The big news this week has, of course, been Hurricane Florence, who, as I type this, is starting to bump into the North Carolina coast. The track’s adjusted such that it’s likely going to be a whole lot of “meh” other than some extra rain and wind that shouldn’t amount to much here 120 miles inland. Didn’t stop the county schools from closing today, but honestly, that’s probably for the best, since two weeks in, they still can’t seem to get the buses running on time. It’s also been a bit of extra anxiety watching things settle out; early this week, it looked as if we might have been facing something pretty serious. I did get thirtysomething miles in on the bike before the dampness started this week, which felt good, though I think it’s going to stay put away for at least a couple of days. I am watching with genuine concern for my many, many friends and co-conspirators in the Carolinas and on the Virginia coast, and hoping they’ll get through everything unscathed.

Otherwise, I’ve been working to wrap up the fiscal year at the office; working to shore up my (ahead of schedule) parts of failing projects while fending off deflected blame from the parts that are bringing the whole business down. One can really only be thrown under a bus so many times in one week; I may have broken out the “dad voice” on several conference calls over the last couple of days. It was necessary. Not really worth going into details, but suffice to say it wasn’t an amazing work week, but then, what else is really new?

Beyond the painful stuff, though, I did manage to sort out the accounting business for my travel voucher for The Class That Ate August™, which should pay any day now, and I am freshly certified for Level III Program Management per the requirements of DAWIA, so there’s that for the resume (it goes nicely with my Level III Contracting and Level I Information Technology certs), but more importantly, it gets me off the HR/training folks’ watch list…for now.

So? Mixed bag overall. I have a weekend coming up with nothing on the schedule other than watching the rain and hoping the power stays on (if it doesn’t, it better get so bad that it knocks trees on my house so I get a new roof out of it). Hoping for some rest and rejuvenation. We shall see.

Reading back over this post, I suppose I could probably just cut/paste from any given Friday, with slight adjustments to account for the effects of climate change. Oh well; my life hasn’t been hugely interesting in a while. To fix that, though here’s something novel: Apparently one of the remaining cats has toilet trained herself.

Looking over the playlist here, I’m back to Pandora (because why the hell not) and the mix is about the usual for that venue this week, with maybe a little more modern indie than usual, which I’m not really complaining about. To be honest; I’m kinda digging it. It also fits nicely with the fact that Katie Crutchfield put out a new Waxahatchee record this week, which is always a positive development.

Have a good weekend, folks, and if you’re in the path, stay safe, okay?

1. “Crush” – Cigarettes After Sex
2. “Mr. Brightside” – The Killers
3. “Village of the Sun (live Finlandia Hall, Helsinki, Finland, 1973) – Frank Zappa
4. “Go It Alone” – Beck
5. “Istid” – Vintersorg
6. “Sunglasses at Night” – Corey Hart
7. “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” – Simple Minds
8. “The Plains of Memories” – Borknagar
9. “Empress” – Snow Patrol
10. “Sound and Vision” – David Bowie
11. “Just My Kind” – the Julie Ruin
12. “Two High” – Moon Taxi
13. “Ride Like the Wind” – Christopher Cross
14. “Timmy’s Song (When I’m Gone) – Keelan Donovan