My first (of six) weeks playing the boss for the team at work is wrapping up. It’s actually been a bit less stressful than I expected. I’ve not been *not* stressed (especially in the early part of the week), but it’s not been a complete disaster. I also managed to move some of my own projects along, which was kind of novel. We’ll see how the rest goes.

The rest of the week passed largely without incident. The weather’s been gorgeous, sunny and in the high 70° – 80° range. I took great advantage of it by logging sixty miles or so on the Capital Trail over the last few days, and seem to be getting my bike legs back pretty quickly. It felt good, and it’s nice to be reminded that I’m in pretty good shape (below the neck, anyway) for being a fifty year-old IT guy. Also, the flowers the “trail abassadors” plant along its length are starting to bloom, so that’s cool. Otherwise this week, it’s been more of the usual, though yesterday I did, however briefly, pay my credit card balance down to zero, at least until the next Chewy order full of cat food hits, so that felt good.

This weekend is filling up pretty quickly as well, oddly enough. Although no one in the house is Irish dancing these days, there’s talk of hitting the Church Hill Irish Festival at some point, because it’s usually a good time, and again, the weather looks pretty great. Also, Thursday afternoon I got a note from WNRN that I won a couple of tickets to the Wanda Sykes show in town on Saturday, so I guess we’re doing that as well, which also should be a good time, ahead of some bigger plans next weekend.

Otherwise, here are some Friday tunes, and the algorithm seems to have finally started shaking the “all americana, all the time” habit, and has a little more variety to it:

1. “Thieves” – Sammy Rae & The Friends
2. “Boombox” – Charlie Parr
3. “State I’m In” – Sarah Gross
4. “Vetiver” – Hurray For The Riff Raff
5. “Bubble of my Gum” – DURRY
6. “Willow” – Sister Sadie
7. “Kreacher” – The Bridge City Sinners
8. “I’M IN THE MARKET TO PLEASE NO ONE” – Winona Fighter
9. “Panic Attack” – Judas Priest
10. “Soul Shaker” – Sarah Lake
11. “Wish Me WEll” – Red Shahan
12. “Storm To Weather” – Grace Petrie
13. “Bernadette” – Jason Scott

Spent way too much time on the phone this week; meetings and calls and consultations, and all kinds of things to get me up to speed to be the boss for the next couple of weeks. Not a whole lot of life outside of that, really. Not much to report. Didn’t get all that much time outside, either, thanks to after-work dentist appointments and being stuck in traffic and rain and all kinds of other stuff in the way. I did get to vote, so that was cool. But honestly, most of it was kind of just there…with a dial-tone or the MS Teams equivalent.

Bleh. Gonna go out for drinks with some friends tomorrow afternoon; hopefully it’ll be a nice time.

Anyway; tunes. Lots of ’em.

1. “Defying Gravity” – From Wicked OBCR
2. “Bubble Pop Electric” – Gwen Stefani
3. “brutal” – Olivia Rodrigo
4. “Plaster Caster” – KISS
5. “Five Card Stud” – Ace Frehley
6. “Possum Kingdom” – Toadies
7. “Body Brain” – Merciful Zero
8. “Losing Teeth” – The Scarring Party
9. “Life Lessons” – Railgun
10. “Star-Spangled Man” – ‘Rogers: The Musical’
11. “Can’t Hardly Wait” – The Replacements
12. “The Boy With The Arab Strap” – Belle and Sebastian
13. “Halah” – Mazzy Star

I’ve been ridiculously productive this week; I finished fawm with a day to spare, even if I didn’t end up actually recording anything during February. I wrote fourteen songs, and a handful of them have potential, which is the idea. I’m aiming to have a new record ready to sell at Congregate this year, so I have until July to get ten songs in solid, fully-produced shape, which is totally doable.

I also cranked it at work, getting my MS Project skills back after fifteen years of letting them lapse, and have scheduled the heck out of all of the agency’s IT requirements so we can keep the program managers in line. Good thing, too, because it’s looking like starting in a week, I’m going to be the de-facto boss for six weeks while the regular boss is off on a little sabbatical. Joy. At least congress kicked the can a few weeks so we won’t be shutting down the end of next week; instead, if it happens, it’ll be right in the middle of my reign over the program support division.

I also handled some important stuff on the domestic front, paying bills and arranging plans for later this month, and all kinds of other things.

