So I guess it’s kinda spring now? We’re supposed to top 80° here in the RVA today, after two days of solid (but warm) rain. I’ll take it. Lions, lambs, all that crap, right?

The week itself has been about standard, at least standard for weeks where I have to run the gauntlet of senior leader briefings to get projects funded and approved, wrestling with backroom deals, last-minute changes of opinion from legal and (especially) finance, and all kinds of other bullshit that even our “experts” on this process can’t wrap their minds around.

How do I deal? Biking, craft beer, and antidepressants (though not all at the same time).

That’s largely the plan for the weekend as well; ideally more of the primary, and less of the secondary and tertiary. Having logged a few long days of document review earlier this week, my goal is to bail a bit early and get out and enjoy the weather for twenty miles or so before the Cap clogs up. It helps to pour the work frustration into endurance cardio, and I’m planning on doing the Cap2Cap Half-Century ride in May, and need to maintain some sort of conditioning.

All the biking this month hasn’t necessarily shed any weight, but I expect that’s coming. I could stand to drop about 40 pounds of quarantine/stress weight (*if* I want to get back down to my lowest point, which was arguably too low), but muscle gain is going to help that long-term, even if I stall/gain a bit up front.

Who’d have thought I’d become a fitness guy in my early middle-age? I hope I’m not completely insufferable.

On that note? tunes. A somewhat usual mix of 80s and 90s alternative, a bit of metal, and some weird shit, but it’s a nice soundtrack while I take advantage of a quiet Friday morning to clean up a bunch of work documentation:

1. “Blackest Eyes” – Porcupine Tree
2. “The Sails of Charon” – Scorpions
3. “Beer Good” – The Electric Peanut Butter Company
4. “Domino Effect” – Ozma
5. “Cold Company” – Minus the Bear
6. “Just Like Heaven” – Dinosaur Jr.
7. “I Ain’t Hiding” – The Black Crowes
8. “Frownland” – Captain Beefheart
9. “Daddy” – Devin Townsend, Che Aimes Dorval
10. “Cliffs of Dover” – Eric Johnson
11. “Ghosts” – nelward
12. “Mother Mary” – Foxboro Hottubs
13. “All of This” – Shaimus
14. “Supernaut” – Black Sabbath
15. “Pretend We’re Dead” – L7

It always hits me hard today, though I always get through it. That said, I’ll be taking some time to think and remember, because that’s what we do. I take the lessons to heart, both obvious and implicit. Also, he would have totally dug the source of this post’s title.

Cheers, Dad. You deserve a better mix.

If you were waiting for the record to stream on Spotify before you listened to it, well….here it is, and you no longer have an excuse to avoid it.

If you listen, I shall appreciate your fraction of a cent per track. Seriously though, people have been saying decent things about it, the mix is pretty good, and when I attempted some of the songs in a live situation on a virtual music circle with friends last night, they went over well, especially as I’d never played them before apart from when I recorded them.

Anyway, I hope you do listen, because I’m actually pretty proud of it.

As alluded to earlier this week, the weather’s been rather awful, and it’s been keeping me from my primary source of stress relief; getting outside and riding the bike. The severe weather warnings have been coming in most of the week for the mid-Atlantic/Southeast, talk of 40-60 mph winds and tennis ball hail, which, y’know, is wonderful (and looking out the window, seems to have already started). We continue, it seems to live in interesting times.

As you might suspect, I’m posting the usual playlist post a day early because I’m taking tomorrow off. After the last two weeks aiming for deadlines and continuing to fill the two jobs, I need a bit of a break, and after wrapping the play at school, the kid wants to come home for the weekend, and I don’t blame her, so I’m going to go grab her around lunchtime.

Who knows what the weekend itself will bring. A friend is organizing an online music circle Friday night, so I’ll probably spend an hour or two hanging with the musical friends I haven’t seen in person for more than a year, which’ll be nice. A social interaction that doesn’t turn maudlin would be nice. I stopped in at the grocery store bar for a beer the other afternoon after errands and ended up chatting across the space between tables with some acquantances about the memorial service for a fellow regular who passed away a week or two back. It was nice (the guy had an interesting life and great stories), but…sad. Apart from getting my back adjusted at the chiropractor yesterday afternoon, my free hours haven’t been particularly eventful. Given the week we’re in, the girls are out even more than usual, doing socially-distanced performances to celebrate their hobby’s national heritage, and the boy, inspired by his newly-licensed status, has been out a bit more with friends. I work, I run an errand maybe, take care of the minimum in Pokemon Go for the day, figure out dinner, then settle in to bed, usually able to sleep, but more often this week, struggling with it.

