second Civil War aside, I had a very low-key 4th of July, other than a long, barely populated drive out to Amherst and back, dropping the eldest off with a couple of her professors and a cadre of her fellow students who will, quite likely by the time many of you read this, be on a very long journey to the land of Vegemite and dangerous animals, Australia, for a week or so of attendance at an international dance conference and hopefully some very cool experiences. The price was largely right, and given the fact that I had no such opportunities at her age, we made sure she could be capable of having such an opportunity herself. My summers during college involved eighty hours a week of driving catering trucks and peeling potatoes, which, while not an awful experience, pales in comparison to being able to travel to the other side of the world, meet people with shared interests from across the planet, and pet baby koalas.

As a parent, these are the kinds of things you gotta make happen for the kids.

This week, given the 4th being on Wednesday, has made my office pretty much a ghost town all week; to that end, I’m taking Friday off (thus this Thursday entry again), because it makes sense to do so. I could use the mental health day, and I’ve decided, more or less that tomorrow is going to be my big VA Capital Trail ride – given how busy my spouse is with prepping costumes and and such for the WIDA US Open Championships the school is hosting next weekend (it appeasr I’ll be running sound for one of the stages, as expected), I think it’ll be a 15-17 mile out and back thing, rather than a “have the wife pick me up in Williamsburg” thing, which is fine, as the return leg always feels shorter anyway. It’ll feel good to get that crossed off the schedule.

Getting that out of the way will also clear the decks for the plans we have Saturday (I won’t feel so guilty about skipping a day if I did 35 day prior), which is to attend the Compassionate Action Conference downtown, which is a day of speakers about animal welfare and cool stuff like that; also, The Kitten Lady will be there, and we’re all big fans of her work, and especially some of her rescue kittens. It’ll be cool.

Otherwise, life is life, which, if you are keeping track, is not the best it could be right now for me (so much stress), but whatever. Gonna get through it, which is all we can do.

Anyway, tunes are the thing. Pretty standard; lots of indie, two generations of Zappa, and the Wang Chunk single that’s better than the one everybody knows anyway:

1. “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It” – Frank Zappa
2. “Eyes Without A Face” – Billy Idol
3. “Sublime” – What I Got
4. “June -N- July” – Cadallaca
5. “Stolen Dance” – Milky Chance
6. “Dance Hall Days” – Wang Chung
7. “We Belong” – Pat Benetar
8. “The Torture Never Stops” – Dweezil Zappa
9. “Slepp Meg” – Lumsk
10. “She Sells Sanctuary” – The Cult
11. “Pompeii” – Bastille
12. “Photograph” – Def Leppard

Setting this loose today, because I’m off the clock tomorrow as mentioned, and probably won’t be locked to a computer while things load and compile, so…

Anyway, the week, as a mentioned, has been relatively quiet – I’ve got a couple of conversations that have to happen today before I cut loose for the week, some of which offer tantalizing possibility, but are more than likely going to get scuttled once the higher-ups get in the way of progress. I’m going to have to manage expectations, and kick the can down the street a ways until I can get the boss back and talk about strategies, because the savings could be huge if they let me do it.

Also, they are *finally* starting to migrate our organization’s email over to the Department’s Enterprise Email service (long overdue; we shouldn’t be managing our own), though the instructions and information regarding prep (mostly locally sourced) are not particularly clear or thorough. I am supremely glad I am not here tomorrow to witness the carnage.

I hate that I’m that cynical, but my experiences trying to do my job in a way that fits with my values of not wasting the taxpayers’ (read: you and me and everybody else) have not been positive the last few years.

Grrr.

It’s hard for me to not be cynical and outraged at anything happening in government right now (save a couple really great victories in Democratic primaries, which give me some hope), what with daily pictures of crying kids in cages and the news about Justice Kennedy announcing his retirement yesterday, pretty much timed perfectly for maximum craziness. We’re in for an interesting couple of months, certainly, but then, it’s been an interesting couple of years.

Oh well, I’m going to do my best to improve things from where I’m sitting, offer help and support where I can, and try to maintain some sort of positivity, in spite of our being part of what I’ve increasingly started to consider a Nation In Decline™

Oh well; I’ve gotten over fifty miles in this week (had a nice twelve miler yesterday), weighed in at *exactly* 220lb this morning, have a nice opportunity to make music with my friends tomorrow, and what looks like a nice Saturday afternoon spent with friends to look forward to, and the weather guy on the radio this morning talked excitedly about no rain in the forecast for the next five to seven days and how things will “dry out” (not that I didn’t enjoy slogging through six inches of mud, uphill, the other day, but it hurts) soon, and as I said before, this week, Thursday is my Friday.

SoI shall find the positive where I can.

Anyway, tunes. This week’s list is lots of indie, perhaps the most used movie trailer/commercial tune of recent memory (and was a big hit on my college campus in the early 90s), and some good old hair metal. I also let it expand a bit beyond the legitmate definition of “eleven-ish”. Oh well. Fine with me:

1. “Pibroch” – Jethro Tull
2. “Gone” – Day Wave
3. “If You Leave” – Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
4. “Electric Feel (Video Mix) – MGMT
5. “Einharjar” – King of Asgard
6. “Cherry Pie” – Warrant
7. “Send Me On My Way” – Rusted Root
8. “Alone” – Heart
9. “Electric Band” – Wild Flag
10. “One of these Days (Live 1988) – Pink Floyd
11. “Jump” – Van Halen
12. “Mascaria” – Slant 6
13. “Someone New” – Hozier
14. “So Young” – Portugal The Man
15. “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” – Tears for Fears

So far, this week’s been relatively painless. As Independence Day is on Wednesday this year, the whole of next week (starting, say…this Thursday afternoon) is essentially treated as a holiday weekend by everyone in my occupational orbit. With people taking leave everywhere, it’s tough to reach a quorum for anything, so the usual meetings are being cancelled more often than not.

I had five emails waiting for me when I got into the office this morning. Five. And none of them were relevant; all of them system generated cruft. This never happens.

As the title suggests, I wonder if the universe is attempting to dope me into complacency before dropping the hammer. it’s got today and tomorrow to do so, because I’m taking off work on Friday. Partially because I need a mental health day, and also because I’m playing a Humdingers show at the Hillsborough (NC) Public Library on Friday night, and wanted to be rested and take my time with the drive. Music-making is always a good thing.

Also, as of last night, I have almost 40 miles biked this week so far; twenty-two on pavement (VA Capital Trail) and seventeen on mud (my usual park at Dutch Gap, which was *very* muddy). I came out of Monday’s ride feeling relieved and refreshed. Tuesday’s ride in the mud *hurt*. The sky is threateningly cloudy today, but the rain’s supposed to hold off – I’m looking at taking a somewhat shorter (under fifteen) on the pavement today, nice and slow, to “play through the pain”, so to speak, but not aggravate my muscle stress.

Anyway, we’ll see what the next couple of days hold…

It has been, shall we say, not my best week.

Coming off of some very difficult stuff at work*, the stress and anxiety of Father’s Day (yeah, it hits me hard), adjusting to the kids being home from school, some weird weather, and frankly, outrage fatigue from the news cycle this week, I have not been my best. I’m trying to do better.

My best times this week were all on the trail; especially Wednesday’s twenty on the Virginia Capital Trail. ‘Twas relaxing, rejuvenating, and had the favor of the gods, as the rain didn’t start until the moment I finished racking the bike on the car after finishing. It also seemed like I was going downhill both ways, which was weird, but I’ll take it.

I’m hoping the weekend provides some relief; we’ll see. The big girls are heading out for a dance competition on the shore of the Great Lakes this weekend; it was going to be all the girls, though the youngest started running a fever last night. We’ll see how that impacts male bonding time (we still might get out to see Deadpool 2, I dunno). Sick kids are tough, though. Anyway, the weather looks like hell this week, so I’m probably just going to accept that the biking isn’t happening and pick up again on Monday.

As for this week’s playlist, I like it; equal parts 80s pop and modern indie. Works for me.

1. “Summer of ’69” – Bryan Adams
2. “Young Presidents” – Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin
3. “Santonian Shores” – Eluveitie
4. “Ophelia” – The Lumineers
5. “Mythological Beauty” – Big Thief
6. “Killer Queen” – Queen
7. “Phantom Limb”- The Shins
8. “Jesse’s Girl” – Rick Springfield
9. “Dangerous Veils” – Jethro Tull
10. “Home” – Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes
11. “I Wanna Go Back” – Eddie Money
12. “Dickie’s Such and Asshole (live)” – Frank Zappa

Oh, and finally, since Pokemon Go rolled out the friends/trading business finally, my trainer code is 2766 8892 1979; if you’re playing, let’s be friends.

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*- management of resources, belligerent developers, the boss out in training when I really need some input, contracting woes, one really long day to support meetings, some senior folks in the department dangling money in front of me to get projects I want done done, though knowing that other people in the program office are going to stonewall me because my successes point out their deficiencies, and hearing the words “under investigation” whispered about an unrelated program; which doesn’t surprise me in the least, but is going to get in my way of getting stuff done. I really need to get out of here…

happy birthday, kid…

So, I didn’t get a whole lot of downtime this weekend.

Starting with Friday afternoon, I left work, rode a quick ten on the trail, then made my way over to the local high school auditorium (now vacated by students, since Friday was the last day) to set-up and assist where necessary for the dress and “tech” rehearsal for the dance recital scheduled for Saturday.

Given the weird, incomprehensible, and undocumented sound board installed there (we ran into issues last year as well) not supporting our needs (or indeed reliably playing music through the house speakers in any way), I ended up running home (thankfully, only a mile away from the venue) and grabbing the little portable P.A. that’s been sitting in a corner of my house since April when I carried it home from Ravencon for a friend who said she’s get it later (which still hasn’t come) and ended up saving the day. Not all heroes, as they say, wear capes. This rehearsal ran late into the evening, after which I came home and collapsed, since I’d been running all week with stress and depression and whatnot, both from me and from the rest of the family who were also jittery, given recital nerves and end-of-school feelings and whatever.

Saturday I woke early-ish, knocked another ten miles out, handled a few errands, got some people rolling on cleaning things up, did some laundry, and tried to relax for an hour or two (read some book, commandeered the PS4 to play a little FFXII remastered, realizing that I hadn’t played it in six months per the save file date), before heading out to drop some books at the library and wander around the general village green area to catch larvitars for Pokemon Go Community Day (I got three shinies – a pretty good effort) before coming home, re-dressing in backstage black, and getting the sound dialed in and running audio for the recital, which wasn’t the complete flustercluck we were expecting; it at least sounded good. I’ll take it. The fam put in a good showing, at any rate, and afterwards, we closed down the local mexican place down the street with some out-of-town friends who came to see us and one of the other adult dancers and her friend (all of us got along swimmingly, and I think we just enabled a new social interface).

Sunday the family took me(?) to Busch Gardens to wander around for Fathers’ Day and check out the food and wine festival they’ve got going on. The park was pretty lightly populated overall, which was nice – lines were short, food was good, and I got to ride a bunch of roller coasters (since the youngest child decides she likes them); this time around we knocked out Invadr and Verbolten; I’ll take it.

I’m kinda spent. Weather’s supposed to be really, really hot – we’ll see how the biking holds out, maybe not a 60-80 mile week this week, but I spent our drive out to Williamsburg yesterday recce-ing my Va Capital trail bike route – I just need to pick the day.

More often than not, life looks a little better from other side of twenty miles on the trail.

As folks keeping tabs on me this week likely know, I’ve been having a rough week, mentally and emotionally. Vivid dreams, unsettling nervous anxiety, intermittent malaise. Not my best showing. That said, I’ve been doing my best to muddle through, and one of the things that’s helped me is keeping up the biking routine. I hit a bit of a bump when the rain spoiled it Monday, though the rest of the week’s rides have been a real boon to my mental health, especially rides like yesterday’s: low humidity, mostly empty trail beyond me, the trees, and the animals; plenty of time and space to just let the mind empty and wander. Sometimes, of course, my mind wanders over to unfortunate earworm songs, and sometimes it falls to counting crank revolutions and calculating pedals per mile, but whatever floats in and out of my thought processes, it really does help to purge concerns and give me a bit of a reset. It is, as I’ve semi-jokingly taken to calling it, my “two-wheeled meditation.”

It helps that it’s been a kind of quiet week at work with few emergencies to deal with; my team’s doing their level best to stay on (or often slightly ahead of) schedule, and I’ve largely been left alone to do my job and not deal with weird manufactured crises. That’s always nice.

It appears as if I’ll be busy this weekend, starting tonight with dance recital dress rehearsal (I’m pitching in to help set up and run sound), the recital tomorrow, and riding out Fathers’ Day on Sunday (see this week’s references to my mental state for details). I also need to work in the usual tasks of laundry, groceries, and the like.

Luckily, I think I’ll be able to make some time for some more of that two-wheeled meditation.

Anyway, Friday morning tunes. A neat mix, including a tune I get to play with a friend every now and then, a neat 80s rarity, and in at #3, perhaps the most 90s song ever; or at least the one that kicked off the whole early 90s aesthetic (even if it’s really about the events in late 80s Eastern Europe).

Music. Another kind of meditation, or at the very least, a neat distraction for someone like me.

1. “Daughter” – Pearl Jam
2. “Sunglasses At Night” – Corey Hart
3. “Right Here, Right Now” – Jesus Jones
4. “It’s A Mistake” – Men at Work
5. “One Brown Mouse” – Jethro Tull
6. “Sweet Revenge” – Bangs
7. “Here and Now” – Letters to Cleo
8. “No More Tears” – Ozzy Osborne
9. “From the Beginning (Alt Version)” – Emerson, Lake & Palmer
10. “Oh! You Pretty Things (BBC Radio Version)” – David Bowie
11. “Fascination Street (Extended Mix) – The Cure

Since I wrote my last post, I’ve kind of sunk into one of those strange, kinda mysterious depressive episodes I get now and then; feeling down, weird buzzes of axiety in the nervous system, typical for me. Sometimes it just happens, sometimes it’s got a reason. I thought at first it might be the rain/weather (spoiled my ride on Monday, cut yesterday’s short), or sympathetic vibrations from my wife and eldest daughter, who are both dealing with some new medication and are a bit out-of-sorts. I didn’t really know. Like I said, sometimes it doesn’t have a reason.

I finally made the connection this morning on the drive in to work this morning.

I miss ya, Dad.

This is right around the time, so many years ago, when it happened. What made it weird is that it usually doesn’t hit me at this time of year; usually, it’s around his birthday in March. Not this year, apparently, as I was pleasantly distracted by my West Coast Musical Oddessey™ this time around, which, I guess caused things to settle in somewhere else.

We’ll see if coming to the realization helps me get past it. I hope so.

__________________________

Otherwise, I still got some stuff done the last couple of days, in spite of my brain betraying me. Got some actual useful stuff done at work, still managed to get a ten mile ride in yesterday, and voted in the Virginia primary yesterday; as there was no Democratic ballot this time around in my congressional district (both Senator Kaine and Rep. McEachin, the incumbent Dems, are running unopposed), I voted in the Republican primary (we’re allowed to pick one or the other here, as we don’t register by party), choosing to support diversity in candidates by picking Shion Fenty (who intrigued me, as a black millenial woman and a child of immigrants running as a Republican), and E.W. Jackson (who is, I fully recognize, a total trainwreck of a candidate, but ticked the diversity box over the racist Corey Stewart and the other guy); both of whom lost by significant margins, which I totally expected; I wasn’t intentionally engaging in “ratf**king”, but that vote for Jackson isn’t doing any favors for my defense. Oh well.

The good news in the election is that Abigail Spanberger (with whom I share many friends in common and have met socially once or twice) easily won the nomination across town in the 7th district, and will quite likely knock out Dave “women are in my grill wherever I go” Brat come November.

__________________________

So yeah; I have some good news to celebrate here in my adopted home state, a decent weather report for the rest of the week to support my biking (which helps me deal with my issues), stuff to keep me busy through the weekend, and a bunch of friends out there who offer support when I need it (thanks, folks).

I think I’ll be okay.

I actually accomplished a very big pile of things this weekend. Friday night’s visit to Lynchburg to watch Shakespeare under the stars – Love’s Labor’s Lost – with the eldest was a nice trip; the show was well done for a small production, and the location, Jefferson’s Poplar Forest, is a gorgeous historical site I definitely want to spend some time exploring for it’s own sake one day soon, and I got to spend time with the kid, and see a couple of her friends that I like (HI, SARAH JANE!)

Saturday I managed another ten miles on the trail in the morning, followed by some grocery shopping and a nice visit to the local farmer’s market for my weekly veggie hook-up from Jerry the farmer. I also knocked out a bunch of laundry, cleaned the toilet, fixed my bass jack (and felt like an electronics god afterward) and motivated the rest of the family to do some real cleaning up. It felt good. We closed out the day making an appearance at a dear friend’s birthday party (at the apartment that was still kind of dressed for the recent bachelorette party; the wedding is in August); socialization was had, Cards Against Humanity was played, and laughs were shared. I’m sure the party got a little more off-the-hook after the old folks like Colleen and I left, as is good and proper. We did bring Mary back a left over bachelorette party cupcake covered with penises; it was funny.

Sunday started again with a nice ride on the trail; another ten miles down, hitting eighty for the week; I’m getting closer to picking my Capital Trail weekend, as I think I’m almost there in terms of condition and endurance. I hit the trail earlier than usual (trying to avoid the humidity), and had a somewhat strange experience – the dog walkers out with their Starbucks kinda looked at me like I was “fitness guy”, which I totally don’t feel (especially since I got lapped by some other guy while doing one of my fifteen milers last week), though I was reminded by my wife and friends on social media that I might, just perhaps, be fitness guy, since I’m out there riding all the time on my well-maintained bike with disc brakes and all, wearing the shorts and the helmet, and knocking out four minute miles on dirt. I dunno.

Otherwise, I did some more laundry, made some Hawaiian-style chicken (“Hawaiian” because it had pineapple in the bbq sauce), made my electronic door locks on the car work again by changing the battery in my key fob (and learning a few valuable tidbits about coin cell batteries in the process), and thanks to Colleen’s doing some sorting of storage boxes from upstairs, hooking up an old VCR (and finding cables to do so to my modern, HDMI-based system) so we could watch the VHS tape we found of a dance recital featuring Mary, age five.

That’s actually a nice lead-in to what we’re looking toward this week; it’s dance recital time once again, which becomes big dad time; I’ve been doing some minor sound editing leading up to the performance the last couple of weeks, but I’ll likely be working sound and setting things up all week to some extent. The work week shouldn’t be too onerous; I actually got some good news late last week about some folks wanting to maybe fund some of the things I want to accomplish but have bureaucracy getting in the way, and need to work that bureaucracy even further (since my boss is away in training for the whole damned month) in order to make this good stuff happen, which will be tough, given that although what I want to do lines up perfectly with the bureaucracy’s stated goals, involves all sorts of complications designed to keep me from working in these sorts of efficiencies because of all kids of weird power plays built into the system. Damnit.

Oh well, I can hope the rain holds off (it’s not doing such a good job as I type this) so I can ride off the stress as the week progresses.

It’s another Friday. The week’s not been awful; just the usual meetings, plus my boss is off taking a class for the month of June (I’m on the docket to take it in August; neither of us were looking forward to it), so I’ve got a few less distractions than usual. That said, office gossip about the future of this organization is running rampant, but I’m doing the right things according to the right people, so I’m not too worried; just taking in the info and banking it for the future.

Outside of the office, I’ve been biking…a lot. Did twenty miles yesterday, because it was gorgeous, and I’m occasionally a glutton for punishment. I hurt afterwards (still do), but it’s a good hurt, and a good reminder than I’m not in my twenties anymore (even if I’m in better shape now), and I made the right call by listening to my aching behind and not doing twenty-five. I’ll be taking tonight off (see below), but I’ve got sixty miles down so far this week, and will probably knock out another twenty or so this weekend assuming the rain holds off.

Otherwise, I totally didn’t fix my bass input jack yet, mostly because I’ve been biking, and haven’t been in the right frame of mind to do it – the soldering iron intimidates me, even if I’m not terribly bad with it. When I get around to it (ideally this weekend sometime), I’ll do a beautiful job and feel like a superhero for the next couple of hours, but I need to work up to it.

I’ve also been watching some upleasant drama/fallout from the con I attended as a musical guest this past weekend, which thankfully didn’t touch or intrude on my experience at all, though some of the stuff I’m hearing (I’m not going to link to it; if you care, it’s out there) does concern me. I expect we’ll get some more news in the coming days. The politics of fandom is just as weird as the larger American community, perhaps weirder because so many of the fans are less-than-competent at social discourse under the best of circumstances.

As for the coming weekend, the eldest and I are taking a father-daughter road trip out west to Jefferson’s Poplar Forest to catch a performance of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labor’s Lost that a few of her friends from school are involved in this evening, and I’ve got a friend’s birthday celebration Saturday evening I’m hoping to make an appearance at. Otherwise, I gotta fix the bass and ride the bike, as previously described, and hopefully watch a bit more of that Bobby Kennedy doc on Netflix I’ve been trying to keep pace with.

Anyway…tunes. Nice, different than usual variety this week!

1. “The Beauty of Dead Cities” – Borknagar
2. “Bye Bye Beautiful” – Nightwish
3. “Shine” – Mondo Cosmo
4. “Here If You Want (Pale Blue)” – MOSSS
5. “Panama” – Van Halen
6. “This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)” – Talking Heads
7. “Just Like Heaven” – The Cure
8. “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) – Eurythmics
9. “Midvinterblot” – Unleashed
10. “Never Be The Same” – Surf Rock is Dead
11. “Dammerung” – Equilibrium
12. “Dear Life” -Beck

Oh, and having read the news this week about Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, and hearing a story on NPR this morning about dramatically increasing suicide rates in this country…as a person who has been touched by this very personally, if you’re having thoughts in that direction, know that there are people who love you, and please, please get some help – one option is the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.