Y’know, this week’s been primarily about figuring out how to be a productive member of society again after being off the grid in holiday limbo for two weeks. I’ve mostly fallen back into things, pushing documents around and being bureaucratic and stuff. I also spent a bit of time keeping my eye on the HR repositories, as it’s about that time for the results of annual evaluations, and more importantly, the impact those things have on salary, to hit the street. When it did finally hit Wednesday afternoon, the news was generally good; I got a decent enough bump; I’m not entirely unhappy (and $diety knows I could use the extra cash flow), and my boss was quite complimentary about the contribution I made this year, where I took on a couple of new responsibilities that ended up becoming a bit more than other duties as assigned and consuming a lot more of my time.

It’s a living.

Beyond that, there isn’t really much. I’ve been hiking (discovered a new trail I didn’t know about in one of my usual park haunts), reading, and…yeah.

I’ve also discovered that I kind of suck at social media (says the old man who’s been blogging more or less consistently since the late 90s…); in anticipation of all the stuff on my Marscon schedule for next weekend, I knocked out a relatively simple graphic to post to the usual social media things and probably print off a couple of copies to hang in the lifts at the con, to let people know where I’d be, but because I don’t know how to ‘gram or ‘face all that well, large chunks of the sides of the image got hacked off because I think in terms of widescreen and not phone screen. My lovely spouse, who’s more up on these things immediately gave me a gentle chiding (thankfully in private). I’m well aware of my limitations; that’s why I’m not my own social media director.

Anyway; not much else to say. I’ll put the Marscon schedule in it’s own post later. Here are some tunes that Spotify spit out. Decent enough; and given #12 (of 11), I’ve clearly been listening to Striking Copper‘s new record, A Trip Around The Sun, quite a bit recently; check ’em out, won’t you?

1. “Shame on You” – Indigo Girls
2. “Need You Around” – Smoking Popes
3. “Right Back Where We Started From” – Army Navy
4. “Old Old Fashioned” – Frightened Rabbit
5. “Never Say Never” – Romeo Void
6. “Kiss Me Deadly” – Generation X
7. “Hope for the High Road” – Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
8. “Everywhere That I’m Not” – Translator
9. “Sometimes A Fantasy” – Billy Joel
10. “Minnesota” – Shackeltons
11. “Dream All Day” – The Posies
12. “Winter” – Striking Copper
13. “Six Different Ways” – The Cure