Insomnia’s a bitch.

In generally good news, I got stimulated (financially) yesterday and paid today, so I can put a few extra bills to bed and make a nice addition to savings. The new record is starting to trickle out to streaming services (I think YouTube is first out of the gate, but the rest will join the party in the next 48 hours or so), so that’s a few fractions of pennies in my pocket there if you listen or some kid on TikTok decides “Make It So, Engage!” is worth dancing to because it sounds like something their aging mom listened to in college (hint hint). Finally, my lovely spouse seems to have wrangled herself an appointment for the vaccine (she’s got a couple of attributes that bump her into the group ahead of my classification), so maybe, just maybe, we can maybe start considering what the world looks like when this is over.

So, to wrap this up, I present this week’s randomish streaming playlist. I can tell I spent a few hours this week listening to instrumental progressive metal as background while writing bureaucratic bullshit memos, because it took a good four or five tunes before any lyrical content showed up. It’s not a bad collection, really; progressive jazz-rock, jam bands, and the theme song to the BBC Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series…I’m digging it.

1. “Vital Transformation” – Mahavishnu Orchestra, John McLaughlin
2. “21st Century Schizoid Main” – Fuzz
3. “Journey of the Sorcerer” – Eagles
4. “Jetpack Blues, Sunset Hues” – Anaanaguchi
5. “Teen Town” – Weather Report
6. “Metro” – Alkaline Trio
7. “Fairies Wear Boots” – Brownout
8. “The Lion’s Roar” – Cynic
9. “Three of a Perfect Pair” – Between the Buried and Me
10. “Ambush” – The Fearless Flyers
11. “Robot Stop” – King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
12. “It’s Catching Up” – Nomeansno
13. “The Sinister Minister”- Bela Fleck and the Flecktones
14. “Ebb and Flow” – Larry and His Flask

I’m a little frustrated with the weather this week.

Well, I’m frustrated with a bunch of things, really, especially at work, as I work to navigate a process that isn’t a process in the current “official” job, and deal with system partners who won’t listen to truths they don’t like in the “old” job that I’m still doing because they haven’t figured out my replacement yet. Plus, you know, historic pandemic, political idiocy, friends losing beloved pets, waiting for my music distributor service to get the new tunes up on the streaming services, finding a jersey that fits, daylight savings’ time, and all kinds of other regular stuff we deal with here in the current era.

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been shaking off some of that frustration by taking nice long, hard-pedaling bike rides after work. A lot. If you’re tracking my progress to the left on the VCT Winter Warrior Challenge, you’ll see I’ve put down nearly 200 miles in the last two weeks. I did twenty yesterday. It felt good, even though it was cold. I’ve started seeing wildlife on the trail. It helps calm me, and it burns about 1000 calories an hour, which is better than just sitting around watching netflix and drinking beer.

Of course, the weather forecast for pretty much the rest of the week is rain and unseasonably cold temperatures. I’m happy to layer and ride in 40° weather, though add a cold rain to that? Nah.

So, I’m going to miss that this week (maybe I’ll get a short ride in Wednesday after a doctor’s appointment if it isn’t pouring), and it’s eating into my time to finish the challenge before the end of the month. I’m not worried about not getting it – I’ve got 15 days to knock out 52 miles as I write this; that’s nothing; two or three solid trail rides – I’m not in danger of not finishing; I just don’t want to lose the momentum I’ve got going.

So yeah, it’s frustrating, even if it’s a total upper-middle-class first world problem. I need to vent somewhere, and I pay for this cloud space, so I’m totally within my rights to use it for this.

…and there’s always next week.

As we make note of the fact that it’s been a year since we’ve officially been using the term “pandemic” to describe the overall condition of the world, we mourn the loss of over half a million of our fellows, lament the denied opportunities for social interaction and live artistic performance and exhibition, and just, frankly, being so damned tired of it all, as of yesterday evening, we have something to celebrate with the passage of the American Rescue Act.

