Today’s election day in these United States; midterms are *always* a big deal, despite usually crappy turnout, but that’s not gonna happen this year, right? Because this election’s a BIG DEAL; like the Washington Post said this week, “This midterm election is like no other in a generation”:

Tuesday’s midterm election is about many things. It’s about health care and immigration. It’s about the economy. It’s about power and who will hold it, both in Washington and in the states. Above all, it’s about something more elemental: what kind of country Americans see today and want to see in the future. That makes these midterms unlike any in the recent past.

Emphasis there is mine…but it’s really the gist of it. The last two years, no matter your political stripe, have been, well, different in this country. It’s been going this way for a while, and I could point you to a million navel-gazing articles about the lapses in civility and hyperpartisanship and whatnot, but the tone of Washington, and thus elections all over the place has changed, and not for the better, in my opinion, but as this is election day, I’m not going to spend anymore time on ideology, or on how anybody should vote; y’all know my positions on things.

No, I’m just going to tell you all to go out and vote – participate in democracy, do your civic duty; engage in the responsibility that comes along with your rights as a citizen. Be involved. If for some ridiculous reason you’re eligible and not registered, first, shame on you, but I forgive you – go get registered. Don’t know what’s on your ballot or where your polling place is? Check here or similar places to start; you’re already on the internet; use it!

As I say every year, it’s the absolute least you can do as a citizen.

Just get out and vote. It’s mid-terms. The whole House of Representatives is up; as is one-third of the Senate. You likely have some state or local offices (I’ve got Commonwealth’s Attorney) and a couple of ballot initiatives. This stuff’s important.

I’m going to close this out with a message from my friends, at, of all places, The Harry Potter Alliance, and their Wizard Rock The Vote campaign – my friend Steph Anderson and her band Tonks and the Aurors (who I’ve had the opportunity to sit in with once or twice) spent a good bit of this summer touring, playing wrock tunes for folks, and registering them to vote. It was cool. The HPA does lots of good stuff, but the GOTV efforts wrock.

You wouldn’t want to upset Dumbledore, would you?

The drive to work this morning was pretty miserable; miserable to the point that I am seriously considering stepping up the “go buy tires this month” timetable and borrowing a bit from savings in the short term. I-95 didn’t feel entirely stable, or at least my car on it didn’t.

Oh well; I survived. I shall start checking prices more actively starting this afternoon.

The weekend was, as I alluded to, pretty low-key, which was welcome. I took my wife out for a dinner date Friday evening, which we both needed. Burgers and drinks at Cap Ale is always a pleasant diversion. Saturday we took care of grocery shopping, farmers’ marketing, and pokemon hunting in the morning, then I spent the afternoon scrubbing the bathroom (which did my OCD clean-freak good), making some good vegetarian chili, knocking out lots of laundry, relaxing and watching some stuff on TV, then setting the clocks back before going to bed. Sunday was more laundry, a couple of little errands in the morning, then spending some time playing, of all things, Team Fortress 2 with Andrew (and actually doing better than he did!). Around 4pm, Colleen suggested heading over to Scott’s Addition (the curry truck was at Ardent!), so we had a family dinner in the beer garden, eating good food, and petting dogs.

I woke up this morning to serious rain, as indicated above. The rest of the family slept in (it’s end of the first marking period, kids get today off for conferences, and tomorrow because most of the schools are polling places). I’m hoping they keep cleaning.

Oh, rest assured I’ll remind you tomorrow as well, but if you haven’t already, GO VOTE TOMORROW!

So this has been a pretty long week; not sure why, really. It seems like I spent the whole time in meetings, which, is, you know, par for the course. I just didn’t sleep well any night this week; again, not sure why. The weather’s been trying to decide whether it’s summer or fall, which might be part of it. I got one decent bike ride in this week, which, apart from getting run into by a deer (seriously, they have it in for me – this one bounced right off my hip while I was riding the trail!) was pretty nice, though it hurt (though not really because of the deer, but because I’m getting old). All I know is that it’s felt like I’ve had ten days under my belt since about 8am Tuesday.

I am currently about seven hours out from what looks like it’s going to be a pretty quiet weekend, which I’m honestly looking forward to; the last few have had more than enough activity, and next weekend looks like it’s filling up quickly (at least that’s a long one), with the SBC dance concert, and a last minute Humdingers gig Sunday afternoon in the Triangle.

