Well, this weekend was fun.

The big 2021 ice storm started doing it’s thing around here on Friday morning, icing up the roads, the trees, the cars, the everything. None of us left the house Friday or Saturday, because the driveway was an ice rink, and we’re still on ‘Rona time anyway. We watched movies, read books, I made a little music, and all the usual things you do when Elsa gets pissed at your neighborhood.

I thought we were going to come through this largely unscathed, though we woke up Sunday morning to no power. The timing of the battery backup on the internet box indicated it went out somewhere between 10pm and 2pm. Those of us who remember history know that when the power goes out in this neighborhood, it takes a while to get things back up and running, as we’re a little spur line between two larger residential subdivisions, and there’s little bang-for-buck in getting us first, because it doesn’t drive up the numbers. We know we’re last, it’s just how it is.

Of course, it was damned cold (barely getting above freezing outside the entire weekend). We did our usual winter power outage thing (it’s actually been a while, thankfully), pulling out extra blankets, grabbing some candles and my camping lantern, wrapping the fish tank in blankets so the poor little guys don’t freeze, etc.

It kinda sucked. We took a calculated risk to go out to the local mexican place for a hot, socially distanced meal, which gave us a little respite, but I was just frather frustrated about the whole thing, as I was looking forward to a relaxing long President’s Day weekend.

Things were still out Monday upon waking. While some of us went to the local library for warming and charging, I set out to just get the hell out of the house, as I was restless, cranky, and wasn’t good company. So, I went to the one local-ish park with a nice paved three mile loop (the close ones are all mud right now), and pounded out the circuit in around 40 minutes, working off some stress, and playing a little Pokemon Go.

Then I stopped at the grocery store for some supplies (like discount candy) and a beer, as one does when one does not want to go home to a dark, freezing house. Luckily, the power had returned by early afternoon, so I came home, and recorded a song about the whole ordeal, in the style of a Sea Shanty, which I hear is very popular among the Tik-Tokkers or whatever.

So, there was that. My fellow FAWM participants seemed to enjoy it anyway. And, none of my fish died, which was also cool.

Otherwise, the weekend kinda sucked, and I’ve dreaded doing the work thing today, but I cranked hard through my first three hours or so, and ended up making a meeting scheduled for an hour only ten minutes long because of my preparation and readiness to throw a bunch of assignments on other people to review.

Nothing in particular on for the rest of the week as far as I’m aware at this point; it’s the usual “life in the time of COVID” existence, which also sucks, but we’re used to it now, I suppose. I’ll probably do the taxes, because it’s that time and all.

Excitement abounds.

It’s Friday. About damned time.

I’ll be honest, it’s been a heavy week. Accomplished quite a bit, and maybe drank a little too much, but all with an unmistakable air of frustration and bleh.

Finally got the lawn guys mostly sorted, and my property is mostly clear of crap before the snowstorm. That effort was a little more frustrating that I’d have liked; of the quotes I got, these guys were the most reasonably priced, though they were a newish small business, had some equipment trouble, and I suspect took on a little more business than they could handle and priced themselves a little *too* competitively. There are a few places that are a little extra hairy that they just weren’t equipped to handle. I paid them their (reasonable, if probably too low) fee, and don’t feel bad about supporting a local small business trying to get established, but I think I’ll go with someone a bit more experienced next time.

Work’s been a little crazy, as one would expect being in the midst of a transition. It’s meant really cranking it to get up to speed on all these new projects I have to support (as the expert in a particular part of the process and have to advise everyone), plus working to try and transition the new person into my old slot, as well as deal with a kind of clueless PM from a partner organization we’re doing some tests with who likes to talk more than he likes to listen. It led to lots of long (talking nearly 13 hours Wednesday) days.

Also, most technology the last couple of days has been cowering and breaking at my touch. I spent the first two hours of work on the phone with the help desk one morning because of computer issues, I can’t seem to get audioconferencing working in Microsoft Teams (at least it isn’t SharePoint), and touchscreens either don’t like my guitar calluses and won’t respond, or respond double.

