Yeah, maybe just a little overwhelmed this week, not unlike every other recent week, frankly, but…yeah.

Lots of stuff at work, too many damned meetings, briefings, process changes, paperwork, email threads, and…etc. Stuff at home as well – too many bodies in a small space, a huge decluttering project which I truly appreciate, though the “in-process” is a struggle as I trip over things on their way toward being re-filed or Kondo’d out of the house, and an elderly cat who’s decided to completely embrace the id and brazenly knock over trash cans, food containers, any dish or plate or whatever that’s been out of someone’s eyeline for more than a fraction of a second…

I *did* have a couple of days of nice weather this week, leading to a wonderful five mile hike along the river and a really nice 21 mile bike ride. I’m hoping for a bit more of that this weekend, but we’ll see. I’ve woken up to rain, and who the heck knows what’ll happen next.

Wrote three decent songs for FAWM this week, and I’m hoping I have another one in me before the week’s out – I’ve got four to go and ten more days to write them, and would rather not wait until the last minute. Overall, the experience has been a good one this year so far, even if I’ve been two busy the last two weeks to record anything, and I’m leaving a bit of a backlog to catch up on.

But, I’m not going to waste any more time on this contractually-obligated missive; one more self-imposed responsibility I give myself as I just take too damned much on and don’t realize it until it’s already dragging me down.

Playlist this week – full-on indie, complete with banjos and reverb, and several animal mentions. Woof:

1. “You Dog” – Advance Base
2. “Little Sparrow” – Alan Dunham
3. “Plates” – Lala Lala, Benjamin Gibbard
4. “It Came In The Night” – Raincoat
5. “Liar” – Envy of None
6. “Galveston” – Why Bonnie
7. “You’re Not Alone” – Amon Düül II
8. “Green Rocky Road” – Bria
9. “Francesca – The Murlocs
10. “The One” – The Lemon Twigs
11. “Here Comes The Hotstepper” – Dr. Dog
12. “Fill Your Heart” – Biff Rose

I’ll be honest, I’m pretty damned exhausted. It’s been a long week. Pretty much every work day has clocked in at well over the standard eight hours; I’ve been plugged into online meetings for most of those hours, and the rest has been full of documentation, deployment planning for an upcoming major system upgrade, test cycles, and management trying to pile on more and more responsibilities to my already overflowing spoon drawer.

I will say that my bosses, for the most part, are sensitive to overwhelming me with work, because, as they constantly tell me, they need me and don’t want me to leave. That said, I’m very much approaching my limit, and the guy who’s trying to pin management of the SharePoint program on me just might be a bridge too far.

Ugh.

At least I’m lined up to have a couple of million in programs funded this month, as soon as Congress gets off their ass and stops with the ‘Groundhog Day’ budget crap, which is, to be honest, damned frustrating. I can only update this song so many times.

While work has been overwhelming me this week, I’ve also been supervising landscaping contractors working some cool stuff outside, and my lovely spouse engaging in Herculean efforts in decluttering inside. That’s when I wasn’t driving across the county to rescue her with a new car battery. Free time is definitely at a premium. It’s a good thing I got well ahead of the FAWM curve last week, because I’ve only got two down so far this week, and recorded neither of them. Still, I’m past the halfway point four days ahead of schedule; I’m not worrying about not hitting the goal…yet.

The weather today, however, looks gorgeous; even better than yesterday, which was particularly beautiful. I’m going to do my best to tick off a few boxes then knock off a early and put some miles on my bike tires – I really need that right now.

Enjoy what weekend you’ve got – lots of the usual stuff here, though my lovely spouse and I have plans to do a pre-emptive Valentines’ dinner at the new Indian place in town, and spend an evening working through the latest Hunt-A-Killer box, which is turning out to be one of the better holiday gift investments we’ve made – working through the clues is a lot of fun.

So tunes – interesting, kinda mellow alternative/indie again, which a surprising focus on Yeshua (#11 is actually catchy as hell), and the Doobie Brothers cover closing things out comes from the amazingly titled album Gizmodgery, which was recorded entirely with kids’ toy instruments. Boing.

