So today started off with a bang, or a restart, at least, since I got part way to work and had to turn around because I realized I forgot my ID card. Luckily, I guess, I remembered less than one exit down the interstate, so it didn’t cost me anything but about 20 minutes and a mild level of personal frustration.

Hoping it’s not an omen.

Still working to shake the anxiety about work, though I have, finally, after much poking and prodding of the folks with the information I need, written up my latest justification and thrown my request for resources into the hands of the people who will decide whether they’re going to give me the tools to do the job they told me my team and I have to do, hoping that all the t’s are dotted and i’s are crossed in the right format. Nothing more I can do unless they reach out, so I’m doing my best to let it go. It’s almost working. Doesn’t help that the President came to the Commonwealth yesterday to crow about how he wants to increase the defense budget by $54 billion. If he’s looking for ways to allocate that, if he throws me about .0000013888% (yes, I did the math) of that proposed increase, I have a couple of simple suggestions that’ll save millions over the next decade.

I’m here, Donnie. My contact information’s in the global.

I’m mostly just going through a period of what a lot of people go through, I suppose, where my work life feels pretty meaningless and unfulfilling. I mean, twenty years on, I’m actually in a position within my organization to do some real good and make some small part of the machinery of the public sector actually work better, cheaper and more efficiently (I’m like my own tiny little liberal deep state!), though I feel like I’m constantly butting my head against impediments in the way of actually doing that. The gears of government are grinding me down, and honestly, I’m feeling frustrated and more than a little helpless. My immediate bosses are sympathetic, of course, though they’re getting ground down even more forcefully. It’s a total circle of bureaucratic ennui.

That right there is totally enough of that. I’m going to try to let it go.

I’ve been spending some afternoons this week enjoying the unseasonably warm weather (well, other than the fact that all the flowering trees around here – including the huge copse of cherry trees right down the block from my office – are playing havok on my sinuses) doing some hiking along the James and Appomattox rivers in some of my local parks. This has been helping a bit to reduce stress.

So this weekend. No idea what I’m doing tonight, if anything. The big event this weekend is Jig By the James, the local WIDA feis run by my girls’ dance school. I’ll be there all day watching the festivities and doing the volunteer thing, fixing sound systems, doing data entry, or whatever other sort of tasks they feel like throwing at a dance dad looking to keep busy.

Anyway, here’s some tunes. My algorithms seem to lean heavy on Mötley Crüe and Mötley Crüe-adjacent these last two weeks. Hmmm:

1. “Too Fast for Love” – The Donnas
2. “Dammerung” – Equilibrium
3. “Kylan Paassa” – Moonsorrow
4. “Dress You Up” – Madonna
5. “Ziggy Stardust” – David Bowie
6. “Havamal” – Falkenbach
7. “Exes and Ohs” – Elle King
8. “Ship Ahoy” – Frank Zappa
9. “Schwertzeit” – Varg
10. “Kickstart My Heart” – Motley Crue
11. “Counting Stars” – OneRepublic

If we’re going to do some Stranger Things news (though I don’t think I need to justify doing eleven anymore; I think I’m the only person left in the blog world doing friday random ten anyway), it seems David Harbour (our stoic sherriff) is in the mix to play Cable in Deadpool 2, which isn’t a bad choice; if we have to have Cable at all (comics in the 90s with all the guns and pouches and extra teeth and tiny feet and spit strings and Liefeld in general were not a good thing – DP himself didn’t become interesting until well into the new millenium).