The big news is I did this with a killer sinus headache the whole freaking week, which was a serious challenge. Doing anything with those gnomes mining for mucus with their hammering and digging and pounding behind my eyes and forehead is.

But I did it, dammit. Here’s some songs:

1. “Middle of the Morning” – Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
2. “Hey Jealousy” – Gin Blossoms
3. “Pilgrim” – The Wood Brothers
4. “Where Are You Going” – Dave Matthews Band
5. “Acid Country” – Tim Wilson
6. “Pink Triangle” – Weezer
7. “Sweet Oblivion” – Valentine Wolfe
8. “Body Brain” – Merciful Zero
9. “Wildest Dreams (Taylor’s Version) – Taylor Swift
10. “Death Knell” – Ghost
11. “Nights in White Satin” – Oceans of Slumber
12. “Angeline Is Coming Home” – The Badlees
13. “Name” – The Goo Goo Dolls
14. “The Boy With the Arab Strap” – Belle and Sebastian

Another week where I’m filling in for the boss, and spending too much time on conference calls. This is starting to become a habit, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I suppose it’s inevitable, as so many folks look to me as the substitute boss most of the time anyway, but it’s not like I *asked* for this arrangement; it just sort of happened organically, or was engineered from the shadows…or…hrm.

In any case, it meant I had to run a few meetings and answer a few more questions than usual, and respond to a couple of requests from on high when some missed marks in areas adjacent trickled up. Not too terrible, all told, but just adds to the other garbage I’m already dealing with.

On the fawm front, I’m up to ten of fourteen, with six days to go, and one song percolating in the background. I’ll hit the mark, but I won’t be running up the scoreboard. Couple of good ones in the hopper, though, and that’s really what it’s all about.

And finally, with the weather flirting with the sixties yesterday, I had my first real road bike ride of the year on the VCT, knocking out a little over twenty miles at a pretty reasonable speed. It felt good, and there shouldn’t be too many concerns about being ready for the half-century and change of the Cap2Cap in May.

In terms of tunes, it started off country, then sliding into an indie pop rock vibe with strong feminine tendencies…Not bad:

1. “Hi-Country” – Daniel Donato
2. “Hw It Ends” – Mama’s Broke
3. “Pump It Up” – Elvis Costello & The Atrractions
4. “Glad All Over” – The Rezillos
5. “Halah” – Mazzy Star
6. “Can’t Hardly Wait” – The Replacements
7. “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” – Pat Benetar
8. “Lose You (feat. Soccer Mommy)” – Bully
9. “Pool Hopping” – Illuminati Hotties
10. “Lilacs” – Waxahatchee
11. “Puppy and a Truck” – Jenny Lewis
12. “Knees Deep” – The Beths
13. “brutal” – Olivia Rodrigo
14. “Brand New Key” – The Dollyrots

So many slides. Over and over. Hours and hours. That’s the story of my week. Couple of big briefings for folks in the rarified air of senior management, plus a handful of training sessions on how to use simple SharePoint libraries delivered to uncooperative audiences, along with all the preparation and editing and run-throughs and re-ordering and, and, and….

My subconscious is presenting things in slide format. My dreams are coming with bullet points. I can’t frame my thinking in any other way. I ended up hiking an extra two miles at the State Park down the road after work on Wednesday because I got a bit lost and misdirected because trail markers are on posts rather than Teams windows…okay, it might have had more to do with my Avenza map temporarily losing contact with the GPS network, but I still missed my turn and went out of my way.

Whatever. I need this long weekend coming up. I’ve got some recording to do, some errands to run, and, frankly, some resting to do.

But tonight, I’m going to go out with my spouse and eldest child to celebrate a friend’s birthday by having a drink or two and doing some potentially embarrassing karaoke.

Anyway…tunes. Still a bunch of indie americana and alt-country, but it’s getting a bit broader, as the whole Super Bowl business has had me listening to Taylor Swift; gotta do my part to support the Deep State™ after all:

1. “My Dog and Me” – John Hiatt & The Goners
2. “Been Worryin'” – Cat Clyde & Jeremie Albino
3. “That’s All I Know About Arkansas” – John Leventhal w Rosanne Cash
4. “Simply Belong to You” – Shinyribs
5. “Everything I Like” – The Suitcase Junket
6. “Roll With It” – The Record Company
7. “Macon If We Make It” – Lucero
8. “I Gotta Get Drunk” – Redbird
9. “Baby, I’m Still Right Here (With You)”- – THGe Pink Stones w Nikki Lane
10. “A White Shade of Pale” – Houndmouth
11. “Pilgrim” – The Wood Brothers
12. “While I’m Down” – John Cragie, TK @ The Holy Know-Nothings
13. “Old Man” – The Wailin’ Jennys

A week. It happened.