I can only hope I’m developing wizard powers, Dresden-style.

I did, however, get up to nine songs written and recorded as I type this for February Album Writing Month, and none of them feel completely like filler. I continue to get really rather wonderful comments from folks, both those who I like and respect, as well as people I’ve never met. I need to knock out five more in the next two weeks or so. I think I’ll get there.

I’ve also, of course, been keeping tabs on Impeachment II: Impeach Harder, being really impressed with the case the House Managers have made, but also kind of knowing that while the exercise is important and necessary, it’s unlikely to end at the result a slim majority of Americans would like (according recent polls). I did, however, write a song about it; a reasonably clever “talking blues” thing that was, of course, out of date by the time I recorded it. Alas.

Nothing on line for the weekend, really – I think with the snow and ice (less than predicted, but enough), we’ll be stuck inside more than is currently usual, so nothing fancy, for normal lbife or for Valentine’s Day, though I still am low-key trying to cook up something special.

Anyway, tunes the algorithms spit out. This playlist came out of me doing a little searching for inspiration; I have it in my head that I want one of my songs this month to have that mid-period R.E.M. sound; y’know, “Crush With Eyeliner” etc. So, I fed that into Spotify and it kicked out the following list, full of pop alternative, from that early 90s era and some cool stuff from earlier decades. I can dig it.

1. “Pop Muzik” – M
2. “My Sharona” – The Knack
3. “Pump It Up” – Elvis Costello & The Attractions
4. Been Caught Stealing” – Jane’s Addiction
5. “Once In A Lifetime” – Talking Heads
6. “Ana Ng” – They Might Be Giants
7. “Radio Free Europe” – R.E.M.
8. “Novocaine For The Soul” – Eels
9. “Debaser” – Pixies
10. “Peaches” – ThePresidentsoftheUnitedStatesofAmerica
11. “In The Meantime” – Spacehog
12. “Cannonball” – The Breeders
13. “Where It’s At” – Beck

H/T to friend Amber for this one

Apart from the schizophrenic southern weather, this weekend wasn’t bad.

Not saying it was particularly atypical; after all, our world is one where there isn’t a hell of a lot of novelty right now. I watched a couple of movies, finished a book and started another, made a huge pot of vegetarian chili that was delicious Sunday night and will provide a bit more than a week’s worth of lunches for me and any other interested parties in the house.

Of course, the weather, as mentioned, has been *weird*. After some gorgeous 70° days, I woke on Sunday to a cold rain. This sucks, because lawn guys (scheduled for today; we’ll see). I ventured out into it briefly to hit the grocery store, which was crazy, filled with everyone stocking up for their Super Bowl parties they shouldn’t be having. Upon leaving the store half-an-hour later, it was snowing, and the temperature had dropped ten degrees.

Of course, by afternoon, it was bright and sunny and in the mid-fifties.

Welcome to the mid-Atlantic in the 21st century, I suppose. Climate is messed up.

Still sorting out what to expect in the week ahead; transition stuff at work as we all figure out what our new jobs are supposed to be, writing some more music for February Album Writing Month (I’m at five songs down, two sets of lyrics to be set to music, and a couple of extra ideas banked), and watching Washington starting tomorrow to see what kind of strange theatrical farce the 2nd Impeachment trial of 45 will turn out to be…

Oh, and more rain scheduled to start Tuesday. I really hope the lawn guys are confident enough to tackle the project today, or we’re going to have to wait at least another week, which will probably include tornadoes or something, because that’s the world we live in.

Oh, and thanks to all the nice people who made Friday such a successful day on Bandcamp for me. It’s a nice feeling when people decide the noises I make into microphones are worth trading for shiny gold rocks. I less-than-three you all.

This week’s been a strange one. The weather’s been bizarre; swinging from three inches of snow to start the week to hitting damned near 70° yesterday afternoon (and making for a wonderful day to *finally* get out for a brisk three mile hike). It’s raining this morning, which I should have expected, since after some broken-down equipment and aforementioned snow delayed my land-clearing project, I finally rescheduled for this morning, and all the stuff that needs moved is wet and heavy again. I can’t win.

