Hope your Thanksgiving was cool. Mine was, relatively; being one of those holidays where the culture foists marketing-crafted “traditions” on us and aims to make us feel inadequate if we don’t adhere, there’s always a bit of stress, even if I’ve managed to let go of a lot of that sense of obligation to do things that don’t feel right. That said, I got my Thanksgiving meal (that I made because it’s good and I enjoy it), prepared with all fresh ingredients (save the cranberries in the jezebel sauce, which were frozen. By me; I bought ’em fresh a while back and didn’t use them all for that purpose.) knocked out on time, and all the dishes completed within minutes of each other and washed most of the preparatory dishes as our early dinner hit the table. I am awesome.

Spent the afternoon of Thanksgiving watching movies (Atomic Blonde – excellent sountrack!; Drive Angry – best Ghost Rider movie; and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets – a mostly worthy successor to Besson’s Fifth Element) and starting to pack up some things for the weekend.

The weekend, as mentioned previously, involved ChessieCon up in the Balitmore area, where I was on the bill with Dimensional Riffs. It’s been a while since I did a con in the area (not since Balticon several years ago), and certainly hadn’t done one since getting enmeshed in the mid-atlantic filk scene. Overall, the con was pretty chill, and very small (it sometimes felt like there were more guests than attendees, though I can’t be sure). I made some friends and contacts, enjoyed the hospitality and welcoming spirit of the lower-northeast region’s filkers, and enjoyed hearing their songs (new stuff is always cool). I broke out some of my newer stuff, which got a pretty decent reception, and got to play all the old stuff to fresh ears. I appreciated the community (as I always do in filk-y circles), who were very welcoming and supportive – I hope I put that attitude forward as well. I also caught a show from the Misbehavin’ Maidens, which was awesome; you should check them out, especially if you’re into bawdy, nerdy, feminist music with a strong vocal/a capella vibe. So much fun.

The other bit I talked about previously, that of drama, wasn’t totally successful – there was a bit, but I’m working on getting past that, and it didn’t totally trash my experience. Also, the ‘Riffs were well-received for our official show – it wasn’t my best show, but it was good enough, and the audience enjoyed it and sang and laughed along in the right places. Can’t really ask for more than that.

The drive home, however, was total shit. There are many reasons I don’t really dig getting within spitting distance of I-83 these days, though the traffic situation from the Baltimore area all the way down to the edge of the Richmond metro on the Sunday after Thanksgiving gave me ample reminder of a major one of those regions. What is on the best days a not-quite-three-hour trip took almost six. Wasn’t loving it, though I got through a bit of my podcast backlog.

As is usually the case if I can manage it, I took the day after the con off, which was the right idea. I made sure I got a decent amount of sleep (as well as some exercise in the hotel’s really nice gym) this weekend; mostly, but having been getting over some kind of cold/virus/whatever, I wasn’t my best going in (and my bandmates all seemed to come out of the weekend with con crud that I’ve mostly avoided), but after the drive, I needed a day away from the program management world, and a chance to sleep in.

I did some shopping for my wife, and knocked out tracks for two new tunes for the upcoming Blibbering Humdingers record, Fantastic Geeks and Where To Find Them (you can get a pre-release EP version at the link). I have one more tune left in the hopper that I’ll hopefully get to tonight (I was kind of burned out after knocking out two yesterday). I’m really looking forward to getting this one out in the world; there’s some great songwriting from S&K (especially Kirsten) this time around, some of my best intstrumental work, and hell, an actual songwriting credit for me. We should have it out by the end of the year in time for our early 2018 Guest of Honor gigs.

That’s it for now, really. Back to the grind, though I’m really on the end-of-year countown at this point – less than two weeks in the office, a week of class, then I close out my occupational year. I think I’ll survive.