The biggest news was the work thing where a couple policy changes and some questionable judgement (at least in the sense of making a decision without all the necessary information) has left a few of the projects I’m working in doubt in terms of funding. To be entirely fair, the underlying reason for this is the fact that we’re now almost half way through the current fiscal year and we still don’t have a federal budget, and the latest continuing resolution funding runs out in four weeks, and Congress continues in dysfunction. If things worked a bit better a few hours up I-95, management wouldn’t have to make these decisions at all. In any case, I’m likely to be spending a bit of time today talking my boss’s boss down from the ledge, as it’s too soon to write things off (because there are a few weeks of slack before the drop dead date), unless we do the shutdown thing this time, in which case we’re all screwed.

This is, in broad strokes, the story of every requirement I’ve worked this year.

Oh well. I shall manage, and probably pull this out of the trash heap in the end, but all these factors out of my control are getting rather tiresome.

But hey, I’ve got most of four songs written for fawm, and a couple of them maybe feel like keepers. We’ll see. Many of my friends are being exceedingly productive (embarrassingly so), and it’s honestly pretty great to see. I’ll catch up in the end, though I’m pretty sure I need some more varied input to help generate some output. It’s going to be all rainy and stuff this weekend, so I see some quality couch time with the tv or a good book in my immediate future; hopefully that’ll spark something.

As for other people’s tunes, it’s still a lot of americana/alt-country in the algorithm, though that hour or three I left the “new rock” playlist accidentally running has dropped a couple of heavier hitters in there. Sure:

1. “All The Gold In California” – Brother Marshall and the Choir of Fire
2. “Angel From Montgomery” – Buddy Miller, Brandi Carlisle, The Lone Bellow
3. “Lost In The Wilderness” – Feeder
4. “Johnny Dear” – Kassi Valazza
5. “Willow” – Sister Sadie
6. “I Forgot To Be Your Lover” – The Black Keys
7. “Yours to Bear” – honeyhoney
8. “It Must Be Someone Else’s Fault” – Courtney Marie Andrews
9. “They Wait” – Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
10. “Got Your Six” – Mary Gauthier
11. “The Way” – Mike and the Moonpies
12. “Stuck on You” – Dea Matrona
13. “El Camino” – Elizabeth Cook

The past weekend and several days on either side of it have been kind of a roller coaster…

First of all, the big birthday party for my lovely spouse went off amazingly well, both in terms of remembering how to host events, as well as “beta testing” the new house space as a music venue. Our friends The Salacious Crumbles played a couple of excellent sets on Saturday for a crowd of friends and chosen family, and I played a few tunes as well (and had both the eldest child and Madison and Leigh of the Crumbles sing along – as you see in the photo above). It was a lot of fun for everyone, the food from Curry in a Hurry and Minglewood Bake Shop went over swimmingly, and it turns out this house is absolutely excellent for entertaining.

We’re going to do it again before you know it; stay tuned.

As for the low, Lukin, one of our elder cats, who’s been having some health issues for the past year or so, passed quietly in his sleep on his favorite chair overnight on Sunday. He was a great addition to the family, full of personality in spite of his deafness and health issues. We kind of knew it was coming, as he slowed down tremendously over the last week or two, and mostly stopped eating, but never lost the friendly and outgoing attitude, making sure to walk (slowly) into the library on Saturday evening to accept proper tribute and devotion from all the folks visiting his house. We’re gonna miss him.

Y’all can see how it’s been. I’m hoping for some sort of settled-down quiet and normal this week, though work’s been kind of twitchy about providing that. We’ll see how the rest of the week goes. I’ve also been trying to make February Album Writing Month happen, though it’s been tough so far; I’ve got three sets up lyrics written, as this post goes live, which is on pace to finish on schedule, but I’ll be honest, it’s been a struggle. maybe I’ll write a song about that? who knows. But, again, we’ll see how it goes.

Hang in there, folks.

Let’s just say that I would really rather not have this week repeating over and over; it kinda sucked.

Lots of stupid work drama, an unpleasant flirtation with the illness that the rest of my family was dealing with last week, a bunch of disappearing mp3s, and a bit of self-inflicted stress as we prepare for this weekend.