Work has been rather intense, as the promised reorganization was official as of Monday. As such, I’m getting yanked into a whole raft of new meetings (since I’m now in a “lead” role that has me touching everything the Program Management Center generates) while trying to manage the transition of my old duties to the new regime, while still putting a bunch of other things to bed and dealing with outside partner organizations whose PMs make all kinds of unwarranted assumptions. Plus, I got word that my lovely old building on post is no longer worth maintaining, so I was scrambling to get myself another seat assigned once we can all go back.

Oh, and my lovely spouse has been sick all week with seasonal flu (no ‘rona, thankfully), on her birthday, no less, and I’ve been pulling some extra duties around the house.

But if nothing else, it’s been a good week for music.

As mentioned previously, it’s February Album Writing Month, and I’ve got this particular creative project off to a pretty good start, writing, demo recording, and posting four tunes so far as I type this, putting me ahead of the pace I need, and I’ve been getting some very positive comments from a bunch of musical types whose work I really respect; I think I’ve got a couple of winners on my hands already.

Additionally, I’ve been working on another, more complex recording project for release this month, and came upon a life-changing and perspective-altering discovery regarding sound mixing that has tremendously improved how my finished tracks sound (the fancy new studio monitors I snagged on sale a week or two back have also been a great help in hearing new aspects of the mix).

In any case, the tune I’ve been working has kind of an obvious release date, as you’ll see, but I decided to go ahead and put it out today to take advantage of the additional promotion and extra few cents a sale associated with Bandcamp Friday, when the music sales platform waives service fees on the first Friday of the month (I can always shill for it again on the obvious day). So, as of about 6am this morning, “Happy Discount Candy Day” is out there in the world at the flexible price of “whatever you want”, but if you do toss me a buck or two in exchange, I’ll see a few more cents today:

All the other stuff up for sale on Bandcamp today gets the same treatment, so if you feel like supporting your favorite independent artists, today is a good day to do so.

Now that we’ve got the complaining and promotion out of the way, how about a weekend playlist? Spotify kicked this out from the “Discover Weekly” algorithmically-generated playlist, and it’s got some neat stuff on it, new, old, and new-that-sounds-old (#11 sounds uncannily like ELO to me); enjoy!:

1. “Escape Is At Hand For The Travellin’ Man” – The Tragically Hip
2. “Se no Cinema” – Ana Frango Eletrico
3. “Hell Is Other People” – Miniature Tigers
4. “King of the World” – Steely Dan
5. “Teenage Riot” – Sonic Youth
6. “Cheesecake Truck” – King Missle
7. “Come Over” – Matt Watson
8. “Uncontrollable Urge” – DEVO
9. “Premonitory Dream” – Crying
10. “Army” – Ben Folds Five
11. “Art School Wannabe” – Sorority Noise
12. “Obscurity Knocks” – Trashcan Sinatras

As mentioned last week, I’m participating in my fourth year of February Album Writing Month, a challenge to oneself to write 14 songs in 28 days. I find I really enjoy it; it forces me to be creative on a schedule, and the community of songwriters involved are wonderful, supportive, and amazing.

It feels like home.

In any case, the first day of FAWM ’21, for me, was actually pretty great. I wrote and recorded two songs, and also nailed the first week’s Songwriting Challenge, What’s In A Name, which is about using a person’s name in the song title, like any number of song you can think of.

I wrote my first tune for the year very early this morning after taking care of my initial morning emails, feeling sorrow, frustration, and disdain, and pouring that feeling into a text editor. After I logged off for the day, I fired up my personal computer, inside my blanket fort (actually an improvised microphone isolation shield), set the lyrics quickly to music and recorded “Barely Hanging On”, which was one of the first twenty songs submitted this year (it was #17).