1. “Nine Billion Names (To A. Clarke)” – Mooncake
2. “Mass Romantic” – The New Pornographers
3. “Marrow” – Thao, Thao & The Get Down Stay Down
4. “Half Baked (live) – Jimmy Campbell
5. “Donna” – Rubblebucket
6. “Car Song” – Elastica
7. “Crumb Back” – Mega Bog
8. “Dream Never Dies” – Lo Moon
9. “Southern Mark Smith (Big Return) – The Jazz Butcher
10. “Pattern Doubt” – Young Jesus
11. “The Sexual Loneliness of Jesus Christ” Jackie Leven
12. “Stohner” – MAN ON MAN
13. “Wounds of Love” – Nation of Language
14. “What A Fool Believes” – Self

…different week.

Work hassles, crap weather. Wrote a few songs though.

For the weekend? Delay-blast birthday celebration for the lovely spouse. Laundry.

This week’s tunes? Much alternative.

1. “Motorcrash” – The Sugarcubes
2. “Starry Eyes” – The Records
3. “Just Like Heaven” – The Cure
4. “The Greatest” – SASAMI
5. “Do Me A Favour” – Field Music
6. “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” – The Cardigans
7. “Bones” – Rosali
8. “Salvation Army” – Harrison Whitford
9. “Astronaut” – Katie Toupin
10. “Up All Night” – The Boomtown Rats
11. “The Ballad of Crowfoot” – Willie Dunn
12. “Gigantic” – Pixies
13. “Ballroom Dance Scene” – Horsegirl

For what will be my fifth year running, I’ll be once again participating in February Album Writing Month, a semi-organized exercise in creativity, taking on the challenge of writing 14 songs in 28 days.

In past years, I’ve always hit at least fourteen tunes, with usually at least a few winners – last year, I felt decent enough about the process to release the entire exercise as an actual legit album (I even printed a handful of CDs); and a lot of people seemed to like it enough to exchange money for a copy.

As always, I’m looking forward to the experience – the activity, the community, unexpected sources of inspiration, and all the rest – and I’m hoping I can keep my streak going.

I’m honestly not sure what this year’s output is going to look like – I never do, really. I can say that I expect the general malaise and burned-outedness I’m experiencing to color the output, at least a bit. Like the sky outside this morning, my outlook’s a little cloudy, what with the usual litany of depressing headlines and the fact that we’re approaching the beginning of the third year of this pandemic. The good news is, even those negative emotions can serve as grist for the songwriting mill, and often pretty potently. Even if I’m primarily part of the filk or nerdmusik milieu, a lot of my stuff ends up being kind of personal; right now, the personal is equal parts “tired of all this crap” and “just plain emotionally wrung out,” so a little exploration of dark places won’t be out of place. Of course, I expect there’ll be a few silly trifles and songs about books and movies I’ve consumed lately, because there always are.

If you’re at all interested in following the mayhem (or even participating in this mess yourself), go ahead and click that image leading this post off – it points directly to my profile, though it’s an easy click to start up your own songwriting adventure as well.

Write on.

On Wednesday evening, I was driving my lovely spouse and youngest child back from a recreational activity involving frozen water, and my head started throbbing. Started in the sinuses, and progressed from there; lights of oncoming cars appearing extra intense, noise starting to bother me, all that crap.

We made it home, I took my regular pills and some extra pain killers and went straight away to bed in the dark.

Waking up the next morning, I had that unmistakable hung over feeling, even if I hadn’t had any alcohol enter my system since I enjoyed that single ale on Sunday evening while cooking dinner. I’m not sure if the headache was a full-on migraine, though the experience was so identical as to make no difference.

That said, I limped my way through the work day and its litany of meetings and got my stuff done, but did very little else the rest of the day.

Feeling mostly better this morning; let’s hope it sticks. I’ve got nothing really on the agenda for the weekend, which is, I think, for the best. The weather looks a bit shit anyway, although it looks a bit more that way to the northeast.

Apart from the cranial business, I got a few things of note done this week. It took less than a minute to complete my begging brief to get one of my programs funded for the year, and took my first bike ride of the year on Tuesday when the weather was sort of decent; that felt good. I’ll take successes where I can get ’em.

So tunes – kind of all over the place this week – couple of great indie signature guitar licks in tracks #5 (excellent local fellow I’ll catch in a club one day) and #10 (until recently, the only tune from these guys you’d ever hear on the radio), then settling into mostly 90s AAA rock, which, sure…fine.

