If you’ve been paying attention to my posts the last couple of weeks (especially this week), you’ve probably gotten the impression that things are decidedly not good.

That perception’s not entirely wrong, of course – one merely needs to look out the window or to the television to see that: the White House is is blatantly denying basic science and trying to distract people with big trucks, and people are risking lives and crashing school board meetings in Utah because masks are inconvenient, but you know what? I’m going to try not to focus on that today, because there have been some Nice Things™ that have happened as well, at least on a personal level in the last week or so, and I want to look at those objectively, and not through the common lens of clinical depression and existential despair.

For example, my biking experience has been pretty great recently. I finished the Quarantine Challenge last Saturday, knocking out a 19 mile run in record time, and, oddly, passing more people than I was passed by. Now, while I wait for my certificate and t-shirt, I keep riding, having 40 miles on dirt under me since Monday, and I’m going to aim to blow past 60 by Sunday, just to see if I can, and likely will, because I’ve gotten past one of those physical plateaus you occasionally hit, and am seeing a real increase in strength and stamina in the last week or so. I’ll take it.

Even if I wasn’t able to host open mic this month (or any of the last five months), and honestly, have barely picked up a guitar recently, I’ve made some progress in my semi-pro music career, finally getting off my duff and working on arranging digital distribution for my work. As of this week, World’s Okayest… is starting to trickle out to the various digital sales and streaming platforms. Thus far, I can currently confirm sightings in the iTunes store, Google Music, and Amazon, with more popping up regularly. Once Spotify hits (I hear it takes a little longer there than other places), I’ll feel like I’ve “made it.”

Also cool, though it’s not a done deal quite yet, I was approached by the Dragoncon Filk Track to maybe do a solo set sometime during this year’s “virtual” convention. It helps that the folks what run things are friends, and that I’ve played the event the last however many years with the Humdingers, but it’s nice to be thought of, and especially nice to be reassured that I was firmly on the list before the con left the physical plane of existence.

One more music-related thing worth noting is the new (to me) toy I acquired. A while back, my friend Alyssa of Rhiannon’s Lark mentioned that she was looking to unload her venerable TC Helicon Harmony Singer vocal effects pedal after scoring an upgrade. Having seen one of these in action in the past (one of my open mic-ers has one, and it’s *awesome*), I kind of jumped at the chance, we coordinated, and as of Thursday afternoon, it’s in my hands. I’m looking forward to finding some time this weekend to experiment with it.

Finally, tomorrow is my Twenty-Second wedding anniversary. The lovely spouse and I have been through a lot in the last two decades and change, but we keep on going, and it’s still cool. Given the General State of Things™, we’re going to play it low-key; one of our favorite food trucks is going to be out at Steam Bell tomorrow afternoon, so we’re going to go have a delicious and pandemic-safe dinner and drinks to celebrate.

Anyway….it’s kind of reassuring to see that I can fill just as much space with talk of good things as I can with frustration with Life, the Universe, and Everything when I put my mind to it. Maybe stuff isn’t so bad after all. We can hope.

It is, however, Friday, and that means I play some tunes in the background and list them here for folks to discover and/or judge. This week looks relatively typical; indie rock and alt-country bookended by 80s alternative icons. Cool:

1. “Six Different Ways” – The Cure
2. “I Just Threw Out the Love Of My Dreams” – Weezer
3. “Ninety Bucks” – Craig Finn
4. “Gun” – Uncle Tupelo
5. “Union Jack” – Big Audio Dynamite
6. “Hard to Kill” – Bleached
7. “Car Song” – Elastica
8. “Dream All Day” – The Posies
9. “The Death Of Pop” – The Rub
10. “Teenage Wasteland” – Wussy
11. “Alone Again Or” – The Damned
12. “Wave of Mutilation” – Pixies

This week was the one during which I cracked. I struggled with all the stereotypical hallmarks of bureaucracy as seen through the filter of Gilliam’s Brazil this week, and it almost broke me.

While the fiscal year ends with September, the fact that the acquisition shop needs time to actually buy the things means that July is the crazy time for program managers in my particular organization. As I’ve said before, because I have training and experience in both program management and contracting, the bulk of setting up the acquisition packages for approval from the C-suite for my corner of the organization falls to me because I’m reasonably good at it, in theory. In practice, it’s me flailing at creating documents with only about 60% of the information I need from the key players, aiming for constantly shifting standards, and dealing with the various departmental gates to get the package (that honestly, nobody with authority is going to read anyway) to approved status, who are often ill-prepared in meetings, and can’t seem to be able to read.