But, there’s nothing on the agenda beyond stuff like grocery shopping, cleaning the bathroom, watching my wife make little hats for the cats (totally worth the $8.70 for the enjoyment she’s getting), and trying to relax a bit this weekend. Maybe we’ll run out for a bite and a drink if a good food truck’s set up someplace? Only if we feel like it.

I guess I should talk about last night, which was pretty great – as indicated, I took the boy child out to what, apart from the Wiggles and innumerable gigs where I and/or friends happen to be playing, we figured was his first real rock concert – Dweezil Zappa’s *Choice Cuts* tour with the latest incarnation of his Zappa Plays Zappa band, this time, only fifteen minutes from home at the Beacon Theater, a nearly century-old venue in Hopewell, just outside the RVA metro. Dweezil and his band played for more than three hours, hitting a wide variety of Zappa classics and rarities, as well as peppering the show liberally with the theme from Psycho, a private joke within the band from Halloween night that kept rolling into November. The band (almost the same lineup as we saw in ’16 in Richmond, with a few changes), as expected, was on point, hitting every note exactly when it needed to be hit, with exactly the right inflection and emotion. Scheila Gomez, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, was, as she was back the last time I saw the show, a highlight, including taking lead vocals on a surprising inclusion, the novelty hit “Valley Girl”, which I wasn’t figuring on hearing, but it was, a hit with the crowd.

The crowd at this one was a little different than the last time; again, it was largely old guys and a few tolerant wives, and like Andrew and I, a couple of budding teenage musicians with their aging musician dads. that said, this was *Hopewell*, which, in spite of only being half an hour from Richmond, is decidedly not part of the Richmond cultural scene; it’s got much more of a small-town, rural Virginia vibe; as such, there were a lot of people at this show who would never even consider heading up the highway to the “big city” to see a show (this venue tends to specialize in aging country performers during the state fair circuit “off season”, over the hill classic rock bands from the 70s and 80s, and numerous “tribute” acts to Elvis, Michael Jackson, and Abba – that’s a selection of who was advertized for the next couple of months, anyway), so the atmosphere was a little different. There was a bit more whooping and hollering, a bit more drunk on cheap beer, and numerous shouts of “Yore Daddy woulda’ been proud, Sonny!” and such. There was also the two guys behind us who wouldn’t shut up during the whole thing; not that they weren’t appreciative of the performers, but were just loud and kinda distracting.

There was also this guy, right the hell in front of me:

He was just as whoopy and hollery as the rest, and wanted to dance around and “yee haw” drunkenly while being like 6’7″. Luckily, I was able to see around him most of the time and he was only moderate distraction. The important part was that the kid and I had a pretty great time, even if he was very tired afterwards. Worth it; his newly-gestating guitar playing mind was blown, as expected, and it was, if I do say so myself, a nice bonding experience.

Anyway; that’s about all there is other than to kick out the random streaming playlist. Reasonably standard; indie, vikings, a little new wave, and probably my favorite Def Leppard tune that never really got as much love as stuff like “Pour Some Sugar On Me”.

1. “Hang Me Up To Dry” – Cold War Kids
2. “Jezaig” – Eluveitie
3. “Madness” – Muse
4. “Nehalennia” – Heidevolk
5. “Powder Blue/Cascine Park” – Yumi Zouma
6. “Hysteria” – Def Leppard
7. “Pain” – The War on Drugs
8. “Pretend We’re Dead” – L7
9. “Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go” – Soft Cell
10. “How Soon Is Now?” – The Smiths
11. “Islands” – The xx
12. “Carrots” – Skating Polly
13. “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” – Eurythmics
14. “Queen Bitch” – David Bowie

Happy Halloween

posted this piece to social media earlier, but felt worth sharing here as well.

This morning on my way in to work, we had a back-up of ten or twelve cars at the post entrance. Why? A family of deer decided that the road in front of the gate was their space for a while. Totally ignored the guards trying to shoo them away. They moved on after a few minutes, but it was clear that it was totally their idea, and no one else’s.

A handful of deer shut down the US Government, or at least a part of it, just because.

It was beautiful. Nothing else today is going to make me as happy as having witnessed this little event.
It’s nature’s world; we’re just taking up space in it for a while.