1. “Expectations” – Katie Pruitt
2. “Drive Me, Crazy” – Orville Pick
3. “Never Get Ahead” – Bobby Conn
4. “Too Good” – Arlo Parks
5. “Genuine Hesitation” – Matthew E. White
6. “Won’t Stand Down” – Muse
7. “Bite Me” – Avril Lavigne
8. “Howlin’ For You” – The Black Keys
9. “Never Let You Go” – Third Eye Blind
10. “Float On” – Modest Mouse
11. “Wake Up” – Rage Against The Machine
12. “Til I Hear It From You” – Gin Blossoms
13. “I Want You To Want Me” – Cheap Trick
14. “I Believe In A Thing Called Love” – The Darkness
15. “Alive” – Pearl Jam

If I look back at the calendar and tally all the stuff I clearly got done, it’s obvious there was a weekend, but damn if I’m not having a bit of a difficult time feeling like I had two days away from my desk and all the usual office weirdness of making sure the data continues to flow, the software licenses and support contracts get renewed, and maintaining some optimism that the initiatives I’m trying to champion someday make some of these processes more efficient and cost a little less.

I know time has passed, because on Thursday and Friday there was snow. Now it’s gone, and the sun was pretty bright yesterday. I can see the groceries I bought and the laundry I washed. I can see the balance on my bank account going down as the bills I paid, the tequila the girls-of-age and I drank, and the new kitchen appliances I got ordered have their prices collected. The fish tank is clean, as is the floor of the home office/studio/sewing space. Over to the left in the little box I keep it in, the number of miles hiked and books read have increased a bit.

Stuff has happened. I accomplished tasks. But it mostly feels like a dream in between emails sent, questions answered, memos written, and conference calls attended.

There was a break from all this, but I didn’t reap much of a benefit in terms of rest or stress relief. The headlines I read and the obstacles I have to overcome, and the people out there in my community who have so little empathy for their fellow humans…it’s playing less-than-pleasant games with my mental health and general outlook.

Objectively, I can prove that I’m getting by, day-to-day, and the ledger shows I’m making progress, but for whatever reason; depression, ennui, two-point-something years of global pandemic that keeps on keeping on, It doesn’t feel like I’m moving forward, and that sucks.

I just feel like I badly need some kind of win, and such a thing is currently elusive. My outlook on the future is hazy, and not in a good way like a solid east coast IPA; the future of well, All Of This™,, is uncertain, buried in dark gray fog, and so many of us, not just me, are struggling to find our way through it to a result that feels like a positive.

But, here’s to hoping we do.

I’ve registered and paid; I’m now committed to do the Century Ride for the 2022 Virginia Capital Trail Cap2Cap.

Guess I better start training, huh?

For the second time in as many weeks, my region of the country is sliding into the weekend with an allegedly significant weather event. Yesterday was rain and snow that mostly amounted to nothing but what’ll prove to be slick roads today as it’s probably not going to break above freezing all day. Tonight they’re calling for more precipitation, but the various forecasters can’t quite agree on what kind or how much.

I’m leaning toward not much, honestly – just enough to be mildly inconvenient.

“Mildly inconvenient” is actually a pretty good descriptor for the week at large. News on the national and state level has been the usual crap; work’s been quiet, though I’d rather it not be; I’ve got stuff I’ve got to get done, and it’s like pulling teeth to get straight answers out of the people who need to provide them, and the thinks I’ve gotten done have been just a bit more complicated than they need to be, but only to the point of annoyance. The rest of life’s been about the same; little impediments that are *just bothersome enough* without rising to the point of crisis.

Ennui. On we go.

I’ve accomplished just enough to maintain some kind of plodding progress. I got my bike back from the shop freshly maintained and tuned for about half the price I’d estimated, just in time to put it in storage due to weather. This week’s paycheck was nice and heavy thanks to that bonus I talked about, and I’ve gotten a couple of bills paid off, but as most of the windfall’s already spoken for, it’s just watching it flow in and out. I successfully briefed one project into funding and approval at work, onlty to have two more smaller, neglected ones dropped in my lap.

That’s the way it goes..two steps forward, one back. Over and over.

But, it’s better than the inverse, I guess.

Tunes this week? Lots of modern indie, a couple of cool covers, and some J-pop? Not a lot of stuff I’ve heard before, but that’s fine; this is Spotify’s “Discover Weekly” playlist, after all.