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been aiming to have our branch’s last two packages for the fiscal year teed up for the end-of-the-month approval-palooza review board, the submission deadline being Thursday (today) at noon. I spun bullshit, catered to every stakeholder’s whims (often contradictory), and mostly suppressed my passive-aggressive responses when people showed up to meetings having not taken five minutes to brush up on the topic and insist on asking irrelevant questions while treating me with disdain and condescension, not unlike asking an honors AP English student if they knew their ABCs….

This, on top of my whole other job of making sure the data keeps flowing through the pipes and ends up in the right format at the end, and trying to wrangle funding to get that process in line after all kinds of discussions with lawyers and stuff to make sure what we wanted to do was on the up-and-up; And dealing with personally ramping myself back up on my prescription meds and serious allergies that had one side of my head completely jammed all week to the point that I couldn’t hear out of my left ear for about 24 hours….

So yeah, I was dealing with some stuff.

About 150 emails into my day on Wednesday, my boss called, and basically asked “Are You Okay?”, because one of the memos I wrote that came across his desk not only didn’t live up to my usual high standards, but upon reviewing it myself, it was basically incoherent; like the numbers weren’t actually numbers incoherent.

Thankfully, my boss and I have a pretty good relationship, and he notices stuff like this, and basically talked me down to the point where I wasn’t vibrating and babbling, and encouraged me to step away for a bit, because for a while, I forgot that no matter what anyone says, there’s nothing in this job that can’t stand to wait until tomorrow.

So, I put some stuff to bed, went to my fortuitously timed chiropractor appointment, where my guy with the magic hands cracked my spine like a zipper opening (and cleared some of the pressure in my ear), then took a drive into the city to have a pint at Castleburg and eat a soft pretzel with pub mustard for dinner, and talk to my staff friends there about what exactly it is we’re going to do about open mic as this whole world outside business keeps happening, and felt a little better afterward.

I did break one of my usual rules by logging back into work in the evening before bed to check to see if finance guy had any more ridiculous requests, which he did, but they were simple to address, and then I went to bed, confident that things were sorted enough to wait until morning.

Morning came, and I found that the app which shall not be named (but anagrams to “hate PriSon”) had wrecked my access to load things for the point of sharing…again, so a ticket got submitted that I expect won’t get fixed today, and I handed off my final packages to someone else to load, a full six hours before the deadline.

And honestly, unless something else stupid comes up, I should have smooth sailing through Friday, at which point I take a long weekend, spend my 22nd Wedding Anniversary on a date with my lovely spouse, and enjoy my application of annual leave on Monday for no other purpose than a mental health day.

Thank you for listening to my venting. Carry on.

No, not you, not any specific person, really, but people in general.

People, in the aggregate, are generally awful. If the current state of things is any indication, huge swaths of the population can’t be counted on to be good, responsible citizens, acting for the good of the community. It feels like the majority of people around me can’t behave non-selfishly; demanding their individual rights without regard to their responsibilities to the larger community, even if, long term, it is in their self-interest to do so. Even if they should know better. I was disappointed today to see the words of an acquaintance whose family has been impacted directly by this damned virus, to the point of hospitalization, persist in talking about how it’s an individual choice whether someone wears a mask or not. It doesn’t make sense, this kind of behavior. You say “rugged individualism”, but all I see is “selfish asshole-ism”.

Especially, here in this particular corner of the world, where the government took steps early to attempt to limit the spread, and has done a pretty good job of it, though honestly, if my experience out there is any indication, I hate to see what the behavior in some of the places doing a bad job. We’ve had the mask order for months now, and it’s worked. Except where it hasn’t, because people are selfish and obstinate. To talk to those cases, our Governor today indicated that actually start enforcing things; making sure businesses are actually complying with social distancing and face covering procedures, and actually turning away people who aren’t masking up or staying out of melee range, which is how it should have been from the very beginning, but to our detriment, those of us on the leftward side of the spectrum really want to believe the best of folks, and we’re constantly finding ourselves let down.

Just wear your damned mask.

Oh, I’m also not fond of people who routinely come to meetings unprepared, then attempt to wield condescending authority in their ignorance*, over and over again. That’s not being a team player, a model citizen, or a good neighbor.

