That’s kind of what my spouse called it anyway.

I’m coming to terms with the fact that I’m going back to work tomorrow after two weeks or so away. If you look back at my posts here for (especially) the past year, you’ll notice a theme: I’m not very happy there. The organization I work for (who shall remain nameless in print) is kind of a mess; management has recently changed, after the previous regime identified some serious problems in a bunch of departments at the headquarters level, and the new folks are shaking things up; nobody knows what’s going on, and what things are going to look like a year from now.

I’m dealing with a lot of stress; a lot of uncertainty, a lack of support, and a lot of (frankly) bullshit in the way of doing the job the way it ought to be done is really frustrating; because if this stuff wasn’t in the way, I could get this thing moving on rails and save the public an awful lot of money, though my pleas for the space to do so fall on deaf ears, mostly because it’s an endless circle of bullshit all the way around, and nobody has any space.

As I’ve said previously, here and to my boss (who’s just as helpless as me, honestly), I’m giving it a year – the contract I’m overseeing pops at the end of the FY, and if things don’t settle down or get put in the proper order by then, I’ll be looking for greener pastures to maintain my sanity.

I’m not really the type to make “new year’s resolutions”, but I am heading into 2018 with some intention: I’m going to try my damnedest to not get hung up in the cycle of expectation, uncertainty, and perception of failure. I’m going to work on managing my expectations of what success in the workplace looks like; the situation just isn’t set up for anything but the worst bureaucracy can deliver. I hate the way this sounds, but I’m going to promise less and expect even less in return, because I’m just one small cog in a big unwieldy machine, and frankly, I’m not in a position to do a hell of a lot to change things unless help comes down from the top (and my organization is terrible at change management, and seems strangely proud of it).

So, I’m going to try to let some things go, and try to convince myself it’s not that I’ve given up, but that I’m setting conditions for a healthier life and a better situation down the road. Feels like the best thing to do; just not get my hopes up, and let this stuff roll off.

In not expecting a lot of validation or feelings of accomplishment in the professional space this year, I’m going to have to find it somewhere else. Luckily, I’ve got some good things happening outside of the professional world – last year, I really got my physical help in order, and had some wonderful creative successes. I’m hoping to keep that going – as we’re fond of saying in the musical realm, “this is cheaper than therapy”, and it really is. People really seem to like what I do in that space with my various co-conspirators, and we’re going to have some great opportunities to take our “hobby that kind of pays for itself (at least some of the time)” out in the world for more people to enjoy, and we know we’ll really enjoy it ourselves, bum notes and all….as a wise man once said, “there are no mistakes, just happy accidents.”

So there; that’s what’s been rattling around in my head the last few days. Just gotta stick to the plan.

Okay, folks…this is the album we’ve been working on for the last year or so, and we cannot wait to share it with everyone! There’s some really great work on here (if I do say so myself), including a songwriting credit to yours truly, some really great songwriting from Kirsten (seriously – “Elegy for a Nerf Herder”? Pegasus award material!), and a bunch of fun material that really got me stretching my abilities as a musician (I gotta keep up with those other other folks, after all…).

Anyway, it’s now out there in the world, and I share it with you. You can listen (and purchase!) at the link above, at least digitally. We’ll have the official CD release at Marscon in Williamsburg in a couple of weeks. Did I mention we’re Musical Guests of Honor this year?

I am, shall we say, excited this is out in the world. Hope you all like it.

I’ll be honest, this year wasn’t completely awesome – there was a low-level (occasionally spiking to high level) stress and anxiety thing going on all year because of a less than ideal work situation, that’s still less than ideal, but like I told my boss, I’m giving it another year to sort itself out before I start looking for a lifeline – there’s a lot of changes coming up with the organization, and it’s either going to get better, or it’s going to go even further to shit than it already is, and a year from now, we’ll know which way the sewer lines are flowing.

That said, there were some completely awesome things that happened outside of that wheelhouse, which is what I’m going to try to focus on. I put in a kid in college, where she’s kicking all kinds of ass. I played a bunch of really awesome shows with two different groups, put out two small records with those groups; Dimensional Riffs’ Live in the Boudoir and the pre-release EP edition of Fantastic Geeks and Where to Find Them with The Blibbering Humdingers, and we’ve just announced that we’re releasing the full-length CD at Marscon!. We are all really proud of this one.

The other big number is 75. That’s the number of pounds I lost this year, thanks to tons of exercise, better diet, and some pharmaceutical assistance. I’ve kept it off for a good solid six months now too. That’s something to be proud of.