If you have any manner of empathy for your fellow humans, there’s a lot to like in this law; and the more I read about it, the more I see exactly the kind of positive changes it has the potential to bring, and to start undoing the last fifty years or so of conservative, trickle-down garbage that’s been dragging down quality of live for pretty much everyone who’s not ultra-wealthy.

Sure, the big story is the checks, but there’s a lot more to it. The expanded child tax credit is going to do some amazing things, especially if we manage to make it permanent. I’d have loved to see the minimum wage increased (heck, it’s only two bucks more today than it was 30 years ago when I was slinging ice cream part-time in high school!); but that’ll come. As for the rest of it, referencing FDR’s New Dealis not an unreasonable comparison.

So, yay, progressive values – I’m taking the win.

I’m taking what solace I can in this good news, as I’m personally exhausted and burned out from a crazy, deadline-ridden and willful ignorance filled week at work. Long hours have been put in, some problems have been solved, but sadly, even more have arisen. I am mentally drained, quite frankly, and tiring myself out physically after work on the bicycle only does so much, although the physical activity is definitely welcome. I’m not particularly focusing on weight loss at this point, but it’s a goal to drop the extra bits of me I picked up over the past year.

Depression’s a bitch, and it hasn’t helped my bottom line (or the lines of my bottom) at all.

Hoping for a quiet weekend, apart from the continued “teach the kid to drive stick” lessons, which include a certain amount of vibration, rattling, and shaking, but no more than anyone else’s first few times. I’ll try and put a few tens of miles in on the bike – last weekend’s 25 miler felt good; depending on my knees, I might do that twice (although I’m taking today off – there’s some rain in the forecast and, also, my knees hurt). Otherwise, I just kind of want to turn my brain off.

And with that, some music. Lots of early 90s distorted guitars this time. At the time, this really wasn’t my thing (I was going through my awkward country and following local acts around phases), but it’s not all bad. I’ll never turn down some Nerf Herder and or Bosstones:

1. “Low Self Opinion” – Rollins Band
2. “Sweet Charity” – Mr. Bungle
3. “Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart” – Stone Temple Pilots
4. “Civilized Worm” – Melvins
5. “Van Halen” – Nerf Herder
6. “Chewbacca” – Supernova Chile
7. “If I Only Had A Brain” – MC 900 Ft. Jesus
8. “Institutionalized” – Suicidal Tendencies
9. “Buckethead” – Colonel Claypool’s Bucket of Bernie’s Brains
10. “Albert” – Eddie Japan
11. “Thursday” – Morphine
12. “Where’d You Go” – The Mighty Mighty Bosstones

So, remember yesterday when I was talking about letting go of those arbitrary deadlines and milestones and such?

After spending the last few hours of work on Monday explaining over and over to test partners how things work and consistently having them (seemingly) willfully misunderstand time and again, I realized I needed to work off some frustration, and the weather was nicer than expected…

…I went to the park and rode a brisk 16 miles on dirt along the river, bringing me to a grand total of 101 miles in my first full week with the new bike.

Oh well, call me a hypocrite; I still enjoyed the ride.

I was, on the whole, actually pretty happy with the weekend, even if I didn’t quite hit a couple of interesting milestones.

As if I don’t have enough deadlines and due dates thanks to my career as a public sector bureaucrat, I find myself forever setting other arbitrary lines to cross in my non-work life where there’s really no need for them, and end up being upset when I don’t quite meet them.

For example; I’ve done this to myself twice in the last few days, and while I should be celebrating my accomplishments, I nonetheless find myself irked that I didn’t manage to get that one last step that would push me over the completely meaningless finish line.

As regular readers are no doubt aware, I released an album of new music on Friday. I promoted it on social media, had the bandcamp platform send out messages to those who’ve bought my other stuff, and, by the end of the weekend, I’d had what I’d definitely call my best run of online sales ever, and even with the paypal transfer fees, I’m pocketing a decent chunk of change, which is nice, as I basically put the online stuff up for “pay what you want”, which, in essence, means people can download it for free. Most people don’t, however, and I had a great sales day.