After doing that, I ran to the store to buy toilet paper, then came back, having a quiet house (girls off teaching dance class, boy upstairs gaming), I grabbed some notes from a while back while I read a certain book, started turning those into lyrics and music, and recorded A Quiet Uncommon Pleasant Place (Auri’ Song)”, based on my favorite character from Patrick Rothfuss’s series “The Kingkiller Chronicles.” I don’t have the scansion quite right, I think, but the demo I recorded sounds decent enough as a first draft.

Also, in one of those wonderful FAWM occurrences, I person I’ve never met listened to it several times in a row and felt obligated to tell me how much they liked it. See what I mean about supportive?

Anyway, I’ve got 12 more songs to go before February 28; I think I’ll get there. I may not note every single song from here on out, but I’ll link my profile page here, and you can always find it if you click the FAWM picture in the “tunes” section of the left sidebar.

So yeah, that’s my obsession for the next month; deal with it. I’ll write about real life later this week, I promise.

By the time you’re reading this, there should be a small army of leaf blowers scraping autumn off of my property. I also have a couple of phone calls Friday morning, so that should make the work day interesting.

It’s been, as they say, a week. I’ve been a little on edge emotionally, and again, I don’t quite know why. I channelled some of that into a couple of hours this week building a drum track for a tune I’ve been meaning to record for about a year and a half now; it didn’t make the first record, but it’s a favorite of a couple of people, and to do it right, it ought to be released at a certain time anyway.

It was the first time I’ve really did any serious work with MIDI, and while the resulting effort isn’t complex, it fits the song nicely, and, more importantly, isn’t just a loop I dug up somewhere. I’m figuring I’ll put some time into building the rest of the track this weekend, getting a lot of the hard work out of the way before that part of my mind gets occupied by….

February Album Writing Month!

Yes, I’ll be participating again; in the past, I’ve generally had a pretty decent output, and at least two or three keepers out of the exercise. Hoping I can channel some of this generalized emotional baggage into something creatively worthy this year; plus, I hope to write a couple of funny ones. I’ve got a few back-burner ideas, though the interaction with fellow participants always inspires further ideas. I look forward to what I end up conjuring out of the aether.

Anyway – tunes otherwise. This week’s “Discover Weekly” from spotify seems really influenced by the pop-punk tastes of my youngest child, who spent some time picking the tunes in the car the last couple of weeks. #7 gave me a laugh, and #11 is a tune that has been popping up in different contexts in my life over the last couple of months, enough to ensure that it was certainly “a thing”, though a thing that I completely missed at the time:

1. “Neopet Graveyard” – Gully Boys
2. “Plea from a Cat Named Virtute” – The Weakerthans
3. “Rats” – Joy Again
4. “When You Sleep” – My Bloody Valentine
5. “Stay” – Buddha Trixie
6. “When U Call My Name” – DOGBRETH
7. “Ivankkka Is A Nazi” – The Network
8. “:(” The Garden
9. “Psycho Killer” – The Wrecks
10. “Alrighty Aphrodite” – Peach Pit
11. “Teenage Dirtbag” – Wheatus
12. “Blood Related” – Kurtis Connor
13. “Chicken Noodle” Small Crush

Woke up early this morning to see a light dusting of snow on the cars in the driveway. It’s pretty and all, but I fully expect it to be gone by noon. When it goes, I hope it takes the moisture with it, because if all goes well, tomorrow I’ve got the lawn/landscaping company coming by to clear autumn off of the property; it’s been a few years since I paid someone to do it, and things need the professional touch, after I’d had to bring a couple of dead trees down over the past 18 months or so.

I expect once the children get up, there’ll be some excitement from at least they youngest one, though in today’s brave new world, things don’t work like they used to:

Welcome to my world, Kid.

So, it’s Monday again…

The weekend, as predicted and hoped for, was largely uneventful. A little shopping, some reading, some decent shepherd’s pie that I’ll be eating the rest of the week, lots of laundry, a bit of television, a bit of reading, and a few Pokemon Go raids from my couch thanks to friends in Virginia Beach.