Anyway, some other numbers:

• books read: 67
• miles biked: 1167
• shows I played: I don’t remember at all, but it was a bunch
• cons attended: something like a dozen, it was a lot
• kids graduated sucessfully from high school: 1
• pounds lost: 75
• inches lost from waist: 8
• new pants purchased that don’t fall down: 4
• solutions implemented to make my split-level fish tank plant racks work: 3
• Irish dance classes attended: 11
• ceilis learned: 5
• the number of those ceilis I can remember by name: maybe one?
• Dance dad sound emergencies solved: a few
• national parks visited: 5
• current Pokemon Go level: 34
• average liters of water consumed per day: 4
• number of D&D players killed: 1
• number of players who have run the cleric in the group: 3
• number of times I totally failed to recognize awesome celebrity Alex Kingston when she came to the merch table: 1

Not a terrible year overall. I’ll take it.

Greetings, folks, from the leisurely period between Christmas and New Years where you never quite know what day it is.

I had a little bit of a bout of illness here the last couple of days (my spouse too – I blame my kid back from college, which is fair, I was sick every year right after finals – she knocked a 3.5 out of her first semester, though – works for me), but I’m mostly back in the swing of things now.

The last couple of days, I’ve been playing with recipes in my Instant Pot pressure cooker (and then some) that my lovely spouse got me for Christmas – so far, I’ve knocked out some excellent refried beans (from dried beans to creamy taco-filling goodness in 30 minutes), a decent pot roast (from which I learned some things) and a middling cheesecake (again, a learning experience, though it didn’t stop the girls from eating it all within hours). I have plans to do an ersatz roasted whole chicken, and maybe a few other things before my break’s out. It’s been fun, learning how to incorporate a pressure cooker into my tool kit.

Since Christmas, it’s largely felt like winter, which is nice. the week or so prior (which I also had off – use-or-lose leave is a thing I deal with), it was brushing 70 – I rode almost 30 miles on the bike! I accomplished a lot around the house, though – I fixed the toilet (replacing all the innards), re-arranging my drawers, and picking up new kitchen table chairs at IKEA. Since Christmas, I’ve still been accomplishing some things, but I’ve been lying a bit lower, resting off the kid-provided illness, doing laundry, and finishing off James S.A. Corey’s “Babylon’s Ashes”, the sixth book in the excellent Expanse series of novels. I also held a small memorial service for the microwave, which died tragically last night – luckily, a decent replacement was on sale at Target this morning.

Also, today, we took the kids to see The Last Jedi, which I enjoyed just as much the second time. Some people are complaining about it, but again, it felt like equal parts deconstruction (which we’re due for after nine movies, a canon TV series, and bunches and bunches of EU tie-in media) and homage ot Empire. Again, though (and I think I said this in the last post), it felt like it could easily have been an ending to things, rather than part eight of nine. The spouse caught the force broom this time, however.

Oh well – I’ve got a week to go before I have to enter the world again. Gonna mostly just chill at home, I think. The youngest is agitating to play My Little Pony: Tales of Equestria, the MLP RPG, which I need to work through a bit, and I gotta think a bit about Marscon, where the Humdingers are musical Guests of Honor in a couple of weeks, so I should probably pick up the bass and dust off some of the Fantastic Geeks… tunes.

I’ll probably just end up drinking whiskey and playing Civilization, though, like I’m doing tonight.

So, I’m done with work for the year (unless I get a note from my team about a certain meeting with security actually happening at some point? I dunno, I’m done worrying about it). I spent this week in class, learning all about schedule management. I passed the class with 98 of 100 points (I missed one question on the exam, and it was a stupid, but understandable mistake). One step closer to level III program management certification. Woo.

Today was my first official day of leave heading into the end of the calendar year (I always take my year end break as a gift to myself). My lovely spouse and I continued our tradition of going to see the new Star Wars early in the morning of opening day. I actually really enjoyed The Last Jedi; it was kind of a deconstruction of Star Wars films; not without flaws, but it did some interesting things with the mythos, and Mark Hammil is a freakin’ superstar. If anything, it felt like a satisfying ending to the series, not part eight of nine or wherever we are now; I’m honestly not sure where it’s going from here, and it doesn’t necessarily feel like it has to go anywhere, really.