We can do better.

________________________________

* – Okay, maybe this statement is a little bit more specific than some of the others.

Remember, back an eternity ago (but actually only about 48 hours, since this is how the world works now) when I mentioned that the bubble wrap was better than the weeping and irritability? Yeah, that didn’t last long. Wednesday (and most of Thursday as I start writing this missive) were emotionally rough, for no particularly discernable reason. I’m logically sure it has everything to do with delicate balances of various neurotransmitters in my ramshackle cellular construct of a brain, but emotionally, it just feels like the world, on both the micro and macro level, are simply out to get all of us, with both strategic little pokes to tender personal places and grand, global-scale efforts to simply burn it all down because the universe is harsh and uncaring.

That really doesn’t make sense; the universe being indifferent to our fate, yet also needling us personally…but then, human emotional perception of things and my inclination to take those things personally sometimes doesn’t make sense either. It’d be easier if we were logical and green-blooded and such, but then, that’s just a veneer when one considers shit like Pon Farr.

Damn, I really am all over the damned place today.

All those emotional, out-of-tolerance roller coaster rides being a given, I did manage to accomplish a hell of a lot of important and useful work stuff this week, advancing projects, bailing my boss’s ass out of the fire half-a-dozen times (always useful to have in your back pocket), acting as a good steward of tax dollars, and providing documentation for auditors because I’m hella organized and anal retentive.

I also managed to knock out almost fifty miles on the bike this week, though I haven’t really lost weight (I’m hitting that “getting muscle built back up to consume fat” point again), which, in spite of parenthetical justifications, I’m still frustrated by, but my clothes fit better at any rate.

As for the coming weekend, it’s mostly bog-standard (bills, groceries, laundry, etc), though I’m planning on wrapping up my last leg of the Capital Quarantine Challenge on Saturday, which for me is an 18 mile stretch between Charles City County and the Chickahominy River in Williamsburg. In celebration of completing the challenge and earning my t-shirt, I’ll probably have a deserved socially-distanced beer at one of Williamsburg’s fine breweries near the end.

And that’s really all I’ve got (my physical experience in the world is small these days, as should yours be), since I’m really trying not to contemplate how the current US administration is so badly mucking things up that there might not be a next year at this rate (it’s like they know they know the election is lost, so they’re basically just wrecking everything and salting the earth behind them, and taking us all with them), and that kind of thinking just leads back to my musings in the first paragraph of this textural scream into the void.

Anyway, tunes. Lots of mostly late 90s alt-pop from Spotify’s “Weekly Discovery” playlist this time, which is perfectly fine, honestly, but nothing special. Mostly digging the little bit of late ’70s “Armed Forces” slipping in at #10, which just hit me right for some reason:

1. “Premonititory Dream” – Crying
2. “She’s a Sleestak” – Nerf Herder
3. “Overexcited” – Guster
4. “Pink Lite” – Sir Babygirl
5. “As I Walk Into The Sea” – Allie Crow Buckley
6. “New Mistake” – Jellyfish
7. “Have to Forgive” – The Building
8. “When You Know Why You’re Happy” – Richard Reed Parry, Little Scream
9. “Black Metallic” – Catherine Wheel
10. “(What’s So Funny About) Peace, Love And Understanding” – Elvis Costello & The Attractions
11. “Up All Night” – The Boomtown Rats
12. “Carlotta Valez” – Harvey Danger

Four day weekend. Not terrible, other than the slightly cloudy feeling I’m likely to have until later this week when I was able to schedule a doctor’s appointment because somewhere between the larger medical group (which ate up my wonderful doctor’s smaller practice last year) and the pharmacy system, there was a hiccup that has left me rationing one of my antidepressants; I’ve done it responsibly to avoid all the scary sounding side effects; I just kind of feel tired and surrounded in bubble wrap, which I guess is better than constant weeping and irritability…so far.

I’ll manage. Otherwise, I rode a bunch of miles on the bike (and saw some cool animals along the way), had a successful grill experience, and have been trying to shake the earworm that is Hamilton since Saturday evening. I also learned that Dragoncon is going virtual (which sucks, but 100k in close quarters in downtown Atlanta 8 week from now? It was the best choice), so at least now I can put that aside.

And now, back to the grind. I have some powerpoints to adjust, some legal determinations to apply to proposals, that sort of thing; the usual crap in my usual universe of things. I’ll keep riding, keep working, and deal with the drag that is the rest of the world as it comes.

