It’s quite possible I’m the only idiot in the organization actually working today, given the date on the calendar. I say “working”, though it’s rather difficult to actually accomplish much of anything when the enterprise email system keeps throwing up random code errors instead of my inbox, and I require certain information from people before I can actually accomplish the things on my to-do list, because I’ve done the rest already, and took the online sexual harassment prevention training last week.

Oh well. I was off yesterday, and left the metro area for the first time in a couple of months. Y’see, the kid’s college finally started allowing folks to come in and clear out their dorm rooms, and yesterday was our window. It was not the most entertaining span of time I spent, hauling boxes in the rain while wearing mask and gloves with constantly fogged glasses, but it’s done (well, the van is still full of crap, but that’s her job to deal with). The stuff after the manual labor was somewhat better; we stopped by the kid’s latest paramour‘s house to have a nice socially distanced dinner, and I got a tour of the quite killer music studio in the basement; this is a good one, and not just because we share hobbies; my kid is being treated with respect and appropriate affection, which as it should be.

Yesterday afternoon was kind of a bright spot in a week that was otherwise not exactly the platonic ideal. Weather was kinda crap, dealt with some low-level anxiety, decent groundwork but little actual progress at work, another open mic date come and gone without anyone behind the mic, and word came out yesterday that perhaps my favorite event of the year, Marscon has gone ahead and cancelled for January 2021, because of the Current State of Things™. It’s almost certainly the right call – mid-January is right in the middle of predicted second or third spikes for this crap. That said, it’s the weekend, more than any other, where I get to spend quality time with my chosen family of nerds, geeks, performers, and all manner of others; it feels like coming home, and it’s gonna suck to not have that to look forward to.

It also pretty much puts paid to any other con this year (not that that wasn’t really a given anyway, apart for waiting for the force majeure clauses to kick in), but there’s definitely going to be a bit of a mourning period.

Oh well; I just keep hoping that we’ll take this big societal upheaval and use it as an opportunity to come out the other side with a better model for how to run things, because as history shows, it takes something like this once-in-a-century business or a big-ass war to force the kind of change we need; our model of living and working and whatever has been pretty much stagnant since the era of the World Wars; I, for one, believe we’re due for some evolution.

In any case, that’s my paragraph on socio-historical philosophy. For this long weekend, beyond a trip to the store to buy cat food, I’m not likely to do a hell of a lot, other than enjoy the fact that I’m not working on Monday and can sleep in a little bit. I’m thinking I might make a nice curry and some homemade naan-ish flatbread. We’ll see.

Anyway – tunes. The Spotify Discover Weekly playlist is actually really rocking it for me today. Chunky guitars, post-punk energy, and one of my favorite tunes from the ’00s at #2. I like it so much (both the energy and the truth of the subject for those of us of a certain age) that I went ahead and linked to the video. Also some Replacements-adjacent 90s goodness, which I’ll never say no to:

1. “Dyslexic Heart” – Paul Westerberg
2. “27 Jennifers” – Mike Doughty
3. “Shitty Ballet” – Bleached
4. “Paying of the Happiness” – illuminati hotties
5. “Bad Reputation” – Freedy Johnson
6. “Molly (Sixteen Candles)” – Sponge
7. “What You Don’t Know” – Caroline Spence
8. “Teen Challenge” – Great Grandpa
9. “Rainbow Shiner” – Ex Hex
10. “Savory” – Jawbox
11. “Elvis is in the Freezer” – Ratboys
12. “Killer Parties” – The Hold Steady
13. “Bathed In Light” – The Dirty Nil