Sometimes the world makes you feel small. I’m okay with that.

On Friday, I posted a bit about weekend plans. Those didn’t go as expected.

Friday evening was indeed kinda chill; I made some excellent refried beans in my instant pot. We ate them. It was good.

Saturday, however, went a bit pear shaped; We tried to make the best of it, but nothing went as we expected. We got to the Celtic Festival to find a morass of mud and filth, but there were still plenty of people hanging around enjoying themselves; It was appropriately Scottish/Irish weather, I suppose. That said, as the dancers gathered for their exhibition performance a little after noon, we discovered the stage was wet and slippery; so much so that one of the girls participating in the competition happening there this weekend slipped and broke an arm. No performance for our folks.

Oh well. We wandered around the festival for a bit, met with some friends who were coming in to town to enjoy the highland games and haggis, and I replaced my missing wedding claddagh with a nice new one that almost matches and fits better. We did get word that our pub crawl buddies had a medical emergency and had to back out, but other folks were happy to join us for at least a little while, and one of the other adult dancers and her husband were interested. Long story short, we ended up in Scott’s Addition for a little while, though the other friends had a teenager emergency and left a bit early. Colleen and I spent a little while at Ardent’s biergarten, because the sun had come out, though we discovered the dance school friends got hung up with other things. Oh well. We called it early.

Sunday the dancing went off okay – the festival was still muddy, but it was less cold and damp. That said, we didn’t really hang around. We came home, finished some laundry, and set the kids up for a few hours while the grownups went out to Carytown to participate in the Harry Potter trivia contest sponsored by the Cupcake shop. The venue was a neat old-timey bar, and it was great to hang out with our friends we don’t see particularly often (even though they live really close), sharing a few drinks and cupcakes and having a grand old time, as well as coming in 3rd in the contest (Mostly because Colleen and Lisa are really good at retaining the trivia – my Harry Potter brainspace is filled with 100-odd wrock tunes I can whip out on stage in a moment’s notice), and we toasted Lisa’s cancer-free diagnosis!

Yeah, I’d say the weekend ended okay.

As for the week ahead? I’m kind of on the counting down point – my leave for the rest of the year is in, and I’m on the seven weeks until the end of my year before my holiday vacation time kicks in. I’ve got a few things to tee up before then, and get rolling, but we’re looking pretty good. This week’s largely quiet, which I shall welcome. Also, Thursday, I have Dweezil Zappa tickets. It’s gonna be great.

It’s been a relatively uneventful week, at least in areas I’m going to talk about in this forum (how’s that for vague?). I worked, I slept, I took cold medicine to sort out my sinus issues related to the changing of the seasons. I played a decent, if experimental (gotta work on that acoustic arrangement of Sabbath’s “War Pigs”) set at Isley Brewing on Wednesday, and was introduced to a musician who’s performance I admired greatly by another musician I admire greatly as “a badass motherf**ker of a player” (in a British accent no less), so there’s that. I hit level 39 on Pokemon Go. I had a rather successful kickoff meeting for my program with the new contractor, though I found out this morning that, embarassingly, I got a guy’s name wrong on a request to set up a follow-up to address a training issue. Oops.

And yeah, it got cold this week. It was in the mid 70s last week. Today, it’s not going to get above 49. and it’s supposed to rain today. Cold rain – yay.

I’m hoping for a pretty chill day and evening tonight; gonna be cold and rainy anyway – stay in, make something warm and nourishing for dinner, chill. Especially because the weekend’s going to be relatively busy, though it should be fun. The dancers have a couple of performances (weather permitting) at the Celtic Festival over at the Raceway this weekend, Saturday afternoon/evening we’ve got some friends rounded up to do the Scott’s Addition Booz Crawl, where we’ll once again do the stumbling tour or Scott’s Addition, hitting our favorite breweries and cideries and meaderies and whatnot with a bunch of other RVA types. I plan on pacing myself, though my friends over at Isley tell me they’ve got five(!) new beers on tap to celebrate the Fifth Anniversary, so I’ll have to try at least a couple of those; good thing we’re planning to hit that one first, so I’ll be able to walk it off (though there’s going to be nourishing curry about halfway through!).