Didn’t leave the house much, apart from the shopping and a Sunday early afternoon jaunt into the city with the lovely spouse for pint and delicious grilled cheese sandwiches at Castleburg, where they still do social distancing and pandemic safety the right way, so we felt pretty safe (even if there were anyone else in the taproom apart from the staff, which, unfortunately for one of my favorite small businesses, there wasn’t – support the places you love so you don’t lose them, folks!).

And staying mostly home was fine. Nothing out there is risk-free at this point. To maintain sanity and keep ourselves fed, we’ve got to take come calculated risks, yes, but remember: just because vaccines are starting, albeit slowly, to roll out, it’s not really safe yet. Until we get up to the 75-80% vaccinated population threshold for herd-immunity, a partially vaccinated public just means more asyptomatic carriers. The vaccine prevents infection in a person; it doesn’t kill the virus dead or prevent transmission. Keep wearing your mask, folks.

So, including the bi-weekly Covid rant, not a whole lot different from the usual.

The week ahead looks pretty typical as well. Work is largely the same at this point, even if changes are still on the horizon. Looks like precipitation is going to put a damper on most outside activities most of the week, though that just gives my knee another couple of days to mend. I’m also working to get pricing for a small landscaping project I need handled more professionally than I’m able, which I also hope won’t be too delayed by said precipitation (local weather’s associated the s-word with Thursday), but we’ll see.

Finally, apologies for he whiplash between John Phillips lyrics in the post title and Nu-McCoy in the header image. It was totally intentional.

After writing a whole bunch of paragraphs about how I’m seriously struggling with what I suspect is the second occurrence of the “six-month wall” and whining about how tired I am of everything these days, I decided that it was too cynical and deleted it.

Sure, there has been a bunch of crap this week, including insomnia, a panic attack, a fall on an after-work hike that still has me icing my knee, a work PC that decided it was dead, fighting with customer service on a never-delivered Christmas gift for my lovely wife (that the seller insist was delivered but won’t provide a tracking number), and a general kind of untargeted anger and malaise.

But, it wasn’t all bad. We had a historic change of management in Washington and the peaceful transfer of power persisted. I got a phat bonus along with this week’s paycheck due to an excellent performance review, which let me pay off some things, including my car, a little bit early, had a welcome video call with good friends the other night, managed to resurrect the work PC, and yesterday afternoon I had a nice pint at my local, along with a pleasant, socially-distant chat with Tom the owner/brewmaster that just might lead to a music gig once this ‘rona business is over…someday.

So yes, on balance, it was a wash, though if you go by actual word count in the “bad” and “good” paragraphs above, the positive wins out, so I’ll go with that.

As Tom says, “♫ …even walls fall down ♫”

Hopefully they’ll keep crumbling and give me a break this weekend. I’ve nothing in particular on the agenda, and I think I want to keep it that way. Play it loose, see what sort of interesting things crop up…or not.

Anyway, tunes. Since I’m thinking about walls in general (and because I won a copy of Tom Petty’s “Wildflowers and All the Rest” box set from WNRN this week), I set the Spotify algorithms loose on the tune I used in the header, which, along with much of the She’s The One soundtrack, came out of same bunch of tunes as that record; it makes for a bunch of Wilburys, and some nice, mostly mellow AAA rock:

1. “Walls (Circus)” – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
2. “(Nothing but) Flowers” – Talking Heads
3. “No Rain” – Blind Melon
4. “Tiny Dancer” – Elton John
5. “A Long December” – Counting Crows
6. “So It Goes” – Nick Lowe
7. “Into the Mystic” – Van Morrison
8. “If Not For You” – George Harrison
9. “These Are Days” – 10,000 Maniacs
10. “Do Ya” – Electric Light Orchestra
11. “Kodachrome” – Paul Simon
12. “Ripple” – Grateful Dead
13. “Crimson and Clover” – Tommy James & The Shondells
14. “Just What I Needed” – The Cars

How refreshing is it to have a President in the habit of saying “We…” rather than “I…” again?