1. “Best Life” – Cheekface
2. “Crimson + Clover” – Pom Pom Squad
3. “Safety Dance” Angel Olsen
4. “SPORTSMEN” – Haroumi Hosono
5. “Cheers” – Faye Webster
6. “Like A Lady” – Pom Poko
7. “New Mistake” – Jellyfish
8. “Those Words” – Mattiel
9. “Don’t Do It” – Courtney Barnett Feat. Vagabon
10. “oh baby” – LCD Soundsystem
11. “Streets of Philadelphia” – Waxahatchee
12. “The Balcony” – Fruit Bats
13. “Traffic!” – Katy Kirby
14. “The Universe” – Death Valley Girls

I know these aren’t original, un-altered comic panels, but damn if they aren’t completely on-brand for my favorite Marvel 3rd-stringer hero:

Indeed; Moon Knight; one of Marvel’s more interesting takes on a particular archetype, has never been a top-tier hero in comics or otherwise. He’s always been a weird, horror-adjacent vigilante with ties, real or imagined (depending on the writer), to ancient gods, a variable power set, and regular crises of identity (why have one secret identity when you can have half-a-dozen?) with niche appeal. That said, he’s been more or less consistently published since the late 70s, and has never not been at least interesting and always visually appealing.

He, and his plots, are kinda nuts, and it looks like the series Disney+ is putting out in March are leaning in to that craziness pretty hard, which is exactly how it should be.

It’s certainly got potential; I kind of like th costume adjustments; it’s eerily comics-accurate, and the textures suggest the character’s ancient Egyptian connections in an interesting way. Oscar Isaac is usually always good (even Apocalypse, which was awful, wasn’t his fault), and Marvel Studios has definitely earned its reputation for competence and quality.

I’m looking forward to it, obviously, but mostly, the mere existence of a Moon Knight tv show is exactly the kind of positive I’m hanging onto hard, what with the rest of civilization being what it is (see, like, every headline, everywhere). If this sort of art is getting top-shelf production, then not everything is wrong with the world.

This weekend, amidst the snow storm that (at least around these parts) was much ado about nothing, my adopted home inaugurated a new Governor, Republican Glenn Youngkin, one of those “business” guys certain people like so much, because success in one area inevitably guarantees success in another, right?

As one would expect, the inaugural address included all the right platitudes about looking out for everyone, regardless of political stripe, et cetera et cetera:

No matter who you voted for, I pledge to be your advocate, your voice, your governor.

Sounds nice, doesn’t it? Of course it does. But it’s kinda bullshit.

Let’s look at a couple of his first-day actions:

Executive Order #1 is all about ending the use of “inherently divisive concepts, including critical race theory” (emphasis mine); which, as anybody paying any kind of attention at all, is an obvious sop to racist white people so they don’t have to feel bad when history class talks about how white people used to own black people around here.

“Critical Race Theory,” by definition, is an academic theory that came around in the 1980s in law school circles as a way to examine how racism has influenced the evolution of US law, and how through that influence, racism might be being perpetuated due to those legal and bureaucratic constructs. Simply put, laws are written by people, and people are imperfect and come with inherent biases, and those biases, including racist elements, can influence the system.

It’s the kind of thing that career academics in post-graduate education use as a framework for researching institutions and systems. It’s not a thing that’s taught in elementary school social studies classes. It has, however, has become a term that conservative activists found works well to appeal to the emotions of suburban white people who’ve been told that it means that K-thru-12 curriculum teach that all white people are oppressors and thus make white people feel bad.

The order even quotes MLK on his birthday, deploying the ““will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” line, which, according to Republicans is the only thing he ever said, and it makes him one of them. They’re wrong.

This appeal to white people’s hurt feelings is what really won him the election (along with the fact that Terry McAuliffe ran a crap campaign overall), and so it’s the cornerstone of his education policy; never mind that it’s all mostly bullshit. In states like this one, though, it’s concerning because textbooks legitimately used to frame the Civil War era in “Lost Cause” rhetoric and speak to the “feeling of strong affection” between slaves and their owners, and honestly, that’s not a thing we should be regressing to.

More immediately concerning, however, is Executive Order #2, which ends Virginia’s mask mandate in schools, which, in this current age of highly-transmissible Omicron, is highly irresponsible, and the logic cited in the document is highly suspect, quoting the kind of research one finds in fringe YouTube videos.

This, friends, isn’t going to end well. The numbers are not good, and if we stop enforcing even the limited countermeasures we had in place, it’s only going to get worse.

But once again, it salves the feelings of a certain flavor of Virginian, and that, apparently, is all that matters to Governor Youngkin.

Gonna be a long four years.