The one thing that came out of all of this was my wife’s new love for the CGI stars of the film, the Porgs (as seen above with Chewbacca), these weird sorta-bird things that hang out with Luke Skywalker on his hermit island. She’s spent the rest of the day since we finished watching the movie around lunchtime looking for the perfect plush replica, and I guess I’m going to have go find one. Oh well, this is my duty as husband and partner, I guess.

Anyway, I don’t have a random eleven this week; I never got around to streaming or randomizing anything – I’ve mostly been listening to NPR or St. Vincent’s MASSEDUCTION record on repeat for the last week – one of my favorites of the year, frankly. Go seek it out.

Musically otherwise, I think I’m officially an old now, as Bon Jovi, my favorite band from middle school/high school (though I got better, right before they got all Nashville and ceased to be a rock band anymore), is in the class of 2018 of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Also included are The Cars, The Moody Blues, Dire Straits, and Nina Simone, plus (and I wonder why she hasn’t been there from the beginning) early influence Sister Rosetta Tharpe, who if you haven’t heard of before, you need to go and dive in now (just click that link and go, my friend. Check out those guitar chops!)…not a bad group of folks.

Anyway, have a decent weekend, enjoy things, and start laying in for the holidays, folks. Happy whatever-it-is-you’re-celebrating!

Monday is, allegedly* my last “in-the-office” work day for 2017. Tuesday through Thursday, I’m off-site (at that nice training facility around the corner from my house) taking a not-so-exciting three day course on Earned Value Management, as I believe I may have mentioned. This is not something I’m excited about at all, but it’s required for the fancy certification I’m supposed to earn for this job, so whatever.

The weekend wasn’t awful, I guess. My wife and I legitimately tried to go to the cool vegan-pop-up/holiday bazaar at Hardywood Park Craft Brewery in the city on Friday night, but after knocking out a little shopping first, the snow and freezing rain were in full swing, and while the roads weren’t awful yet, the drivers were, and it was getting colder, so we settled for dinner out at the nearby mexican place (she got a margarita, I made it home without the requisite bottle of Gingerbread Stout, which is really good stuff), then home.

The storm kept up for most of Saturday, though the roads weren’t awful – we ended up with an inch or two depending on where you took your sample, but I still ended up venturing out once or twice for some things (cornbread to go with the chili I threw in the crock pot, etc) and to catch the new Gen III pokemon (because I still play Pokemon Go – sue me).

Sunday, I ran the usual D&D game with the post grad students legit PhDs (congrats Kat and Will), where we had a good time with a classic “on-rails” one shot dungeon crawl, where the druid managed to get her hands on a Cloak of Billowing (a “common magic item” that does nothing useful other than to billow dramatically on command); and chose to continue wearing it while wildshaped into a velociraptor (I allowed it, because “rule of cool” is my DM mantra). As a dinosaur, she couldn’t speak, but continued to puncutate interactions by billowing the cape whenever appropriate (or not), mostly to taunt the barbarian in the party, because why not. It was fun, and the boss demon, for whatever reason, was fond of metagaming (telepathically telling the party about his employee evaluations, and sacastically wondering why they just don’t come on in for the fight, rather than continuing to confer outside the big doors with the symbol of Vecna on them). I also gave out Inspiration for dick jokes. It was fun, and a good send-off for Will, who’s off to a post-doc fellowship in Texas for a while.

That’s about it, really. Otherwise, I’m continuing to work on shutting down the program for a couple of weeks while I’m in class/on leave, figuring out when we’re going to get out to see The Last Jedi this weekend, and working to deal with the unfortunate lower-GI symptoms of the iffy leftovers I had for dinner last night, and thanking the maker that I forgot the other batch I’d packed for lunch.

____________________________

*- I say allegedly, because although I’m in class the rest of this week, I’m likely not going to be able to put the last bit of business I talked about earlier without another meeting with people I’d rather not deal with.

Okay then. Not loving life right now. Stress (and depression) is a bitch.

As I run down the end of my work year, I’m able to nudge lingering issues forward, sorta, but they never seem to get solved. I’ve got this one issue I’ve been trying to run down since October, and whenever I make some progress, they change the rules, or somebody who had influence leaves the organization and somebody else needs to get “up to speed” and then *they* change the rules and I have to sell my (very simple) solution all over again. Made some progress this week, but it’s slow and I need some sort of good news/resolution.