Sunday, my lovely spouse and I have been invited to sit in as part of a four-person team by some friends we don’t see nearly enough to participate in CaryTown Cupcakes “Cary Potter” 2018 Trivia Night; where we’ll eat cupcakes, answer some trivia questions, and hopefully have a good time. I’m glad I’m on the team with these other folks, because despite my status as a wizard rock semi-celebrity, my wife and these friends know a hell of a lot more about the nuts and bolts of Potter than I do. I still think it’ll be fun.

That’s about it, really. I’m just trying to get through life right now; the end of the year is in sight, and honestly, I kinda need that little break I give myself (I noticed where we were based on the whole year-end eval thing I talked about recently, and having just put my leave requests in for the rest of the calendar year). 2018’s been exhausting for so many reasons, both really long, and passing ridiculously quickly at the same time. Temporal perception is weird.

All that is left before I wrap this is up is introduce the random streaming playlist. Neat mix with a lot of the usual players, but a few neat little gems included, producing interesting memories in some cases. I’ll let you figure out what those are.

1. “For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)” – AC/DC
2. “Boys Don’t Cry” – The Cure
3. “Medley: King Kong/Chunga’s Revenge/Son of Mr. Green Genes (live)” – Frank Zappa
4. “Beat It” – Michael Jackson
5. “Human” – Rag’n’Bone Man
6. “Bittersweet Symphony” – The Verve
7. “Under the Presssure” – The War on Drugs
8. “Careless Whisper” – Wham!
9. “Shove” – L7
10. “Someone To You (Acoustic)” – BANNERS
11. “Belfast Hornpipe” – Irish Traditional
12. “Just Look At This Mess” – Punch Brothers
13. “Paparazzi” – Lady Gaga
14. “Een Geldersch Lied” – Heidevolk

Colleen and I spent a lot of time on the road this weekend, visiting friends and family across the mid-Atlantic and enjoying some great performances. I also had a closer-than-I-would-have-liked encounter with some Amelia County wildlife.

Friday night, while returning home late from Amherst, where we saw an absolutely AMAZING performance by my kid and her fellow theatricals at SBC of Heathers: The Musical on Friday night, we were mostly alone on Route 360 heading toward Richmond around midnight when I saw, well ahead of us, a pretty large 4-6 point buck working his way across the median strip between the east and westbound lanes. Having some experience with this sort of thing, I slowed down quickly and safely, though the deer didn’t. I slowed further and swerved (again, safely toward the luckily wide berm) out of the way, and this deer, presumably, given the season, crazy with lust desire, decided to follow, eventually side-checking passenger side of the car pretty hard and (again, presumably) with stunned turpor, wander off into the woods.

We pulled over to survey the damage, and, luckily, there didn’t seem to be any, save some minor scuffing, largely in the road/weather dirt (it was raining most of the week) on the rear passenger side door. No blood, hair, antler-holes or even, thankfully, dents were present. We continued on our way, a little shaken, but none the worse for wear.

A more thorough survey of the vehicle Saturday morning confirmed there was nothing beyond a small scuff just below the belt-line that can polish out easily. I am quite thankful, and what’s funny is that we were both mostly worried about the deer.

That covers the post title, so let’s move on.

So yes, Heathers was really well put-together. My kid still gives good villain, and really seemed to impress the theater and arts department (we had a nice chat with the department head before the show), who she surprised, because she hasn’t done much to talk about her musical theater background (she’s mostly known as a dancer at school); they seem pretty high on the idea of making use of her for further productions (I don’t think she’s going to have much of a choice). I am a proud dad, and spent most of the weekend talking her up.

And there were a lot of folks to talk her up to on Saturday. While the rest of the family danced in the rain at a festival in Midlothian, I took care of some errands in the morning, hitting the farmer’s market (it’s apple season, and Jerry my market hook-up sold me some amazing Jonastar and Honeycrisps this week) and the grocery store and knocking out some housekeeping and laundry. After that, Colleen and I headed down to Raleigh NC for a show by my friends Metricula and Mikey Mason at a neat little venue, The Maywood. We arrived in town, checked into the hotel (one late-night drive in a weekend, deer or no, is enough), and met some friends at the Trophy Brewing Taproom, conveniently located right next door, where we collected even more friends (including the performers for a bit), had a couple of drinks (falling in love with the Milky Way stout and Off the Top Rope IPA), ate some tamales from the food trucks, and enjoyed ourselves before the show, where we all had a pretty great time and talking up the kids’ performance again.

