It’s been a week. Not an awful week, aside from a couple of long work days and one bout of near crippling insomnia the night before I had an important meeting in DC (still nailed it, btw), but a week, largely dedicated to stacking the deck to make the next couple of weeks flow more smoothly in lots of different areas. Could’ve been worse, all told.

Friday’s a work from home day this week, which is nice, given the weather – I don’t expect this tropical storm to seriously derail us, but it’s raining an awful lot, and that makes the commute a pain. Already had a couple of rainy ones this week, and I wasn’t looking forward to another.

One thing that made the week’s driving go more smoothly though was my choice of soundtrack. I’d blown through my audiobooks, and the local library branch was totally picked over when I hit it this week, so I plugged my mp3 player into the dash (I can do that now, thanks to my new head unit…yay) and caught up with several hours of Mikey Mason’s Beer Powered Time Machine podcast. Mikey characterizes it as “a celebration of good beer, storytelling, and personal histories”, which it certainly is. On one of the social networks this week, I described my experience with it as follows:

so, I finally started really catching up with Mikey Mason’s “Beer Powered Time Machine” podcast this week, and I’m wondering what the hell took me so long. It’s a celebration of storytelling – with beer – and perfectly captures the comfortable feeling of sitting around a table or up against the brass rail with friends, old and new, sharing experiences – it’s the best lubrication for getting the wheels of nostalgia and memory turning short of actually being there – it filled yesterday’s time behind the wheel with lots of pleasant memories. Thanks, Mikey – keep ’em coming!

And I stand by that description. It had me laughing, thinking, reflecting, and creating a list of “beers I gotta try” all week, and I look forward to more. I highly recommend it.

Otherwise – nothing pressing this weekend. There’s talk of music tonight, maybe, and there’s potential music tomorrow if driving a little ways seems like I good idea, and music early on Sunday morning. Otherwise, I’ll probably do laundry, make kids clean up messes, take care of the shopping, and maybe finish Arrested Development. But for now, tunes:

1. “Classy Girls” – The Lumineers
2. “Hey Jude” – The Beatles
3. “Feeling The Pull” – The Swell Season
4. “Horse To Water” – REM
5. “Lay Your Hands On Me” – Bon Jovi
6. “A Different Kind of Fun” – Earth To Bob
7. “Cantina” – Voltaire
8. “That’s Just What You Are” – Aimee Mann
9. “Let’s go Crazy” – Prince + The Revolution
10. “White Highway” – Saraya

And in case none of those struck your fancy, here’s a bird singing the theme to My Neighbor Totoro:

Also, you should totally check out today’s xkcd…

Seventeen years ago, I was not yet here in Virginia to experience this particular natural event, but this year, it’s a cool experience.

I expect it’s probably grist for the nostalgic blog post mill in the future, but for now, I just wanted to share a photo of one of the plague I hung out with for a while this morning. He said “hi” by thrumming his abdomen.

For more of what I’m talking about, see here.

Stacked refers primarily to the fact that my weekend is terribly overloaded, to the point that I had to give up me free moe. tickets for this evening, because there was just too much going on (though stacked could also refer to the fact that the new jeans my spouse bought this week at the thrift store really highlight her hourglass pin-up figure – yowza!!!)…

…erm…Ahem.

Anyway…lots of stuff going on. Busy week at work, both in terms of actual activity (which was draining, but occasionally rewarding, oddly enough), and in terms of extra-organizational political fallout. Also, this weekend, I’ve got teenage houseguests, several amateur dramatic productions to watch and drag kids to, and an occasion to see two terribly good friends make their partnership official, at a wedding that’s sure to be the social event of the season.

So, anyway…the quietest I’m going to have it this weekend is Friday’s workday (thankfully at home), which is saying something.

A comment on the list number this week – I called it “10.1” because #3 is really only about 7 seconds long. I was just too lazy to do the HTML jiggering to get it to number that way. Nice list, though, really:

1. “I Live With It Every Day” – Barenaked Ladies
2. “Bad Medicine” – Bon Jovi
3. “Tick” – They Might Be Giants
4. “Run To The Hills” – Iron Maiden
5. “Lost (live)” – Katy Perry
6. “Straight to Rock City” – Rock Sugar
7. “Free You All (A Terrorist’s Lament) – Jonah Knight
8. “NaNoWriMo (Dance Remix) – John Anealio
9. “In All That Is Green” – SJ Tucker
10. “Below My Feet” – Mumford and Sons
11. “Let It Go” – Voltaire

Also – are you watching the new Arrested Development on Netflix yet? Surely you’re an AD fan, right? If not, you should be. I’m currently four episodes in, and it’s really pretty clever the way everything is fitting together asynchronously. I’m looking forward to the back nine…so don’t spoil it for me, okay!

Just wanted to say thanks to Dan at 21st Century Sandshark Studios for doing an admirable job capturing the mood in many an office this morning:

It’s the “Have A Nice Day!” at the bottom that really does it.

As I mentioned last week, I spent part of this weekend adventuring. Specifically, along with my friends Jason and Rebecca, I hiked a new (for me) section of the Appalachian Trail in Shenandoah National Park, as well as taking in the climb to to the top of Stony Man Mountain, the second highest peak in the park. Our hike picked up the AT at the Pinnacle parking area (where we were greeted by some well-lubricated revelers in the picnic area), and proceeded south to the branch trail leading to the Stony Man summit, and back again. Total round trip was a little over 8 miles, and while we only picked up six or eight hundred feet of elevation, we started at 3400 feet, so the height was not insignificant.

For a late May day, it was actually pretty chilly, barely brushing the low 50s, and quite windy. Still we were well-prepared, and stayed warm with a rather brisk pace, covering the outbound leg of our journey in around two hours, leading to a very windy lunch on the summit. Along the way, we saw some very nice scenery, including lots of just-blooming wildflowers, a baby grouse with it’s mother (who didn’t cooperate for photos), and some really rather beautiful scenery:

Here’s a shot of Stony Man (featuring the back of Jason’s head) from about the halfway mark from Pinnacle:

And another shot from the same place, zooming in on the mountain’s namesake rock formation:

A few shots from the summit at high noon:

And here’s a red-breasted grossbeak who called to us on our way back down:

It was a nice, brisk hike, with lots of pleasant conversation along the way, though we all came away noting how old we all feel, comparing the aches and pains we were nursing afterwards. Still, there are plenty of 38 year olds who couldn’t do what we did at all – I know many of them. That I did it with no ill effects other than a few muscle aches (largely due to using muscles in ways I don’t when biking when I have to carefully descend from mountain peaks on trails covered with loose rocks and plenty of switchbacks) and no complaints from my circulatory system, I feel pretty darned good about myself.

Also, on the way home we stopped off in Culpepper VA to check out the rejuvenated downtown (Jason grew up there, and there’s a bit of a renaissance of new independent businesses downtown), where we visited the Culpepper Cheese Company which has lots of cheese, of course, but also wine and beer, and where we partook in a wonderfully refreshing beer tasting as a reward for our physical efforts. I had samples of three really great beers from local brewers, though the highlight was generally agreed to be the Wood Aged Kilt Flasher Scottish Ale from Devil’s Backbone. Excellent stuff – if you have the means, I highly recommend finding yourself some.

So yeah, a pretty good Saturday.

working from home today, listening to the rain tap on the skylights while I take care of a bunch of system admin tasks before the holiday weekend. Should be a nice and quiet today, if all goes well.

A few things on for the weekend – tonight I’m supposed to help the kid finish up principal photography on her short film project for theater/drama class (I get to fill in as one of the villain’s hired muscle since one of them dropped out), and tomorrow I’m hiking a section of the AT in Shenandoah with some friends.

Otherwise, I’ve got some reading to catch up on, and since Amazon’s so good at delivering quick (the closest distribution center is only about five miles from the house), I’m going to make time to watch the low-budget Menahem Golan-produced 1990 Captain America film that never really got a theatrical release (like a lot of license-maintaining Marvel productions at that point in time), but got released to Blu-Ray recently, I’ve never seen it, though I remember when I went to that Star Trek convention in 1989, there was promo all over the place for it. I’m sure it’s pretty cheesy, but it fills a nice hole in my collection of Marvel Comics memorabilia, right next to the Hasselhoff Nick Fury and direct-to-video Man-Thing films.

Anyway, here’s the soundtrack of my morning from Pandora, though #8 eventually inspired me to just let the 80s Hair Metal channel spin, which is what’s been backing my keyboard tapping all morning since:

1. “Walkin’ In Memphis” – Marc Cohn
2. “Never Mind” – The Replacements
3. “Upside Down Frown” – They Might Be Giants
4. “My Only Swerving” – El Ten Eleven
5. “I’m On Fire” – Town Mountain
6. “Code Monkey”- Jonathan Coulton
7. “Seven Nation Army” – The White Stripes
8. “Seventeen” – Winger
9. “Heartlines” – Florence + The Machine
10. “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” – Simple Minds
11. “Aquaman’s Lament” – Mark Aaron James
12. “Ain’t No Use In Tryin'” – Trampled By Turtles

I’m off of work today. Just because. Might clean some things up, run some errands. Otherwise, nothing.

Once I finish a couple of necessary tasks, I’m off the computer the rest of the day. Don’t bother me.

Yeah, I’m broken and beaten. Not by anything sinister, but rather the simple act of getting from one piece of life to another, and finding things in my way, be they a 100 mile drive, or a pack of cackling teenagers filming a movie (which wasn’t as bad as I’d expected), or a pile of stuff all over the bed when all I want to do is go to sleep (which was much worse).

Have enough of that stuff happen, and stuff starts to crack. I’m starting to crack. However, I hope I’ll find a little bit of a break coming up – I’ve got two long weekends in the pipeline (and probably 11 more come summer, although I won’t be paid for those) here, and I hope I can find some rebuilding time.

Oh, and I watched Point Break for the first time last night…can’t believe I’ve never seen it before. It’s just about the perfect example of the late 20th century testosterone-fuelled action movie. Patrick Swayze thows a pitt bull at Keanu Reeves at one point – it’s just amazing and ridiculous, and I watched the whole thing with a stupid smile on my face.

Oh well – tunes.

1. “3am” – Matchbox 20
2. “Left of the Dial” – The Replacements
3. “Under Pressure” – Queen & David Bowie*
4. “Float On” – Modest Mouse
5. “Someone Is Crazy”- Jonathan Coulton
6. “Radioactive” – Kings of Leon
7. “What I Like About You” – The Romantics
8. “2082” – They Might Be Giants
9. “From a Window Seat” – Dawes
10. “Kids” – MGMT

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*- let’s completely ignore the fact that I double-taked it for a minute, wondering why Vanilla Ice came up in my Pandora shuffle…

It’s not every night that ends up organically devolving into an impromptu lazily shuffling rendition of Lady GaGa’s “Poker Face”, performed on guitar, concert ukulele and hammered dulcimer, but when such a thing does happen, it’s kind of magical.

Of course, as it happened organically, nobody was in a position to capture a recording.

Damn.

Coulson Lives.

Lola better be one of those classic SHIELD flying cars.

Update: three whole minutes worth of trailer for this program!:

The real question now is who’s J. August Richards playing? Luke Cage? Rage? Cloak? A CW/”Arrow” style Black Panther? Sweet Christmas, people! We need to know theses things!