-me, on social media during Biden’s Inaugural Address

It felt good to set work aside for a bit yesterday at lunchtime and pull the Presidential Inauguration up on the screen, for a lot of reasons, but largely, because the change in management does a lot, certainly symbolically, and, thanks to first day executive action, to encourage a sense of relief and cautious optimism.

Seeing Kamala Harris take her oath as Vice President, making her a whole series of firsts (woman, Black American, Asian-American, WOC, GenX) in the office, honestly made me choke up a bit (I’m not devoid of emotion); first of all, I’m a big fan of the VP in general, plus, it’s so damned encouraging to see people in American positions of power that look like America. As a white cis-het male, I say it’s beyond time we got the heck out of the way.

This was, as I say above, the good kind of history being made.

Joe Biden, of course, has been working toward this day his whole life. I’m not going to rehash his story; it’s out there. He wasn’t my first choice for the job this time around (wasn’t even in my first tier, honestly), but I was proud to vote for him in the general election, because although he’s more moderate than I’d prefer, he’s a genuinely decent, empathetic human being whose heart is in the right place, and who has the wisdom to listen to the people around him, and is willing to evolve his thinking on issues in ways a lot of older politicians aren’t.* He reminds me a lot of the best parts of the people who come from the part of the world he and I both hail from; hard working, pleasantly informal, posessing of both academic aptitude and so-called “street smarts”, and informed by the best parts of his religious tradition – championing social justice and Matthew 25, rather than crusading to impose his particular tradition and will on others.

Speaking of religion, I have more than a few friends (of many different faith traditions, or none at all) that expressed discomfort with the religious references in the inauguration (and in these sorts of secular ceremonies in general); I agree with them (and with Thomas Jefferson) on the concept of the separation of church and state. We shouldn’t invoke religion (Christian or otherwise) as we do in secular public life; it’s a means (intentional or not) of excluding people, and Government shouldn’t be doing that.

That said, there’s a personal element to things like the inauguration, and for President Biden (I love typing that, btw), his faith is a big part of his life and guides the way he thinks about and interacts with the world. I personally didn’t have a problem with his use of religious references in his Inaugural Address or having a Jesuit priest (a long time friend) offer the invocation.** The fact that his “religious” language largely borrowed from Jesuit tradition is a bit of a relief, as that corner of Catholicism definitely “walks the walk” when it comes to doing right by others, and I know that’s the philosophy that’s informed Joe’s way of thinking, and we need a lot more of that right now.

I wasn’t intending to go on a tangent about religion in the public square, but it was on my mind, and this is my space, so, there it is.

In any case, it’s a nice feeling to feel optimistic about things going forward; it’s certainly novel and welcome after the last four years or so. I trust the Biden-Harris administration to do their best to get us through this unprecedented time, and bring in the best minds to help set things on the right course, and do their best to make sure that those minds look like a cross-section of the nation, and consider everyone’s interests. “President for All Americans” is pretty much transition boilerplate, but have a good feeling that unlike the last guy, Joe’s going to do all he can to live up to it.

And that’s how it should be.

______________________

* – See issues like same-sex marriage, Hyde amendment, ’94 crime bill, etc. He’s sometimes a little late to the party, but he gets there. I expect he’ll govern more progressively than expected, especially with the growing progressive caucus in the party pushing from the left.

** – The question of whether Government or other secular events need have an invocation at all is one that probably ought to be considered a bit more. Even if doing so is thought of as simply “ceremonial” or “traditional,” said tradition is often Christian-centric; that may have been demographically representative in the past (though most of the “Founding Fathers” were some flavor of Deist) but as much as right-wing talk radio likes to shout about it, America doesn’t look like that anymore and we ought to account for that. Personally, I’ve no issue with a “moments of silence” and such, but when such “ceremonial” things are framed in overtly Christian contexts (things like Baccalauriate associated with public school graduations, religious dislays in public buildings, “In God We Trust” on currency, sectarian prayers to open public meetings, etc), it continues to be exclusionary, and in general, exclusion is bad.