The show was pretty great, as expected; we crashed at the hotel, arose, and headed home after breakfast. Arriving around lunchtime, we took care of a few things, *then* headed over to VCU to attend the local students art show, celebrating the art from local schools being hung in the education building for the 18-19 school year, and one of the youngest’s pieces from last year was included. We found the painting and sat for the presenation, wandered around campus a bit for Pokemon community day (only two shinies…alas), grabbed some food, then headed home.

Then, I kind of fell asleep on the couch around 7pm watching an episode of the new Daredevil. Exciting.

So yes, this weekend was busy. This week, overall, shouldn’t be too bad – just the usual stuff for the family, and the Isley open mic if I can manage on Wednesday. Plenty of time to rest up before the Celtic Fesitival and Halloween pub crawl in Richmond on Saturday.

Sometimes, I think we do too much.

It’s Friday. Finally. It’s been a weird week; alternately dead time or total crazytown, and likely to flip minute by minute. That said, I have, at 6:50am as I’m typing this, completed all the required tasks on my day’s to-do list as I wrote it down when I left the office yesterday evening. At least until the next thing comes along and shits the bed, but whatever. For now, I’m a winner at project management.

The rest of the week’s been relatively quiet, I guess. With the weather change, I’ve been fighting off unpleasant sinus issues; basically living between doses of Tylenol Sinus and NyQuil. Biking’s been right out, sadly. It’s been work, sleep, occasional pokémon (hey, new gen 4s showed up this week), a few chores, and little else, at least until last night, which I managed to clear the head long enough to pay the bills, take care of a little bit of shopping, and buy a couple of tickets for the Dweezil Zappa show in two weeks. When Dweezil’s playing fifteen minutes from your house in a classic old theater, you go, and you plan to blow your just-learning-to-play-guitar teenager’s mind by taking him. It’s gonna be cool.

Also this week, sadly, my wedding band disappeared somewhere. Yes, it’s been big for a while since I lost the weight (I had a thing on it) and it didn’t cost much (we got matching claddagh rings a few years back at the Celtic Festival since she had to have her original gold band cut off because pregnant), but I still feel really bad about it, because important symbol and all that. I’ve searched the office and car and house high and low, but it hasn’t appeared. I fear it’s gone. 🙁

The coming weekend, however, is looking up. Tonight, we head out to SBC to catch Heathers, the stage musical, starring my kid as the Shannen Doherty Heather. I’m *so* looking forward to it. Saturday, the local kids have a quick dance performance at a festival across town in the morning, then the lovely wife and I head down to Raleigh for a “date night” to catch a couple of good friends playing a show (and nobody’s asked me to play yet – I might just get to watch!). Sunday the youngest is having some art in a show over at VCU, so we’re going to pop over and check that out.

It’s a busy one. I hope the sinuses hold out.

In any case, that’s the news from Lake Woebegone…um, it’s Live From Here with Chris Thile now (and it’s awesome)…um, never mind. That’s my time. All that’s left to do is introduce the random elevenish…which hits all the usual notes, along with a twelve minute live opus from a guy from Pink Floyd, a bunch of modern indie, and song from Modest Mouse I always forget about, until I hear it and realize how much I totally dig it. Every time:

1. “Taken For A Ride” – Tally Hall
2. “Sign” – Man on the Moon
3. “Private Eyes” – Daryl Hall & John Oates
4. “The Night We Met” – Lord Huron
5. “Revised Music for Guitar & Low Budget Orchestra” – Frank Zappa
6. “Bitchin'” – The Donnas
7. “A Little Honey” – Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats
8. “Real Love Baby” – Father John Misty
9. “Anonymous Face” – Quix*o*tic
10. “1999” – Prince
11. “Float On” – Modest Mouse
12. “Wonderous Stories”- Yes
13. “Shine on You Crazy Diamond (Live) – David Gilmour
14. “Sweet Child O’ Mine” – Guns N’ Roses

Oh, I guess one more thing. The amusement I got out of spending twenty bucks or so at You Goat Mail to send a mystery package to my kid at college was worth every penny and more. Five star, highly recommended.