it’s Friday. Thank $diety.

I’ve been struggling with work all week; swinging from angry to frustrated to despondent and then back again. So many conference calls full of people who can’t be bothered to listen to reason, logic, or, frankly, anything.

I’ve also felt like hell physically. This cold snap is playing hell with my sinuses. This week has largely been nothing but office bullshit for eight (or more) hours, drive home listening to The Adventure Zone on spotify (thanks, Mary and Andrea, for this suggestion – it’s hitting the sweet spot), complaining to my lovely and patient spouse about my day, knocking together something to eat, then settling in with a book for a very early evening zonked out on Nyquil.

I guess, yeah, there was a pleasant visit to Frank the chiropractor, who made my back feel good for a bit, and I did knock out some pretty decent Ethiopian red lentils on Monday, though I may have cooked them a little too long. Oh, and I now own my own public address system, which will get used for gigs and supporting Irish dance events. It’s not fancy, but it’ll do for a small room.

This weekend looks to be primed for celebrating my lovely spouse’s birthday; the tentative plans are to meet some friends for dinner and enjoy some time out. I really hope it works out. I could use a good, pleasant time without pressure.

But, I’m also putting pressure on myself, but it’s good pressure. It’s February Album Writing Month, beginning today, and I’m going to do it again. The gist of this thing is to be creative on a schedule, the challenge set upon ourselves to write 14 songs (approximately an album’s worth of material) in 28 days. It doesn’t have be awesome, ut just has to be. Hell, I’ve already got a good start; I knocked up some lyrics this morning already. I’ve got a bunch of friends participating this year along with me; if you care to track my progress, my bit on fawm.org is here. One of these days, I’m going to learn to be a songwriter.

Oh, my bandmates in the Blibbering Humdingers booked a gig a few months back to write and record a promotional tune and video for Adult Swim‘s new show, Tigtone, a sort of video gamey/absurdist/fantasy thing. It’s really S&K’s medieval thing, so I’ve only been tangentially involved (if at all), but I’m still proud of my people, and am proud to share with you the video that dropped yesterday, which will surely lead to us living our best lives as full-time rock stars any time now, right?

All that’s left, I guess, is the random music. Well, not so random this time; Pandora started repeating itself; rather than prune things, I just went with it. Almost the whole back half is repeated artists. Oh well. The tunes are basically good:

1. “Wasted” – The Donnas
2. “Stick Together” – Frank Zappa
3. “Pretend” – Hovvdy
4. “The Man” – The Killers
5. “Crazy Thing Called Love” – Queen
6. “Be Good” – Frumpies
7. “Pumped Up Kicks” – Foster the People
8. “Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go” – Soft Cell
9. “Nothing Is Easy (live)” – Jethro Tull
10. “Do You Want to Hit It” – The Donnas (again)
11. “Who Are The Brain Police?” – Frank Zappa (again)
12. “Killer Queen” – Queen (again)
13. “Skip Under Lide” – Lumsk
14. “Jack-A-Lynn” – Jethro Tull (again)