewalk and twisted my ankle (apparently others did too – as I limped by the spot yesterday, somebody put some orange cones over the area), which just kind of sucks. Also, somewhere along the way, I gave myself a pretty deep gouge/abrasion on the inside of my right thumb. This is bothersome because (1), I have no idea where it came from; I just noticed myself bleeding the other afternoon, and (2), it kind of hurts when I’m running songs on the bass in preparation for Dragon*Con next weekend. I gave it a rest last night to see if giving it another day to heal up helped (besides, I’m still don’t have setlists; I’m kind of making educated guesses as to what we’re playing).

Oh well; instead, I sat down with my kid and watched Pacific Rim last night, and according to her, I “sat there smiling like a four year old” the whole time. I guess that means things are looking up, at least a little bit.

Here’s some tunes, as per usual; I changed up the Pandora settings a bit; the mix is a little different, if a bit heavy on modern alternative stuff for this particular sample. At least it’s leaving the same three Journey songs out now.

1. “Ghosts of Mississippi” – The Steeldrivers
2. “All That Jazz” – Chicago OBC
3. “Dead Inside” – Muse
4. “This Charming Man (BBC version) – The Smiths
5. “Heathens” – Twenty-One Pilots
6. “One Chance” – Modest Mouse
7. “Three Marlenas” – Wallflowers
8. “Drop The Game” – Flume and Chet Faker
9. “Turn Up The Radio” – Autograph
10. “Fighting on the Same Side” – Hooters
11. “Rock You Like A Hurricane” – Scorpions

And I just gave up and went eleven right away; sue me; I had a momentary bout of enthusiasm when I saw this earlier this week: