Today, January 2, is my last day of my so-called “Christmas Break”.

All told, it was some time away from work. I got some stuff done, got some books read, played a little music, and, I guess, didn’t think too hard about project deadlines for a couple of weeks, but at the same time, it wasn’t the restful and rejuvenating time I was kind of hoping it would be.

The holidays always hit me with a bit of melancholy; mostly because of the pressure to do the traditional things, when those don’t always work for me. There’s also a bit of mourning; not so much for loved ones lost (though there is that), but a mourning of possibilities of what our culture tells me things ought to be like, as opposed to what the ended up being. This is, song lyrics aside, decidedly *not* the most wonderful time of the year, at least from where I’m sitting.

It probably didn’t help that I started off the year finishing Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography, Born To Run, which is a great book that I’d recommend, though the way Springsteen describes his struggle with depression and anxiety really speaks to me; his descriptions of his experience come really close to describing mine; my lovely spouse tells me that’s because we’re both musicians and that our perspectives are similar.

She’s probably right, but I was just startled to be compared to Bruce Springsteen.

Oh well; I may look into changing up my annual leave use patterns this year; this holiday season, capping off a year as unanimously regarded in the negative as 2018 was, didn’t really clear the decks the way I’d have liked.

It’s Sunday evening, December 30, as I write this. After spending a nice afternoon out catching a pretty decent jazz trio at Castleburg and maybe stumbling into another open mic/performance/emcee opportunity at another venue in Scott’s Addition (we’ll see where that goes in the coming weeks…), I’m sitting at my kitchen table drinking a Jameson and Diet Coke, setting aside my library copy of the Springsteen autobiography (I watched Springsteen on Broadway on Netflix the other evening, which was at least partially inspired/adapted from the book, titled, kinda obviously, “Born to Run”) to pop open the laptop, figuring it’s time to reflect, as a little bit of alcohol in the system inspires, on the past (reference my friend Mikey Mason’s “Drunkards and Philosophers” AKA “Beer Powered Time Machine”, though we all know the original is better, and one of my favorite songs ever), and given the particular moment, with thirty hours or so left until the calendar turns over, on the past year.

It’s really kind of been a mixed bag, if I’m to be completely honest. The nation is in turmoil, with the economy churning, the stock market swinging wildly by hundreds or thousands of points each day, depending on the whims of the President’s 5:00 AM toilet tweets; the government’s been shutdown again (though not my part this time) for the third time in a year, and the Cabinet has a turnover rate of over 30%, with my Department without an official lead after a dramatic resignation letter/never mind, “You’re Fired” sort of situation last week. I don’t see that improving in the new year, to be completely honest. It is, as has been described many times, a Dumpster Fire™ and will probably only get more interesting when the new Congress takes over next week. I shall be watching closely; but more importantly, my pay pool/salary adjustments based on the case I made with the “look how awesome I am” write-up a few months back will take effect (I’m no longer on the GS schedule, but the NH, and I’m not sure how this bullshit applies to me), and I’ll know whether all the hassles I have to put up with are going to be worth putting up with for another year, of if I should start seriously shopping for another position in the public service (with 22 years in, the pension’s hard to give up) and be a rat diving off a sinking ship (which the rumors say my particular organization likely is). I dunno.

Outside of the whole career thing, this year’s not been awful. I’ve kept myself at a pretty consistent weight, and my doctor tells me I’m doing all the right things; I’m a bit behind ’17 on my biking miles (I blame the month I spent in Aberdeen MD for work, though I hiked a hell of a lot), but I did a 35 miler this summer, and I’m averaging 200+ push-ups a day in 50 rep sets, so my physical health remains pretty great, and I think the doc and I have found a decent regimen of drugs to deal with my anxiety/chronic depression. I am, weirdly enough, in the best shape of my life at age 44. I still struggle with stress and anxiety, but it could be a hell of a lot worse.

Musically, I may have had the best year ever, looking back at it. I’ve had my work released on two different CDs (Fantastic Geeks and Where To Find Them and a pop-in on Metricula’s peformance on Streamer Song Swap Vol. 2), performed on both coasts (both solo and as part of various bands), and all over the mid-Atlantic region, as part of the Blibbering Humdingers, Dimensional Riffs, and under my own name at a bunch of open mic opportunities and filk convention 2x10s, had music I’ve been involved with get airplay on podcasts all over the internet, and got my first songwriting credit on a recording (even if it went over like a lead balloon every time we’ve played it live), been accused of being a musical whore for hire (I sat in with *four* different bands at Ravencon 13.5 this year, as well as other folks here and there), wrote a metric assload of songs as part of February Album Writing Month, and maybe six or seven of them are any good. Also, starting in February, I’ll be hosting a monthly open mic night at Castleburg Brewery and Taproom, which I really hope goes well, and I’ve got some other feelers out there (as mentioned above). Also, I think 2019 might be the year the Chuck (or whatever I decide to call myself) album will actually surface. It helps that I’ve found a wonderfully supportive musical community who encourages me and makes me feel like I’m valued; I’ve really, finally, gotten some confidence in my role as a solo performer and vocalist, and it’s pretty damned awesome.

As far as the family goes, my eldest and youngest continue to kick all kinds of ass at their various school endeavors, and my middle child has finally seemed to mostly find his footing with school, passing everything for the first half of the year, and starting to play guitar as well, and it’s given us something to bond over a bit, which is really rather nice. Also, my lovely wife has really started working in earnest on her business of creating clothes and Irish Dance solo dresses (we’ve spent winter break setting up her sewing space), which I think is really going to be successful, based on the work she’s done this year.

So….yeah. Work kinda sucks, the world kinda sucks, but personally, I’m healthy and successful in the pieces of my life that I get real validation from. I think I can live with that. I’m really hoping that this coming year goes well – I’m not sure what I want, though I’d like to continue the success in the personal and creative stuff that really matters to me, and maybe make a little more money and maybe even some validation (I’m not holding out for pure satisfaction) in my professional endeavors, so I can get my financial house in better order.

So yeah, that’s really about where things sit for now. I usually do a “by the numbers” post, and I still might, but who the hell knows. I might just coast through the rest of the year and enjoy myself.

Yes, I’ve been absent this space for more than a week. No matter, I warned you all.

The last week’s been pretty productive, if expensive. Christmas shopping is done, since, well, Christmas is like two and a half hours from when I’m typing this. I’ve gotten quite a bit done in the last nine days, actually. I’ve done a bunch of laundry, cooked some awesome meals, cleaned up a bunch of leaves in the yard, kicked some ass on Team Fortress 2, washed the car, and drunk a few beers. Well, more than a few….but it’s the holidays.

I also booked a neat new side gig for Next Year – seems I’m hosting a monthly Open Mic at Castleburg Brewery and Taproom in the city starting in February. As I’ve mentioned previously, Castleburg has a gorgeous room, an amazing sound system, and some great beer. I asked about whether they hosted an open mic a few weeks back when I stopped in, and ended up booking a meeting with the awesome manager, Rhonda, this week to talk about me hosting such a thing in the space. The first one is scheduled for February 20, 2019, and I really want it to be successful, so I’m going to promote the hell out of it until then, as is appropriate.

So that’s the promo here. Expect to see lots more in the next 8 weeks or so.

In any case, as I posted on social media earlier today:

Have a great whatever it is you celebrate, friends …or if it’s already been celebrated, I hope it *was* great….or if you don’t celebrate anything, that’s cool too.

Anyway, I wish you well. All of you. 😊❤👍

That about says it all. Enjoy your holidays, folks!

Today is the last official* day of my work year, and I’m counting the minutes, as the watermarked stock photo image above suggests. I haven’t taken that much time off in 2018, and given my level of seniority and the kind of leave I earn, the concept of “use-or-lose” comes into play, so I have two weeks or so to burn. It’s also the habit I’ve gotten into over the last few years anyway, as it works for me, and let’s be honest, here in the public sector, we basically shut down (let’s hope only figuratively, though my department won’t be subject to this one, we’re one of the few that got full-year funding) anyway.

As is also my habit, I’m not making much in the way of plans for the holidays, either. My two week constitutional will largely consist of me sticking close to home, and not doing much of anything unless I or the household chooses. As I say every year about this time, I made the choice to not do the typical holiday-obligation travel a while back, and my sanity is so much the better for it. My lovely spouse and I dragged three young kids and their attendant stuff all over the place for years, and it wasn’t at all relaxing or enjoyable. I’m not going to do it now with three adult-sized kids and their different attendant stuff now. If people want to see me, they know where to find me. I’m going to take two weeks of “me/us” time, just chilling at the house, cook some meals, catch some Pokémon and maybe a couple of movies, hit a few breweries, and just relax.

It’s been a hell of a year, full of senior-level briefings and program “murder boards”, exams, apocalyptic current events, the 24 hour news cycle, and all kinds of other stress. We all deserve a break where we don’t have to think about it too hard and just enjoy the days as they come.

I do have a short overnight planned for the weekend; the Blibbering Humdingers (along with our friends Hawthorn and Holly) are playing a couple of sets each at Cavendish Brewing Company’s “Christmas in Hogsmeade” event down in Gastonia, NC on Saturday. Cavendish (which I discovered at ConCarolinas’ “Heavy Metal and a Pint” panel last year), tends to do some neat, geeky events and this Potter-themed event is one of them. They’ve got stuff going most of the day, and the lovely spouse and I plan on getting down there a few hours early, enjoy some time with friends, drink a few pints, and generally get a break from the snowed-in conditions from earlier this week.

It’s actually been a pretty good week for music overall; with the light crowd at Isley this week, I ended up playing a 40 minute solo set to a small-but-enthusiastic crowd, including a few weird Christmas tunes and a handful of my own compositions, and it went *really* well (there may be some video out there online if you look hard enough). I also got some feelers this week about a potentially cool development in town that might open up some more performance opportunities, though I’m not going to say anything more for now, so as not to jinx it, but if we pull it together (I’ll know more next week), it’ll be pretty neat.

So, that’s it, really. I kinda doubt I’ll be as regular about posting in this space for the rest of the year – if something cool comes up, I’ll talk about it, and I’ll probably do my semi-traditional year-end wrap up posts, because I’m so very anal about that, and while it hasn’t posted yet, The A/V Club’s annual “Year in Band Names” will arrive shortly, and I always share my enjoyment of that with my adoring public, such as you are.

In any case, that’s the state of CdPdN for now. All that’s left to do, given that it’s Friday, is to share my random play-list; a little longer because I’m just enjoying the background noise while shutting down the shop for the year. While heavy on the modern indie, it of course devolves into what every playlist for Pandora eventually devolves into for me – Zappa, Bowie, and The Donnas. That last one though is always a welcome surprise, as it’s got one of the best guitar solos of the hair metal/power ballad era on it – never not worth a listen:

1. “Right Before My Eyes” – Cage the Elephant
2. “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” – The Proclaimers
3. “Chicken: 30” – The Coathangers
4. “Simply Irresistable” – Robert Palmer
5. “No One’s Gonna Love You” – Band of Horses
6. “Crazy” – Gnarls Barkley
7. “Overkill” – Men At Work
8. “Heroes” – David Bowie
9. “Pygmy Twylyte (live 12-10-73 – show 1)” – Frank Zappa
10. “Broadsword” – Jethro Tull
11. “Laid” – James
12. “Decide” – Heavens to Betsy
13. “Drivin’ Through My Heart
14. “I Remember You” – Skid Row

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* – I shall have my work laptop within reach at home should I hear that the project goes pear shaped, but I don’t expect that to happen, and I’m not one to choose to work on my own time, even if other suckers people around here do.

So, I ended up getting two days off of work thanks to the twelve-to-fourteen(!) inches of snow Mother Nature saw fit to dump on my section of the mid-Atlantic starting early Sunday morning; so early, in fact that they cancelled the 5k the youngest and I were going to run that afternoon. Oh well, I made a huge pot of vegetable soup, watched Real Genius, played a few hours of this ridiculous video game called OnRush, which is all about crashing cars into each other, which is cathartic.

The storm, as I discussed with someone I met Tuesday night, originally from Bloomsburg PA, of all places, was an awful lot like the storms growing up in NE PA; lots of snow, lots of shovelling, but otherwise not inconvenient; no power going out, no blocked roads…it was nice.

Otherwise, the weekend was not bad; took a trip over to Hardywood to eat Mac and Cheese from the food truck and pick up a couple of bottles of GBS variants, but not the ones everyone else standing in the long line(!) were grabbing, mostly Kentucky Christmas Morning – coffee and bourbon barrels. The whole city goes nuts for this brew – this satiric article is awfully close to the truth). Ran into a few friends; it was nice. The lovely wife and I spent our evening at the Castleburg taproom catching a couple of sets from The Sequels, a pretty great country-rock americana band. It was a nice bit of time out before we got snowed in.

In less interesting news, my brand new Windows 10 laptop decided it was going to be difficult – I’ve put it in timeout for a couple of days until I get the motivation to really fix it – backups and factory resets thanks to garbage updates from Microsoft. If it doesn’t get itself in gear, I’m gonna threaten to install Ubuntu.

For Monday, I was up early shoveling the driveway. On Tuesday, the lovely wife and I ventured out a bit around lunchtime to hit the library and take care of a couple of errands, and I got a little stir crazy by Tuesday morning, so I headed out to wander around the local park and watch geese over the James.

Starting Wednesday, it’s back to work, starting to put things to bed so I can take my leave after Friday.

Today looks relatively quiet, especially after yesterday, where it seemed I was stuck briefing all the important people everywhere. As I said on social media, even two decades in public service, up here near the top of the pay scale, it’s weird to know that on a semi-regular basis, my voice echoes through the august corridors of power (even if it’s only playing through a speakerphone).

Beyond that, work’s been largely about spinning things up to operate without me. At closing time today, I’m down to five more workdays (maybe less if something I talk about later impacts things) before my holiday break. My tech lead is being a little alarmist about progress, but as I’m figuring out, that’s just the way he is, and he’ll pull a Scotty-level save out at the last minute.

Otherwise, this week has not been ridiculously busy. Housework, being followed around by the kitten, longing for the sweet release of retirement…you know, the usual. As mentioned previously, I had the day off on Wednesday, and did relatively little, beyond taking a trip through whiteout snow conditions to the other side of town so my lovely spouse could pick up some specialty elastic to finish a sewing project. The snow was all gone by the time we left the region an hour later after our shopping and a rare mid-week lunch date (although we actually did that *twice* this week, as she met me on Monday so she could retreive the wallet she left in my car!), but it was neat while it lasted.

Of course, the whole mid-Atlantic region is panicking now, on the radio, on my office email, in the high school halls, in the shopping malls (♫ Conform or Be Cast Out!♫) and elsewhere about the storm predicted for Sunday/Monday. The latest I’m getting from the NWS is only two inches or so, though other models folks are talking (including my resident weather hobbyist friend) about give us more. I’m mostly concerned it’s going to wreck my plans with the youngest on Sunday to run the 5k in the afternoon. We’re keeping our eye on it.

Otherwise, nothing else really on tap for the weekend from my end. If you happen to be in the Pacific Northwest, consider checking out the Weekend of Wizardry in Tacoma, Washington, where a ton of my wrock friends are going to be, including my bandmates from the Blibbering Humdingers. If you’re somewhere else, there’s almost certainly something cool going on in your neck of the woods.

With that, I’m going to leave things as they are, except to present today’s random playlist, which is heavy on post-punk alternative this time around, but that’s okay with me:

1. “Skip Under Lide” – Lumsk
2. “Didya Think” – Arlie
3. “Photograph” – Def Leppard
4. “Pictures of You” – The Cure
5. “I Turn My Camera On” – Spoon
6. “Every Breath You Take” – The Police
7. “Thick as a Brick”- Jethro Tull
8. “Time After Time” – Cyndi Lauper
9. “Change” – The Revivalists
10. “Ruler of Everything” – Tally Hall
11. “Jungle Bird” – Punch Brothers
12. “White Wedding” – Billy Idol
13. “Under The Milky Way (Acoustic Version)” – The Church
14. “Come With Me Now” – Kongos

This morning, I had to scrape frost from the windshield.

Yesterday around 11am, I found myself driving in whiteout conditions on a popular metropolitan beltway.

I’ve been cold almost constantly for the last couple of weeks.

This weather pattern they’re talking up for the weekend is looking at dropping a few inches on us at the low end of the model.

I’m not quite sure I’m ready for this, when it all comes down to it.

I’ve been pretty busy this week so far. At work, it’s lots of meetings, testing, decision-making, and setting things up so I can disappear for two and a half weeks’ holiday break starting in eight working days (since tomorrow is the “National day of Mourning for President Bush*, and thus a federal holiday in practice). At home, it’s been working on knocking other things together to prep for upcoming activities, including continuing my training for the upcoming Celebratory 5k I’m running with the youngest on Sunday to wrap up her participation with Girls on the Run, a neat little program she’s been having fun with.

My training, of course, has been interrupted by the awful cold/sinus thing I had last week, but yesterday, I ran a full practice 5k one one of my usual bike trails, and didn’t do too shabbily. If weather holds this afternoon, I may do it again today…though the weather guys have been dropping the dreaded word “snow” into things, possibly for tomorrow, so we’ll see. At this point, I’m running most of the distance (with some breaks, mostly due to the impact on my ankles – I’m a biker so I can avoid all that), though I expect I’m pushing myself harder than I’ll have to in order to keep pace with the kid. I mostly just don’t want to embarass myself.

Not much else to speak of this week; it’s pretty typical. Just trying to work my way through the last slog until I can relax a bit.

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*- I guess I should comment a bit on President Bush (41)…Although I remember Carter and Reagan, Bush was the first President I was truly aware of – his term coincided pretty much in line with my high school years. Mr. Ely the civics teacher and advisor for the “Young Republicans Club” was a big fan, unsurprisingly, and given where I was at the time and the primary influences I had, I tended to be way more conservative than I ended up being as an adult. That said, 41 really was from another era; an era where cooperation amongst the parties was de rigeur and possible, and things he passed, like the Clean Air Act, and the Americans With Disabilities Act, are things that are basic human goods, but that today’s Republican party wouldn’t touch, with cries of socialism and whatnot. His presiding over the end of the Cold War, and over the first Gulf War (wow…a military action in that part of the world with a clear goal and end point? kind of an anomaly in modern American history) isn’t to be ignored. He wasn’t perfect, of course, no one is, though I kind of think of him as the last of the decent Republicans, in part, I think, because he was a career public servant and really knew the bureaucracy inside out and in general, how Washington worked, and was truly interested in the public good rather than “pwning the Libs”. The world is very different today, much, I think, to our detriment. I’ll definitely mourn the loss of Mr. Bush, and the loss of the era he represents. Also, if Sully (tear) thinks he was a good guy, that’s gotta mean something.

Greetings from Friday morning. It’s been a long week, not the least of which because I’ve spent it primarily on the phone while sounding like a frog, or blowing my nose, or coughing up yellow/green mucus, all while surrounded by freezing temperatures, sometimes on the inside (my office yesterday was weird). Except for Tuesday, when I called in sick. I’m slowly on the mend, but I’ve blown through two boxes of tissues this week, just at work.

In spite of all the snot and nose blowing and whatnot, I made some significant work progress (or rather, my staff did, but they did so allegedly under my leadership? I dunno), made it out to open mic on Wednesday, not to perform (see previous paragraph), but to support my fellow musicians, and because I just needed to get the heck out of the house. Funnily enough, the bartending staff outnumbered patrons that evening, so I just had a beer, shot the bull for an hour, then came home and went to bed.

Really not that eventful a week, I guess. Just cold and sick, with occasional quality kitten snuggles, especially last night when I needed them.

Stuff on the agenda this weekend is relatively light (for us, anyway); there’s a Christmas dance performance for the rest of ’em on Saturday (I’ll pull some form of dance dad duty, as usual), I have an appointment for my 55,000 mile scheduled service at the Toyota dealership, and on Sunday, Barry’s going to have the Curry In A Hurry truck over at Hardywood, so that’s where we’re headed for dinner, I think.

That’s about it. On the two week clockwatch now. Holiday break is in sight.

Oh yeah – tunes. Lots of punk/pop riot grrrl today, a great Cheap Trick cover, and a pretty great Pink Floyd tune to close it out.

1. “Sweet Emotion” – Aerosmith
2. “P.R.D.C.T.” – Bratmobile
3. “Who Made Who” – AC/DC
4. “Unbesiegt” – Equilibrium
5. “Situation” – Yaz
6. “Are You Gonna Move It For Me” – The Donnas
7. “Alien She” – Bikini Kill
8. “Everybody Wants to Be Famous” – Superorganism
9. “I Want You To Want Me” – Letters to Cleo
10. “Just My Kind” – The Julie Ruin
11. “Stink Foot (live)” – Frank Zappa
12. “Apocalypse” – Cigarettes After Sex
13. “Coming Back To Life” – Pink Floyd

Happy Monday. My holiday weekend was relatively relaxing. After I wrapped work on Wednesday (ending my week with some good news for once), the crew went out and had dinner and caught a screening of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, which was problematic, but pretty. I missed the fun character moments and inherent sweetness from the first one that was better than it had any right to be. Thanksgiving was pretty chill, by design. I cooked some stuff, I drank some beer, and hung out with the fam. It was nice. For “Black Friday” I avoided shopping (the spouse grabbed one thing on sale online), though we did make a quick trip to Scott’s Addition to grab a growler of Isley’s “Apple Brown Betty” (brown ale with apple juices from Blue Bee Cider down the street) released this past weekend, and a couple of bottles of mead from Black Heath while we were there. In the evening, we went out to an open mic hosted by my friend Doc (a.k.a. Dirty Metal Lefty) at a local coffee shop, where I ended up playing a couple of *really* good sets, if I do say so myself.

Didn’t do a whole lot on Saturday; it was rainy and meh anyway. Got some nice stuff from the farmer’s market, hung around the house. Sunday, I drove the kid back to college after hitting the grocery store to stock her up on snacks for the last couple of weeks of the semester. I also found a really freaking weird beer on the shelf, “Grainsmith Pineapple Chai Stout” (ingredients also include chocolate nibs, coconut water, and agave nectar); it was too weird *not* to buy (also, it was cheap). I sampled one can in the evening while watching The Meg (Jason Statham vs. Giant Sharks? my kind of movie), and it was…odd. My reaction to it on social media apparently inspired my friend Mikey to do a livestream of his weekly podcast Beer Powered Time Machine (also, his usual venue was closed), though I missed the live version, sadly, recovering from the drive, and from the strange beer. Oh well, I’ll catch it on the replay.

For this week, I’m already monitoring several work hiccups that are probably going to be a pain in my ass, but I think we’ll get past them. I’m also concerned that my sinuses are clogging up more than normal allergies would indicate, but I’ll try and get through it. I’m on the Three Weeks Until Christmas Break™ countdown, and I’m not going to let stuff get me down.

Or at least I’m going to try my best.