I will freely admit that I’m especially prone to clockwatching right now, and I don’t see it really improving any for the next couple of days. It’s been a rough week/month/year, and I’m within spitting distance of the end of my working time for 2016.

This is the time of year, when (due to the requirements of human resources) I take stock in the events of the last twelve months, lessons learned, victories won, and task accomplished, then write them all down on a form created by bureaucrats and professional form-builders, and then pass them over to my supervisor so we can sit down and have a good laugh about the process and have arbitrary numeric ratings applied to my activites over the last year.

This was the week where I took my scattered notes and program schedules and email archives and spent a few hours on the clock writing all kinds of impressive things about myself and my team, because the bureaucracy says that’s what I’m supposed to do. This year I wrote five pages of impressive prose bullshit; 3000 words or so that will probably mean nothing, but might mean a lot depending on how this new experimental pay system business they’re toying with around here shakes out.

In any case, spending lots of time talking about how great I am at my job and how much my team contributes to the mission or whatever is perhaps one of the least enjoyable things I could do, given how my major motivations around here involve being quietly competent and staying out of the spotlight whenever possible.

Anyway, that’s what’s been occupying my mind the last day or so. I’m also entering that time of year where I have to tell people not to open boxes from amazon with my name on them, and find places to hide things for a couple of weeks, at least until I put a tree up and buy some wrapping paper.

The other big thing on my mind is that this weekend, I’ve got a great annual tradition to attend to; some dear friends are throwing their annual holiday party tomorrow, and for the third year running, have seen fit to invite my humble musical co-conspirators The Blibbering Humdingers as the entertainment. I get to hang out with my friends and play music with and for some of my favorite people in the world for a good bit of tomorrow, including some new stuff we’ve never played together in the same room at the same time. I can’t wait.

I also got to play some tunes with some *other* friends last night, which is always fun, and we ended up writing the bones of a kind of naughty song about some of the frustrations we’ve been dealing with in our extended circle. It’s not done yet, but it’s got a pretty nice chord structure and was therapeutic for the laughs it gave us all.

I found myself humming it (with expanded orchestration!) in the shower this morning; that means it’s got at least a little bit of catchy staying power. We’ll see.

Anyway, as we all head into our weekend, here’s my morning Pandora playlist. This week started off kind of strong, peaked in the middle, then fell off completely toward the end with some shitty 90s AOR and new wave covers. As I write this, the last one hasn’t come up yet, so the final judgement’s still a wash:

1. “Queen Bitch” – David Bowie
2. “The Torture Never Stops” – Dweezil Zappa
3. “Magnet” – Bikini Kill
4. “You Make My Dreams” – Hall & Oates
5. “Internet Troll” – The Doubleclicks
6. “Hazy Shade of Winter” – The Bangles
7. “Good Mistake” – Mr. Little Jeans
8. “Farm on the Freeway” – Jethro Tull
9. “3am” – Matchbox Twenty
10. “Where Did Our Love Go” – Soft Cell
11. “Brat Girl” – Bratmobile

(two minutes later) – okay….I’ve never heard this one before, though it’s certainly energetic. Could be worse. Have a good weekend, everyone.

Also – new trailer for Spider-Man: Homecoming (actually two of them) popped up overnight – not bad, not bad at all. This kid’s got it, and Michael Keaton (a national effing treasure) makes the Vulture look bad-ass, which is a term no one has ever used to describe Adrian Toomes’ alter ego before.