For the first week of year forty-eight, it could’ve been worse.

I got a *ton* of stuff done at work, and finally got the meeting with my boss lined up we’ve been trying to have for more than a week, where we hatched plans to redesign the broken processes of our agency from the ground up, if only they’ll let us do it – on paper we have the power, but in reality? Who knows.

For the moment though, cautious optimism is in effect.

I also put some solid saddle time in for the first week in a while; little over a hundred miles since Sunday, including a 31 mile run yesterday afternoon in 100°+ weather, which, while definitely good for me, hurts like hell everywhere this morning. I’m likely taking today off to recover (as much as I try to ignore it, my body is very good at reminding me I’m in my late 40s), but I’m considering a nice 40 or 50 miler on Sunday; we’ll see what the weather holds.

As alluded to earlier, I turned 47 on Monday. No huge celebration; nothing to see here. My spouse and children did kick in to set up a pretty neat birthday gift – a new smart watch (Samsung Galaxy Active2) to replace my cheap, beloved, and dead Tinwoo Eclipse (the best smart watch you can get for 45 bucks; just don’t clean the fish tank while wearing it!). So far I’m digging it; I’ve been able to shut down all the stuff I don’t want to hear from it, though it does give me slightly better workout data than the Tinwoo did; so I have more data to obsess over and artificial milestones to meet, which is good for both my body and for feeding my OCD.

Ah, my love-hate relationship with technology; I appreciate the information, but still kind of resent the intrusion as all this stuff becomes so integrated with the day-to-day.

As for this morning’s tunes? “Discover Weekly” this week is hitting the GenX buttons hard, digging into the 80s and 80s-adjacent for whatever reason. I’d not heard #4 before, and I like it, and it’s honestly never too early in the morning for #9:

1. “God Gave Rock ‘N’ Roll To You II” – KISS
2. “Talking In Your Sleep” – The Romantics
3. “Heartbreaker” – Pat Benetar
4. “Born to Run” – Frankie Goes to Hollywood
5. “Sledgehamer” – Peter Gabriel
6. “Sausalito Summernight” – Diesel
7. “Young Turks” – Rod Stewart
8. “Thunder Island” – Jay Ferguson
9. “Holy Diver” – Dio
10. “Incommunicado” – Marillion
11. “Run Like Hell” – Pink Floyd
12. “Sunless Saturday” – Fishbone