I kind of hate my job right now, even though I’ve gotten a two week reprieve on furlough. We’ll see. Government is actually good at waiting until the exact last minute to accomplish the absolute minimum required to keep trudging along. At least I get my class

Right now my weekend is allegedly quiet – the girls have a couple of small dance things (nursing home performance, local Christmas parade), and I’m supposed to run my D&D game on Sunday, but really, who knows, since the weather folks are saying the magic word snow for tonight and tomorrow, so who knows; when that particular word gets uttered, all bets are off in Central VA.

Me, I just want to get resolution to something; anything. Quick, somebody set up a contrived problem I can come in, solve, and maybe feel better…

Nevermind.

Anyway, tunes. #4 is one of those anthems of my high school years that’s always kind of nice to hear. And yes, there’s a double dose of Pink Floyd on the list, which I’d normally get frustrated about, but honestly, it’s really two different bands, depending on whether Roger Waters was there (#6; although there’s still some Syd Barrett influence left in ’71, even though he left a few years earlier) or not (#1, which was really all Gilmour)…

…and that’s your prog rock history lesson for the day. Rock on, potentially wearing your Rick Wakeman cape.

1. “Marooned” – Pink Floyd
2. “Famous Friends” – Kittens Forever
3. “All Messed Up” – The Donnas
4. “Fallen Angel” – Poison
5. “Santeria” – Sublime
6. “One of These Days” – Pink Floyd
7. “Dr. Feelgood”- Mötley Crüe
8. “I Melt With You” – Modern English
9. “Promises” – Day Wave
10. “Head over Heels” – Tears for Fears
11. “You Make My Dreams”- Daryl Hall & John Oates

The news of the potential of Disney buying up a big chunk of Fox’s assets and intellectual property hit a fever pitch this week, with talk of a deal being announced as early as next week, leading to exciting possibilities like orphaned Marvel properties such as the X-Men and Fantastic Four “coming home” to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

I’m kind of conflicted, actually. While I would *love* to have Marvel’s First Family exist within the MCU (preferably as a weird-science Kirby-tastic 60s period piece – hear me, Feige?), and the option of getting Star Wars: A New Hope‘s home video rights back with the other films (which could finally lead to maybe getting us some decent original theatrical edition versions released someday), there’s a lot of potential not-so-good things that could come of it, both in terms of the characters we love, but also the entertainment industry as a whole.

First of all, if Disney buys up Fox’s entertainment side, they’ll own upwards of thirty percent of all movies released in the last year (that’s a stat I heard this week; I can’t find it right now); that’s not exactly good for competition. While it’s not a perfect synchronization (given various production companies not aligning completely with studios etc), that’s one giant megacorp controlling damned near everything, which in my mind, is going to, at the very least, stifle creativity. Disney, being as huge as it is, is pretty risk averse – I don’t see to many risks being taken – Marvel movies are great, and wonderfully enjoyable, but I wouldn’t exactly call them particularly daring.

Also, Hulu could be a problem; That particular streaming service is currently split amongst almost all the major studios – Disney and Fox each hold somewhere around a twenty-five percent stake. Disney buys Fox, all of a sudden, the mouse is a majority stakeholder. This might not be all bad -Disney’s been talking about setting up their own streaming service for a while; should this go through, they might just use the existing Hulu infrastructure instead. However, if Disney’s got a majority, all the other guys who get their stuff out over Hulu’s service will fall by the wayside.

One of these days, the studios are going to figure out that everybody having thier own services sucks – Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon have pretty much figured the infrastructure out; sure, holding back studio properties leads to cool stuff like Stranger Things, but I can’t think of anybody who wants to subscribe to fifteen different streaming channels to get all the cool stuff – that’s just cable TV all over again, and since these entertainment businesses are all also kind of in the broadband business, and Net Neutrality in serious danger of going away, we, the customer, are screwed.

Also, finally, I don’t really even want the X-Men hanging out with Cap, Thor and Iron Man on the movie screen. The fact that the MCU started out without the heavy sales hitters like Spider-Man and the Mutants actually encouraged more creativity and aiming for the “deep cuts”, many of which are my favorites. If those guys were there from the beginning, we’d never have gotten Ant-Man or Doctor Strange. Historically in the comics, the X-Men have mostly stayes to their own end of things (other than recent, overdone event series of the last decade or so) historically, and it works – additionally, the X-Men movies seem to work pretty well on their own anyway – they aren’t all amazing, or particularly married to continuity, though they work in their own sense of context, and have given us some pretty great individual properties like Deadpool and Logan, which wouldn’t have really worked otherwise. I say leave ’em out – they’re fine on their own, and the comics guys since the 60s understood that (in spite of Wolverine being on everything now). Sure, Marvel didn’t do amazing things with Inhumans as a replacement they’ve been playing at for the last few years, but Marvel doesn’t really *need* an X-Men replacement in their universe – the Avengers, Defenders, and cosmic folks hanging with the Guardians are fine.