…but not without expressing my disappointment with one thing I saw this morning. It’s become my habit over the last couple of weeks to, after knocking out the original barrage of emails and taking care of morning ablutions, to a couple of times a week take a quick trip out to one of the local convenience stores to grab a beverage and maybe a bagel if I don’t have any in the house for breakfast. This was one of those mornings. While I was out, I was again disappointed but not surprised to see a somewhat less than 50% mask use rate among customers (this county is #4 in the state for total cases for a reason), though extremely let down and disappointed to observe several members of the county police force milling around in a very crowded Wa-Wa store leisurely drinking coffee, pointedly not observing social distancing (amongst themselves or the public trying to use the coffee station) nor wearing masks.

These folks are supposed to be the example, right? That’s the idea? That the “blue lives” are people to be looked up to?

On a morning when I discovered the wife of a dear friend is in the hospital thanks to COVID-19 complications (someone who lives in this very county), this was not the kind of thing I needed to see.

Shit is broken, folks. Please, please, do your part to make it a little better?

If you’re reading this Friday morning (as I expect you probably are), I’m probably in the midst of my next leg of the Capital Quarantine Challenge, and not sitting at my computer after loading up everyone’s inboxes first thing, because it’s the federal bank holiday for Independence Day. My plan as it stands is to knock out the section from the starting line near Jamestown to the first big parking trailhead at Chickahominy Riverfront Park. Depending on timing, Billsburg Brewery is like three blocks from the trailhead, which could be a bonus to celebrate my accomplishment. With that stretch, I’ll have largely finished off the stuff I can do on my without borrowing my lovely spouse to drop me and pick me up at various mile markers (having done the stretch from the Richmond flood wall out to marker 45 on Tuesday afternoon). We’ve got tentative plans to knock out one of those sections on Saturday afternoon, which should have me covered for 35 or so of the 51.7 miles of the trail, and have me on track to earn my t-shirt by next weekend, if not before.

As for the rest of the weekend, I’m largely going to avoid celebrating Indpendence Day itself, because gatherings in the age of the ‘rona, and, to be honest, I don’t trust that there isn’t going to be some weird shit going down (Stonewall came down in the city yesterday, and I’m not betting against some acting out in protest here in Amanda Chase-land) in the area.

This is, for good or for (mostly) ill, the world we live in right now, and we have to adjust to what makes sense. Tentative plans are to do our thing, watch Hamilton on Disney+ with some friends in a “virtual watch party”, and take care of the rest of the usual stuff. I also took Monday off, because everybody else at the office did (hell, a lot of them took off the whole last week of June), and I might as well burn some leave I’m accumulating.

Anyway, tunes. Not a bad mix; lots of rough-edged folky pop (even from the Indigo Girls at #1, as a par of them always wanted to be the Replacements anyway), some new, some not. I kinda love the crazy heavy mix on the drums on #9, which is a new one to me:

1. “Fugitive” – Indigo Girls
2. “American Music” – Violent Femmes
3. “Charlotte Anne” – Julian Cope
4. “Tuesday Morning” – The Pogues
5. “Makes No Sense At All” – Hüsker Dü
6. “Motel Room” – Kiss the Tiger
7. “Cut Your Hair” – Pavement
8. “Daddy” – Man on Man
9. “Of Pressure” – Mount Eerie
10. “Don’t Do Me Like That” – J Mascis
11. “This Is Not Who I Want To Be” – Joanna Sternberg
12. “Yin and Yang (The Flowerpot Man)” – Love and Rockets
13. “After Those Who Mean It” – Laura Stevenson
14. “Woyaya” – Anias Mitchell, Kate Stables

The lovely spouse and I took a quick ride yesterday to get out of the house and hit some Pokemon Go/Wizards Unite spots, and along the way, we stopped at one of the many local WaWa convenience stores to top of the gas tank (with life as it is, I’m on the “once every two or three weeks” plan) and grab a cold drink on a hot humid summer afternoon.

While inside grabbing our drinks, Lionel Richie’s 1986 summer hit “Dancing on the Ceiling” started playing over the PA. Despite being ubiquitous during it’s release (and hitting #2 on the Billboard charts), it hasn’t actually aged well, and has been repeatedly included on numerous “worst songs of all time” lists since. It is catchy, but without a doubt, objectively terrible.