That said, I was just short of the symbolic “one hundred dollars” for the day on Friday, and a small part of me won’t let me just enjoy the fact that a bunch of people gave me money in exchange for the noises I make into microphones of their own free will, and that I made some extra money I wouldn’t have otherwise, because I can’t let myself enjoy my success.

Likewise, I’ve been putting the new bike through it’s paces this past week, and really enjoying myself, and feeling good for getting outside and exercising again and doing something I love. As of Sunday afternoon, I knocked out eighty-five miles over the couse of the week (including a successful 25 miler on the Virginia Capital Trail on Sunday), in spite of the cold weather and not being in ideal riding condition after being out of the saddle for almost four months.

Eighty-five miles after not doing it for a while is a big accomplishment, and it puts me well on pace to make up the time I missed on the VCT’s Winter Warrior Challenge (look left) and hit that challenge and earn the certificate and sweatshirt. However, as I’m a forty-six year old man who hasn’t biked in almost four months, my knees are, nonetheless, feeling those 85 miles.

Given that today is going to be slightly colder than yesterday (although it’s going to get into the 70s later this week), there’s no shame in taking today to recover and hit things fresh on Tuesday. However, a small part of me is itching to knock out those last fifteen miles this afternoon in spite of everything, because that’ll put me at 100 miles in a seven day period, even if over past seasons, it took me weeks to work up to that level.

As my lovely spouse tells it, this sort of thing is the result of “gifted kid burnout”, a strange little side-branch of impostor syndrome, and, apparently, a trendy internet meme that I’ve only run into tangentially because I’m a middling GenXer and don’t frequent the right social media places.

And she’s right. There’s something to this “never good enough” crap that drives me. It’s tough to enjoy success. If I do make a mistake, I agonize over it. It’s all over the history of this space.

It’s not a perfect thing (as several of those linked articles point out); I’ve gotten over most of that sort of focus on perfection. I do my job well enough (though stupid mistakes do irk me more than some), I get paid well enough for my efforts, and have managed to avoid the crazy rat race those business guys I went to grad school with thrive on. I’ve taken on things I wasn’t originally good at, but got “good enough” by putting in the work, despite setbacks. I’ve mostly relegated that burned-out perfectionist gifted kid to a disused dark corner.

But, he still occasionally comes out, and I deal with him.

In the meantime, I’m going to do my best to ignore him and celebrate my successes the best I can, because I did some cool stuff this week.

Warning: contains promotional content!

It has been, as they say, another week. And, looking back, a hell of a year. This time last year, things were just starting to get weird as the first cases of COVID-19 started popping up around these parts, leading to, well…you know. With the vaccines starting to work their way out now, there might be some light at the end of this tunnel, but in spite of what the people in charge of Texas and my local school board are doing, I think there’s still quite a bit of tunnel left.

Keep up the masks and distancing, folks. It’s important.

Anyway, this week…I spent a lot of time on the phone with work; more than usual, which is always a treat, though with the weather starting to improve, once I logged off for the day, I spent a *lot* of time putting the new bike through it’s paces. As I write this Friday morning, I’ve got almost fifty miles logged in the saddle, on both pavement and dirt, and I am quite happy with my purchase. The lighter frame and narrow tires make the experience on the paved Capital Trail much nicer (I’m averaging five minute miles now rather than almost ten on the old bike), and it still does more than well enough on semi-rough dirt trails. I wouldn’t do any single-track downhill with this one, but I didn’t do much of that anyway.

I might take today off and give the muscles a rest, though I think I might have a 25 miler in me for the weekend. And, every mile helps, as I signed up for the VCT Winter Warrior Challenge this week, late in the process; to “win” the sweatshirt, I need to knock out a total of 282 miles between 1/1 and 3/31; apart from the hiking miles (which totally count according to the rules) I’ve logged, I’m giving up eight weeks, though I am on pace to complete this before the end of the month if I keep it up, which I will.

Apart from that, it is, of course, Bandcamp Friday, where waives its fees for artists selling music on the platform, which means a few extra cents on the dollar in our pockets if you buy something today.

