Objectively, this weekend was largely successful and productive. I addressed a lot of regular #adulting responsibilities, stayed in line with my fitness objectives (weather permitting), managed a relatively successful family outing, did some preparatory work for my previously mentioned brewery gig in a couple of weeks, and even managed to book two more music gigs in the coming months, which I’ll mention more specifically once the hosts release the details to the public.

That said, the actual human feelings I experienced this weekend were honestly rather unpleasant, in large part due to the rest of humanity consistently being assholes.

For example, with my day off on Friday, I did the shopping in the morning, which while less populous than my usual Saturday morning timeslot, the people that were out there in the retail world were, individually and collectively, more problematic and difficult than usual. This held true for any expedition into a establishment involved in the sale of goods or services; the people were awful, the environment was awful, and it seriously brought me down. I want to blame it on the Christmas stuff starting to invade retail spaces; that crap always hits me the wrong way.

On Saturday, a majority of the family ventured out to the drive-in to catch Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which was, I guess…fine. I really enjoyed the reinterpretation of Namor and his people through the lens of ancient Meso-American culture, but nothing else really spoke to me, and the whole thing was almost an hour too long.

My perception of the film may have been colored by external events, including the technical details of timed auto-off functionality on push-button start cars, the rain that hit three quarters of the way through the screening, and, to no one’s surprise, the other humans at the venue, who insisted on sitting on the roof of the car in front of us, talking loudly through the movie (so I could still hear them through closed car windows), and the wondrous folks smoking, against specific posted instruction, some particularly dank strain of weed nearby that gave me a blistering headache and seriously aggravated my sinuses and my general attitude.

Leading from that was the insomnia likely resulting from the allergy and headache meds I took when we got home Saturday – maybe one in every forty of fifty times I take benadryl for allergy issues, instead of knocking me out, it gets me wired. I was up well past 2am, and slept fitfully for a handful of hours after that, with obvious negative effects on my Sunday morning mood.

The only good thing I can say about the experience is that I was able to nail a solid victory on a higher-than-my-usual difficulty level on Civilization VI.

Sunday was mostly about fighting with a sticky dryer door and a couple of trips to the hardware store for bits and bobs to repair things, and only managing to kick the can down the road, because I’ve got a bunch of other things in line before buying a new one comes up on the priority list.

The one bright spot I can point to is stumbling upon a particular song on the radio while running errands during the weekend, which just hit me in exactly the right spot for momentary pleasure in a nicely meta way. I share it here in the hope it brings readers the same: