It’s been pretty dull the last couple of weeks, if I’m being totally honest. It’s work, bike, eat, sleep, repeat…over and over. I really need some novelty.

However, lacking anything novel, on Thursday afternoon, after spending way too many hours on meetings with briefings heavy on references to the U.S. Code and various federal policy, I racked the bike and took a nice ride in the warm, but slightly overcast weather, as I’m likely to do; gotta stay healthy, and keep the stamina up for that century ride in two weeks…

Anyway, somewhere in the middle of a brisk twenty-one miles, my mind wandered, which is kind of what I’m going for; just disappearing into the ride…

…but sometimes, strange things get dredged up from the subconscious, like the first song on the playlist below, which was a staple of middle school dances in central Pennsylvania in the 80s….

Anyway, it sent me down a Spotify rabbit hole, and the following mix got spit out at me with minimal searching. Most of the big ones are here; if Mötley Crüe’s “Kickstart My Heart” or Aerosmith’s “Angel” were included, this would hit pretty much everything. That one at #5 made us feel like we were getting away with something, and #13, I’m pretty sure what was playing during my first awkward slow dance with a real girl in sixth grade.

And yeah, we got rickroll’d – deal with it:

1. “Da Butt” – EU
2. “Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go” – Soft Cell
3. “Everything Counts” – Depechhe Mode
4. “Time After Time” – Cyndi Lauper
5. “The Roof Is On Fire” – Rock Master Scott & The Dynamic Three
6. “Just Like Heaven” – The Cure
7. “Take My Breath Away” – Berlin
8. “Private Eyes” – Daryl Hall & John Oates
9. “Careless Whisper” – George Michael
10. “Modern Love” – David Bowie
11. “(I Just) Died In Your Arms” – Cutting Crew
12. “Never Gonna Give You Up” – Rick Astley
13. “Always” – Atlantic Starr
14. “Dancin’ With Myself” – Generation X
15. “Don’t You Want Me” – The Human League
16. “Jump” – Van Halen
17. “Twist of Fate” – Olivia Newton-John

Y’know, I really can’t remember a week where I was so exhausted both physically and mentally. Once again, work had me earning my raise with some long days and excessive mental processing, and given the gorgeous weather we’ve had around these parts this week, I rode off the mental by putting over 70 miles (so far) under my bicycle tires after logging out for the day.

And to be honest, I didn’t have much time for anything else apart from taking a few minutes to pay the bills, feed myself, and read myself to sleep.

I did make sure some of that reading was digging through the final Hunt-A-Killer box to try and come up with a theory on whodunnit, and I think I did, but I expect when my lovely spouse and I start comparing notes this evening, she’ll have done most of the heavy lifting.

Also, that sleep in the paragraph before last was occasionally rough going – I’m seriously dragging ass this morning after tossing and turning all night. Not expecting much for the weekend, and there’s very little on the schedule, so that’s working out.

As for tunes this week, a little more upbeat than last time, and trending a bit more into the late 70s and early 80s. Not a bad mix, with #2 including Joan Jett’s sultry/throaty vocals, and some always excellent funk Telecaster grooves at #13:

1. “25 O’Clock (2001 Mix) – The Dukes of the Stratosphear
2. “Crimson and Clover” – Joan Jett & The Blackhearts
3. “Blasphemous Rumors” – Depeche Mode
4. “Following Laika” – AFTERxCLASS
5. “Apocalypse Now (& Later) – Laura Jane Grace & the Devouring Mothers
6. “Keep On Knocking” – Death
7. “That’s Just The Way I Feel” – Purple Mountains
8. “The Hell Of It” – Paul Williams
9. “Be Better At Listening” – Pomplamoose
10. “Country Motion Sickness” – Mae Valerio
11. “Gold Dust Woman” – Fleetwood Mac
12. “Breathless on DVD” – Antarctigo Vespucci
13. “Bambi” – Prince

…but the obstacles, however minor, keep doing the things that obstacles do, and getting in the way of anything resembling accomplishment.

I have a job; one that I’m good at, pays well, and that, under most circumstances, I don’t mind doing at all (and sometimes even enjoy), except all this administrative stuff, two hour meetings that could’ve been two sentence emails, operating system “upgrades” that simply break every workflow one has to do the job in between those meetings, outside entities trying to “network” by attempting to pick my brain on pointless issues to feed their latest trendy business school buzzword certification, plus all these other people needing help getting their stuff done because word’s gotten around that I make this shit look easy.

It’s just making it very hard to care right now, especially since I’ve gotten into one of those two or three day lulls where there aren’t any looming deadlines, but somehow I still end up putting in a ten hour day at the virtual office and have nothing at all to show for it.

Yes, that big-ass raise I got in January is nice, but I don’t love all the attendant bullshit that comes with earning it.

Oh well; first-world problems and all that.

All that which, as a socially-conscious person, makes me feel guilty for being frustrated with my life, because I put up with some inconvenient bullshit to earn a solid living when there are so many people in this damned country and on this damned planet that don’t know where their next meal comes from.

Can’t win for winning, I guess.

Long week where I didn’t get nearly as much done as I’d wanted to, due to many factors, including spring break absences at work, thunderstorm and tornado warnings, and some biological events you really don’t want the details of, but kept me within spitting distance of a restroom most of the week.

Ew.

Got a couple of nice bike rides in before the weather and, um…other things kicked in, and even through that, I got a couple of decent walks through a local park with closely-spaced facilities.

Otherwise, I waited around for people to sign things, had my mild, bland lunch of a nice baked potato eaten by…someone who remains anonymous, and the silver lining of getting a lot of reading done.

Oh yeah, there was Justice Jackson getting confirmed yesterday, which is cool. Historic on all kinds of levels (black woman, public defender background, etc), plus it’s nice to see more GenX representation on the court.  There just aren’t that many of us.

Tunes this week?  Lots of kinda twee acoustic pop from waifish female vocals dropping an occasional F-bomb, which…fine.  The band there at #6 is definitely worth your time if you’re into post-Riot-Grrl garage pop (which is a niche genre I just made up), a style also represented a bit by #12, and likely pioneered by the band coming in at #13:

1. “Gothic Surf-a-Rama” – Vampire Beach Babes
2. “Crop Circles” – Odie Leigh
3. “My Chinchilla” – Cub
4. “Play It Right” – Mountain Man
5. “How Long” – Palehound
6. “Monday” – The Regrettes
7. “Garter Snake” – Macie Stewart
8. “Used To” – Wilma Laverne Miner
9. “Helpless Blues – Solstice Version” – Fleet Foxes
10. “Plastic Jesus” – Tia Blake
11. “Lift” – Skullcrusher
12. “Combat Baby” – Metric
13. “Forsythia” – Veruca Salt

Apart from all the bullshit (insert link to absolutely any news website right now), some cool stuff happened on the US political front this week.  President Obama visited the White House for the first time since he left office back in ’17, in support of a fix to the “family glitch”, a calculation bug in healthcare marketplaces that has kept a few million families from buying subsidized coverage. Of course, I’d love to see universal single-payer coverage, but this is definitely progress – more people getting health care is an unambiguous good.

The nice thing about fixing the glitch is that it’s easily doable under executive authority (it’s really just a change in how a clause in the law is interpreted by the program), so no Congressional involvement is needed.  Boom. Done.

The thing that got me, though, was the historic nature of the photo included above – the first Black President engaging with the First Black woman Vice President – which gives me hope that we’re not all completely screwed in this current era. They’re also both ridiculously attractive humans, so the photo’s just gorgeous to behold.

Just wanted to share something positive, since that’s so damned difficult these days.

It was a week. Not much more, not much less. I honestly don’t remember much of it…between work, exercise, eating something or other, getting this tune stuck in my head thanks to the ice skating class across the way, the entertainment highlight that was Moon Knight, struggling with the dense text of the novel I’m reading, and sleeping generally like crap, it just sort of passed by.

Maybe that description is a little facetious, but I don’t care.

Today, it seems, is April Fool’s Day, which I’m mostly going to kind of ignore; so much of the world’s a big joke now anyway, and ThinkGeek doesn’t exist anymore.

A trip to a friend’s birthday party on deck for the weekend, and whatever else gets done.

As for tunes, back to Spotify weekly discovery (though it’s BandCamp Friday, so if you buy my stuff, I get an extra ten cents or so per dollar!), and it’s full of interesting covers (including Jason Isbell’s execellent cover of my favorite REM song), and a generally mellow vibe overall, which, frankly, is fine with me.

1. “Brightest Star” – Lily Hiatt
2. “Waiting for October” – Polaris
3. “Oceans in Between” – Damon & Naomi
4. “Covert Discretion” – FREEMAN
5. “Harvest Moon” – Jeff Rosenstock, Laura Stevenson
6. “Life on Mars” – Miguel Atwood-Ferguson
7. “Desperado” – The Langley Schools Music Project
8. “Driver 8” – Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
9. “Hallelujah” – Delicate Steve
10. “The Queen of Hearts” – Offa Rex
11. “Box of Rain” – Grateful Dead
12. “Belly Side Up” – Bent Knee
13. “When the Sun Comes Up” – Greta Morgan
14. “The Woman Who Was Also A Mongoose” – The Dead Milkmen
15. “Cowboys Are Frequenty Secretly Fond of Each Other” – Willie Nelson

The weekend, all told, wasn’t awesome.

Saturday morning, I awoke to find our dear, elderly, crazy, mixed-up cat Charlotte had passed quietly in the early hours of the morning. She’d been slowing down for a while, having suffered a stroke a year or two back, and having a couple of episodes in the last couple of weeks, but was still always active, vocal, and highly motivated by social interaction and food (sometimes too motivated by food), until she wasn’t, and just laid down and went to sleep.

She’d been with us at least sixteen years – you kind of lose track with shelter cats, but was definitely a presence in our lives for certainly most of the kids’ lifetimes. The house is a little quieter today.

Otherwise, it was a lot of just getting things done that needed done, in spite of the melancholy. Lots of chores, some fitness stuff – hiking this weekend, as the rain and high winds in the area were a concern, and not just because riding at a 14-16mph pace into a 25mph headwind really sucks, but good hiking along the river; I’d knocked out nearly 20 miles on foot by Sunday afternoon, when it was cold, but sunny and beautiful in the early afternoon.

On Friday afternoon after work, we did get out to try the new brewery in town, and it was…fine. But “fine” in this metropolitan area doesn’t necessarily cut it. It was bustling and full of locals, however, though I think that’s much to do with the convenient central location a block down from the village green, and not being wedged into a bike shop like the spot across the street. I’ll keep an eye on them (as they’ve only been open a couple of weeks, and these things take time to ferment, as they say), but all told, I still prefer The Kilt.

Apart from that, there was some movement on gig booking, though I’m going to wait until any potential hosts announce before I do. Also, I tested negative for COVID on Friday, so there’s that.

As for today, if I get through my workday (there’s some serious bullshit on the horizon around lunchtime), I’ll feel maybe a little better about the week.

As per usual, these four day weeks are always busier than the usual five day package. Just seems like all the meetings and briefings and problems rear their heads at the office, along with more-intense-than-usual drama elsewhere. If the world cooperates, I’ll likely knock off a little early, though the world hasn’t cooperated so far, so we’ll see…

I have, however, made it through this extra-busy week full of all the things mostly unscathed.

Mostly.

I did get word from one of my bandmates that I shared the stage with all last weekend that they’d testing positive for COVID a day or two after the con. Thus far I’ve shown no symptoms, but I’ve taken a few steps these last couple of days to stay out of the way of crowded places, be extra-judicious about mask-wearing, and generally follow the CDC Quarantine and Isolation Guidelines because I’m responsible like that. Based on those guidelines, I’ll test myself today, if only to throw off the weird psychosomatic “do I feel less than ideal because I’ve been infected, or just because I’m really good at convincing myself that I was, and it’s just usual tired-of-all-the-work-bullshit stuff” effects.

In any case, because of said positivity, we won’t be playing Fantasci this weekend down in Durham, which is honestly fine – I’d see some friends, but it’s a heck of a drive to go for one hour-long set.

Apart from that, word has come to me that several acquaintances or relatives-of-acquaintances have passed away this week, which, frankly, sucks. Also, Madeline Albright, a heck of a public servant with an inspiring story, and someone in government I’ve always looked up to. Dammit.

On the better front, we had those new appliances we ordered months ago delivered and (mostly) installed. They’re pretty, stainless steel, and some of them are wifi-enabled, which is just weird. But, I’ll take the wins where I can get them.

Nothing really on the agenda this week; given that positivity stuff above, I’m keeping my head down until I know more. Probably the usual laundry and chorin’.

As for tunes this week, I’m taking advantage of the new queueing functionality in the bandcamp app, which lets you build playlists from or shuffle your collection and all that sort of thing. Thus, this week’s list is built up inordinately of friends and co-conspirators (apart from #13, anyway – bigger, but definitely indie), but y’know? That’s totally okay – my friends are pretty damned talented people:

1. “Sorry, Mom” – Mikey Mason
2. “Sedna of the Sea” – Leslie Hudson
3. “Love Me” – The Positronic Cats
4. “Don’t Sail There No More” – Misbehavin’ Maidens
5. “Producers Are Mean!” – Night Sabers
6. “Ocarina of Love (The Zelda Song)” – Madison Metricula Roberts
7. “Dance Dance Hero” – Foot Pound Force
8. “Con Crush” – David Tyberg
9. “Waltz” – Keely Burn
10. “Battle Hymn of the Nazi Hobos” – D.J. McGuire
11. “Bela Legosi’s Not Dead” – Summer Russell
12. “Stones Speak Commentary” – Rhiannon’s Lark
13. “Prayin’ For A Sweet Weekend” – Rock Sugar
14. “Happy Holidays Too” – The Doubleclicks
15. “Shiny Objects” – The Long Losts
16. “Dancing In The Car” – Leff Whitmire

Marscon was, as it always is, a good time; it’s home. It’s the place where my con music career transformed from the guy in the back of the filk room all the way up to the guy with a well-attended solo set on the main stage. And, of course, the first event I ever played with the Blibbering Humdingers so many years ago…

It was a little weird with the policy shifts and such, but people mostly managed without drama. We played our music, though our performances were all a little rusty, as we’re *all* getting back into the habit of attending events with even moderately-sized groups of people. The audience, however, is predisposed to like us, since so many of them are friends, so even the bum notes were appreciated…and there were quite a few bum notes.

I got lots of positive comments about my solo set, sold a couple of CDs, and had conversations about possibly booking another convention later this summer, though those details are still sorting themselves out.

I’m getting well-enough known amongst this crowd that, somewhat exhaustingly, I kind of have to be “on” for the entire period; it’s difficult to get from one part of the convention space to another without being stopped by someone with a greeting or a joke or looking for conversation. I love this event, I truly do, but it’s work. Rewarding work, but still work.

Things actually wound down early this year as well – I didn’t stay for the the typical Sunday night dead-dog/cool down, as I was just too wrecked from being so damned social. I checked out early and left as soon as Mikey was done using my guitar for his Sunday afternoon set (his had a technical fail early in the con and I became his spouse’s favorite human because I lent him mine and he wasn’t forced to go buy a new one).

But now, it’s in the can for another year, and that’s okay – universe willing, we’ll do it all again in January.

As mentioned previously, this weekend is Marscon, and given that, I’m doing my usual Friday post on Thursday in order to get it out of the way, because I’ll have things to do tomorrow; even if I did take a long weekend, which I damned well deserved.

Definitely deserved it because this has been one of those short weeks that’s had way more than a full week’s worth of work to shovel through in it. I am, one can reasonably say, overloaded with work things, to the point that people are randomly commenting to me about how much I’m carrying. I guess it says something about everyone’s confidence in me to get stuff done, and I kind of feel obligated to do it, given the big raise I picked up this year – some weird sort of motivation to live up to the image that’s been created – it’s a weird Calvinist work ethic thing, even if I grew up on the opposite side of that. There’ve been a few hints dropped here and there that I’m being groomed for something bigger, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. It’s all rumor and speculation at this point, but…yeah; it’s something I have to think on before this phantom figuratively drops.

Apart from that stuff, I’ve been working to get my exercise in (not enough, my inner crazy person says, even if 40 miles over three days is fine for someone who’s getting over a respiratory thing – at least the rain today will enforce a day of rest), and spending lots and lots of time rehearsing for Marscon shows; polishing the old stuff and trying on the new stuff for both the Humdinger and Chuck shows, and also bracing for impending weirdness at this weird year. In any case, schedule still stands as follows:

• Saturday 3/19, 11am – Large Auditorium – Chuck Solo
• Saturday 3/19, 1pm – Large Auditorium – Blibbering Humdingers
• Saturday 3/19, 10pm – Large Auditorium – Blibbering Humdingers (“naughty” show)
• Sunday, 3/20, 11am – Large Auditorium – Blibbering Humdingers

It is, I should also note, St. Patrick’s Day, which plays nicely into family hobbies and heritage. I’ll probably drink a pint of Guinness at some point this evening, and I am currently wearing a green t-shirt as part of my casual chic ensemble this morning. I doubt I’ll be celebrating much beyond that – too much to do.

I shall, however, mark the occasion with this image my friend Greg shared on the social media feeds last night; seems appropriate – you’re welcome:

And with that, all that’s left is the tunes. Almost alarmingly mellow country-infused indie mix this week, with a few diversions into famous/influential megastars and a little School House Rock for good measure. It’s almost like the algorithm gods have decided I need to relax a bit…

1. “The Past Is Our Plaything” – Dean Wareham
2. “Joy Ride” – Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles
3. “Letting Go” – Erika Wennerstrom
4. “You’ve Got A Habit of Leaving” – David Bowie
5. “Alone Again” – UFO
6. “Blueberry Dream” – The Pink Stones
7. “Would You Like to Get Some Goats?” – Melissa Carper
8. “Stay Down, Man” – Dan Reeder
9. “Modern Woman” – Erin Rae
10. “Strange” – Boise Cover Band
11. “Stop and Start” – The Sadies
12. “The Runner” – Allison Russell
13. “God Only Knows” – Brian Wilson
14. “Lolo 13” – Laura Jane Grace
15. “Three Is A Magic Number” – Blind Melon
16. “Old Time Feeling” – S.G. Goodman
17. “Kitty’s Back” – Bruce Springsteen