And, as you were warned, I have something new out there for you to buy! I present, for your edification, The Blanket Fort Demos, a new collection of fourteen all-new tunes I recorded during this year’s February Album Writing Month. Most are the original one-or-two take demos, though I did a little bit of sweetening here and there. I like ’em, and I hope you do too:

Lots of other people out there have new stuff out today as well (my friend Madison keeps a great list), including my bandmates the Blibbering Humdingers, who’ve put up the pre-order for the new record, Positively Gruntled, which’ll be out in a few weeks (after I put my stamp on a few of the tunes, for example)!

So, yeah. That’s the story from here. All that’s left is the traditional Friday playlist. I was tempted just to post the tracklisting to the new record, though that might’ve been a bridge too far. Instead, I left it up to the spotify algorithms again, and I can tell I was listening to some classic and prog rock recently, because this looks like it mostly could’ve been recorded off any local classic rock station’s air, and y’know? That’s okay:

1. “Crazy on You” – Heart
2. “Where Eagles Dare” – The Misfits
3. “It’s Love” – King’s X
4. “Ballroom Blitz” – Sweet
5. “My Way Soon” – Greta Van Fleet
6. “Black Hole Sun” – Soundgarden
7. “School’s Out” – Alice Cooper
8. “Jane” – Jefferson Starship
9. “Synchronicity II” – The Police
10. “Infected” – Bad Religion
11. “Little Guitars” – Van Halen
12. “25 or 6 to 4” – Chicago
13. “Turning Japanese (non stop edit)” – The Vapors
14. “Roundabout” – Yes
15. “Spreading the Disease” – Queensryche
16. “Mountain Song” – Jane’s Addiction

So, my little “time away from work” was, by definition, “time away from work”, as I didn’t log into work on either Friday or Monday. Doesn’t mean that work issues weren’t living rent-free in my brain for at least three of the four days.

Damn. I can’t catch a break, even when I schedule one.

I got some things done that have little to do with the office, which was nice. Lots of laundry, preparing a huge batch of chicken salad that’ll probably be lunch for the rest of the week, and a nice afternoon spent with the college kid (we needed to run some stuff out to her on Friday, so we took her out for dinner and hung out a bit), even if there were about five hours of driving involved.

It’s back in the saddle again today, in a couple of ways. I’ve got a full schedule of work meetings today (but not the one I *really* need, unfortunately), and if the weather continues to hold, I’ll be saddling up on my new bicycle this afternoon!

I never did get around to having the damaged one fixed at the shop; the bill related to replacing a whole new crankset and associated gizmos at the shop was, frankly, intimidating and frustrating, especially on an eleven year old bike that’s put down at least 20k miles over those years, often in scenarios where it wasn’t ideally suited. The conditions of my riding have changed since I bought the thing back in 2010; I spend a lot more time on pavement and gravel than I do careening down mountains on narrow single-track runs.

So, as the tax refunds came in, I started doing some research and seeing what was out there. I ended up grabbing one of these at Pedal Power RVA on Monday morning, the Giant Roam 3, a so-called “cyclocross/hybrid/adventure” bike, equally at home on gravel and dirt (like the forest service roads and bike/hike/horse trails I frequent) and pavement, like my beloved Virginia Capital Trail, where I’ve spent way too much time in the last year. My old Giant Revel 1, of course, is still on hand, and I’m researching parts and specialized tools I’ll need to fix it myself in my spare time (parts are reasonable if self-sourced, especially since I located an old pdf of the tech specs of the bike online) once the weather gets more reliably nice, but honestly, it was time to upgrade to some more modern bicycle technology that better suited my current habits.

Really what motivated me, though, was seeing a guy at one of my favorite parks racking his bike after a nice ride late last week during the gorgeous weather as I was wrapping a nice six mile hike, and feeling my heart ache for the same experience.

I’m really looking forward to this afternoon’s shakedown ride.

Otherwise this week, it’s the usual work crap, and as much trail time as I can manage. If I can find a few free hours and make my fingers and throat work right, I really should do a couple of sweetener takes on a couple of my FAWM tracks; I’m within striking distance of releasing them as a record for Bandcamp Friday on March 5th. I’m actually rather happy with my output this year, and releasing these “intimate” recordings out into the world feels right, whether it makes me a few bucks or not.

Stay tuned…