Did that, however, stop everyone in the store, regardless of age, race, gender identity, or any other demographic measure, from singing or humming along under their masks for those four minutes or so?

It did not.

And now it’s in your head too.

I have been reminded by various sources that today is Phoenix’s so-called “Gotcha Day”, which means that she’s been with us for a full year now. Even if she’s a little cranky sometimes (but then, so am I), she’s my friend, and life is better with her around. She certainly helps me get through quarantine work-from-home days:

Remember how I was expecting a smooth and short work day on Friday? Yeah…well…it wasn’t. I was stuck dealing with difficult, frustrating people all day long, for a full eight hour day, and then had to field a couple of calls after I was off the clock. I suppose I should be grateful to have a secure employment situation, and I am, but my experience yesterday did not live up to my expectations, so I was frustrated. In nearly all aspects of life yesterday, people I interacted with took advantage of my tendency toward organization and preparedness to make up for their own lack of same, and I barely got so much as a thank you, acknowledgement, or any sort of favorable exchange rate.

I really effing hate that.

Today has been, so far, somewhat better. I started the day early with a quick ten miles on the Virginia Capital Trail, logging my first five of fifty-one-point-seven this summerfor the Capital Quarantine Challenge, an event the Capital Tail Foundation is throwing this summer to encourage people to get out and be active and socially responsible by traversing the entire trail from Richmond to Williamsburg. No need to do it all at once. My usual ten mile out-and-back between miles 40 and 35, which I’ve been doing a couple of times a week lately, became my first section. Maybe next time (perhaps tomorrow morning) I’ll park out near marker 35 and head out toward marker 30, and knock out another section. At some point I’ll have to start having somebody drop me somewhere and pick me up at the other end if I’m going to finish this, but I have until August 31 to finish, and if I do, I get a t-shirt and certificate of completion. Plus, the Trail, which I love, gets some funding.

The rest of the morning was spent out visiting the farmers’ market and picking up the groceries for the week. I also, somewhat surprisingly, left Lidl with a charcoal grill I didn’t expect to come out with, but I spent a little time assembling it, and we’ll probably grill for dinner this evening. Lidl is a neat little German chain that’s moved into this area strongly, and has great deals on staples, plus all sorts of neat revolving stock from international foods to chainsaws (yes, I bought one last year).

Anyway, that’s the news from Lake Woebegone here; hoping for continued peace and quiet for the rest of the weekend.

It is Friday, and a welcome one. Although this was a short work week (I was off Monday), it felt extra long, as they do, especially since several of the days were extended, stuck-on-the-phone for ten hours days. If all falls together as I hope, I’ll be taking those hours back for myself this afternoon. Of course, I just have to wrap up the task that today’s header refers to. It’s a thing that should be simple, but the slave-to-policy automatons I have to deal with can’t get past the fact that it’s just a bit different. Oh well, I shall persevere, and my boss will say nice things about me to the right people (because he does that, thank $diety) since I pulled his ass out of the fire again.

I guess it could be worse.

I have absolutely nothing on the agenda for the weekend, which is just fine for me. I’m still struggling with a sinus headache that kicked in after my bike ride yesterday; between the pollen in the woods (which I can mostly tolerate) and the dust and whatnot kicked up by the lovely spouse’s “clear out the crawlspaces” efforts this week, it’s not been a good 24 hours for the plumbing in my head.

After last night’s storms the gnomes hammering behind my forehead, I’ll probably take a day off from biking (I’ve got more than 20 miles logged so far this week, I won’t feel too guilty), and try to relax tonight before hitting the usual weekend routine of groceries, biking, and laundry.

And that’s fine.

Anyway, tunes. Lots of neat modern indie I’m kinda digging (gonna look that band at #3) with just enough 80s and 90s stuff to engender familiarity:

1. “Vampire Weeknight” – Jenny Owen Youngs
2. “No Way Sit Back” – And The Kids
3. “Frequent Crier” – Future Teens
4. “Superbike” – Jay Som
5. “General Electric” – The Ophelias
6. “One More Hour” – Sleater-Kinney
7. “Diamond Meadows – Anthony Phillips
8. “The Whole of the Moon” – Kirin J Callinan
9. “Super-Connected” – Belly
10. “Friend Is A Four Letter Word” – 1 Trait Danger
11. “Earn Enough For Us” – XTC”
12. “1972” – Broken Social Scene