That said, I am really looking forward to this weekend. Saturday, as you might know, is my lovely spouse’s birthday. We are both celebrating a major milestone birthday this year, and she’s up first. Given that we have this big new house, we’re hosting a reasonable-sized to-do, which is actually rather large for us, to celebrate. We’re getting it catered by our favourite local food truck, having some good friends play some tunes, and generally hoping to have a good time with friends and chosen family who make us happy.

It’s gonna be a big deal.

We’re gonna need it to forget the garbage from the rest of the week.

Anyway; tunes. More alt-country/Americana (I haven’t had much chance to listen to music this week), though this list is hitting a nice lefty sweet spot for me, and I guess we could call it a “fathers and sons” set with #1/#11 and #4/#5

1. “Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other” – Willie Nelson
2. “Duane Allman” – Amy Ray, Susan Tedeschi
3. “Before I Go” – John Hiatt
4. “Sparkle and Shine” – Steve Earle
5. “Maybe A Moment” – Justin Townes Earle
6. “How Many Women” – Lydia Loveless
7. “Smile” – The Bottle Rockets
8. “(I’m Gonna Get Over This) Someday” – Logan Ledger
9. “Devil’s Got My WOman” – Andrew Combs
10. “Back Against The Wall” – Son Volt
11. “Turn Off The News (Build A Garden)” – Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real
12. “Mountain Girl” – Blue Mountain
13. “I’m Over You” – The Silos
14. “Excuse Me If I Break My Own Heart” – Whiskytown

The previous week was, for the most part uneventful apart from some periodic occurrences hitting their intervals. Got a bunch of work stuff done, including actually using my B.S. in Education(!); prepping a lesson plan and teaching a class on certain bureaucratic processes I’ve managed to become the expert on. I also had my annual salary appraisal thing (the result of my efforts described in the above gif a few months back), which, overall, went pretty well; the boss said nice things about me, and while I’ve topped out my particular pay band/salary lane or whatever they’re calling it, this year’s federal pay bump worked out pretty well for me, and I’ve got a nice lump-sum performance bonus coming that’ll help me pay a few bills, throw my spouse a nice birthday party next weekend, and get a jump on replacing the venerable workhorse laptop I realized I’ve been using for ten years(!) without issue, except that I wanted to play Balder’s Gate 3 and it just wasn’t up to it.

Apart from that, I got the 25,000 mile service done on my car, saw some good blood pressure results from the recent med changes, and didn’t get sick like the rest of my family was over the last week.

I’ve got a whole lot of nothing on this weekend; I expect there’ll be some more party planning and house cleaning, but not a lot of outside time, thanks to the rain, wind, and the weird 70° temperatures we’ve having this week, after I was walking through snow on Sunday.

Climate change is real, though usually not this rapidly.

Today’s Spotify-algorithm driven playlist is still full of americana and modern alternative country and blues, which shows the influence of the Jason Isbell deep dive (Damn, The Nashville Sound is a great record). I’ll take it, of course, though I probably need to work in some greater variety to seriously shake things up. Time to set the kid loose on my account again, I guess:

With the holidays and work and weather and life and stuff, it’s been four months since I added a new state park to my Trail Quest list. I figured I ought to do something about that, so while the rest of the family (all of them fighting some sort of bug that’s let me alone thus far) slept, I got on the road before the sun and headed about 90 miles north to Leesylvania State Park in Woodbridge.

I arrived shortly before 8am, hitting the Potomac and Lee’s Woods trails, a few extra spurs, and some additional walking to take a photo or two, and find a long stick to retrieve my phone when I tripped and dropped it from a bridge onto a thankfully frozen pond after shooting the photo above. The whole place had about four inches of snow on it, which is a novelty, since we’ve been too far south to get much of anything here in the RVA metro. The hiking was pleasant, and I stopped counting bald eagles after I’d seen more than a dozen of them.

I’d actually tried to check this one off a couple of times over the summer when I visited the other NoVA parks, but during the summer, by virtue of it’s smaller size and proximity to a whole bunch of people in the DC suburbs, it fills up really quickly, to the point that they’re turning folks away by 10m most summer weekends. I can see why folks like it so much in the summer; the water’s quite nice, and it’s ideal for launching boats, though I thought it was perfectly suitable for a sub-zero hike on a January morning.

One more, and I’m halfway to hitting ’em all.