So, by the time this posts, it’ll be my birthday. Hello, 45.

I don’t feel old, until I sprain something by tripping over nothing. Still, I *am* in better shape than I was when I was twenty, which I guess says something.

Tomorrow is the last day of the class I’ve found myself in for the last two weeks. It’s not been a bad experience, and I’ve enjoyed it, and made a few friends in the deal, and as I write this, the running graded total has me two points short of a perfect score. I expect I’ll drop a few more, because one of the truisms of these sorts of workforce development courses is that nobody gets perfect scores on group exercises, but all told, I’ll take it. That said, I’ll be glad to be done with it, because I’ll get my usual schedule back.

For exactly three days, because come Thursday of next week, I am off to do the DragonCon thing once again after taking a year off. We’ve got a bunch of shows lined up Friday through Monday. It’ll be good to see and play with my friends again, especially folks I only get to see there, or otherwise a couple of times a year at special events. My nerd musical community is one of my lifelines, even if I’ve managed to build up a nice local musical community as well.

Speaking of that community, my open mic this week as almost too successful; we ran over half an hour past official closing time because we had too many people sign up, even if I did limit sets to fifteen minutes or three tunes. I suppose this is a good problem to have, though we’ll have to maybe make some adjustments for future events if turnout keeps trending up. In any case, the venue is very happy, as tons of people come in and eat and drink a bunch; certainly more than enough to cover my stipend and comped bar tab.

Not much on the agenda for the weekend; we’re going out with friends for a birthday dinner out tomorrow night, I’m getting my oil changed and tires rotated, and I’ll do like usual and hit the farmer’s market. I expect I’ll try to record a bit, because that’s what I do, and likely run some tunes we’re likely to play next weekend. Otherwise, I’ll probably just raise a glass to the memory of what is no longer possible, an MCU with Spider-Man in it. Oh well. Maybe they’ll find a way to reconcile, maybe not, but Tom Holland was the best thing to happen to my favorite super-hero for quite some time.

Anyway; tunes. As part of our ongoing decluttering project, we got rid of a bunch of CDs along with the books, but not before ripping them to mp3 first, so I have a bunch of newish digital stuff to cycle through for these random playlists, which are listed immediately following this paragraph. Not a bad list, really:

1. “TMZ” – “Weird” Al Yankovic
2. “The Green and the Blue” – Amy Macdonald
3. “Can You Keep A Secret” – Utada Hikaru
4. “Burn All The Letters” – Indigo Girls
5. “London (live)” – The Smiths
6. “Hero Takes A Fall” – The Bangles
7. “Start Again” – Bishop Allen
8. “Shimmy Low (live) – The Clarks
9. “Are You Ten Years Ago” – Tegan and Sara
10. “The Lovecats” – The Cure
11. “Songs From The Wood” – Jethro Tull
12. “Would You Rather” – Phoebe Bridgers