If you’d been paying attention to my goings on this week, you probably caught a mixture of hair-tearing stress and affectionate Tim Kaine dad jokes. Work’s been interesting, if non-conclusive lately; the agency re-org is slowly proceeding, and I think I may have an actual idea of where I’m eventually going to land; I’ve always known what I’d be doing, but it wasn’t immediately clear who I’d be doing it for.

This clarification is probably for the best, as my boss retired yesterday. Big fancy retirement ceremony and all. He was a good guy. Actually, I did double duty on retirement ceremonies yesterday, hitting a second show in the afternoon, this time honoring an agency deputy director who I followed around for years between agencies, who was always a good egg, and looked out for me a couple of times in my career when she didn’t have to, so I wanted to take a moment to say thanks and show my appreciation. Retirements are interesting things…in one case, they make me feel old, because these people heading off now were just hitting their journeyman/competent phase of their careers when I came on the scene, and now they’re gone, which means I’m supposed to be the competent one now. Also, it makes me look at my career path, and feel bewildered when I realize that although I’ve got almost 20 years of public service to my name, my own retirement is a very long way off.

There was also a class in my building this week, which involved me being on-call tech support and building manager in addition to my usual program management stuff. Yay.

The rest of life has been a stressful week full of preparing for tonight’s gig, where the band* is once again opening for a comedy/improv show we have some connections with. This gig’s been VERY stressful for a number of reasons (as expressed in the asterisked footnotes below), but mostly because of personnel issues and communication. Last night’s rehearsal was somewhat encouraging, though it didn’t make up for two weeks’ worth of constant frustration. Anyway, I’m playing two sets tonight, one with Dimensional Riffs to open the show, then a short acoustic thing where me and a couple of vocalists do a few other newish tunes** while the comedians do whatever they do between sets.

Also on deck is a friend’s birthday party on Saturday night, and another friend’s “Cheesy Sharknado Party” (bad movies and fondue, leading up to Sharknado 4) on Sunday. Also, I’m taking off Monday, because I owe it to myself, that’s why.

In the meantime, here’s some tunes unrelated to tonight’s gig – Pandora’s feeling a little 120 minutes/hipster this week, it seems:

1. “Mad World” – Tears for Fears
2. “Your Love” – The Outfield
3. “Sheila Takes a Bow” – The Smiths
4. “Don’t You (Forget About Me) – Simple Minds
5. “Melt With You” – Modern English
6. “Just Like Heaven” – The Cure
7. “Kids” – MGMT
8. “Shots” – Imagine Dragons
9. “Little Bird” – The White Stripes
10. “Here It Goes Again” – Ok Go

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* – Eh, I hesitate to call it a “band” at this point when I have to have alternate arrangements in place to play entire set for solo acoustic guitar and a couple of voices because the other “instrumentalists” can’t be bothered to answer correspondence, show up for rehearsal at all, or when they do show u, theyre unprepared to do anything but attempt to hump one of the vocalists under the guise of “performance enthusiasm” but don’t know the damned songs.

** – The “full band” set has but one new song in it, as nobody else could be bothered to show up or learn anything else. Do I seem bitter? Yes. The little “acoustic set” is our solution to filling the alotted music time when most of the other performers are, expressed with euphemistic politeness, “not team players”. After we get through this gig, there are going to be some serious discussions. It seems I have been spoiled by spending the last three years playing with responsible, professional, adult musicians.