I bet this deal happens. That said, I hope it doesn’t seriously upset the delicate balance of the entertainment industry, or the ten years’ worth of cool storytelling in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, even if they already have the whole Infinity Stone thing queued up to change up the universe anyway and just wedge stuff in – I just hope they don’t.

As I mentioned a couple of posts back, the year doesn’t really feel like it’s coming to an end until I see a certain feature on a certain web site. Well, I’m feeling it. As such, I share with you, as I do most years, The A.V. Club’s Year in Band Names feature; a collection of all the interesting, clever, or strange bands/demos/whatever that the AV Club music editors have cross their desks over the course of the calendar year – it’s an interesting look into the world of indie music (which, as I wasn’t when I started following this piece years ago, a part of) and the trends and patterns found therein.

2017 included lots of good ones. In no particular order, here are the top ten that jumped out at me as I digested this year’s collection:

• Necrolytic Goat Converter
• Hold On, Caufield
• Terra And The Dactyls
• Insignificant Other
• Tyrannosorceress
• Mayya And The Revolutionary Hell Yeah!
• Diarrhea Sprinkles
• Top Nachos
• The Washboard Abs
• Republican Hair

As well this year, I figured I’d share a couple of other multimedia highlights apart from the cool names, as it’s gotten so much easier to share media than it was years ago when they first started this annual piece. To wit:

• Fragile Rock – emo puppet band
• Period Bomb’s song title: “Ovary Acting”
• Guilty Giraffe’s album cover for “A Time to Slime” (the linked “Lost My Cat” isn’t bad, either)
• Basement Beers’ amazing song title “Wake Me Up When ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’ Ends (Nicole’s Song)”
• Simply put: “This Saxophone Kills Fascists”

Anyway, it felt wrong not to share the joy.

I spent more than twelve hours behind the wheel this weekend. I have been from one end of Virgina to the other a couple of times, and my back is killing me, even if I did get a chance to catch up on my friends’ podcasts.

I’ve been from Richmond to Amherst twice (two hours or so each way) to retrieve and return the eldest, who was home for the Feis and grade exams this weekend along with her mother and siblings (yes, siblings. all of them – they’ve got the boy competing now!). The Feis went well for the kids and the school in general – all the ladies nailed at least one first place, and both girl children bumped a level in a category (that’s a first place ahead of a certain number of competitors), and the boy child did not come in last in his group, which is something.

I was not present for the competition on Saturday, as I said previously, as I had to head two hours in the other direction for the Humdingers gig, at the party, which is always a good time; plus we got to play most of the new stuff that’s going to be on the new record, and I got to hear the first public performance of “Kiss in the Rain” (I need to write a bass part eventually; it’s going with some different instrumentation on the record and doesn’t need me), which is gorgeous, and has a neat Decembrists vibe – I can’t wait for the world at large to hear it; in fact, I can’t wait for the whole world to get their hands on the entirety of Fantastic Geeks and Where To Find Them, becuase it’s going to be really, reaslly awesome; we’re all very excited.

To wrap the weekend,after hanging for the first part of grade exams with the HOI crew and running the kid back to school on Sunday, I got part of the grocery shopping done, put in some laundry, and settled down to watch a couple of episodes of The Punisher on Netflix, which I’ve been slow to engage with;I’m not a huge fan of the character (there’s honestly only so much you can do before he’s basically the villian with a code he started out as), and let’s face it, he’s troubling given the current american climate (at least before it became wall-to-wall sex offenders in terms of zeitgeist recently). I’m five episodes in, and while it’s not Jessica Jones or Luke Cage, it’s engaging me a bit, although not a hell of a lot has happened yet. My biggest problem is the fact that it’s kind of just retreading his (well done) arc in Daredevil season two of working to knock down the conspiracy (yeah – it’s a whole dark government conspiracy now rather than just a random mafia encounter) that got his family killed, adding more evidence to my thesis that there’s only so much you can do with the guy.

So yeah, that’s the weekend. The coming week will largely involve working to close down the work year and putting out the last few fires, and again, keeping an eye on the news to see if I get to take my class the week of the 11th, or get furloughed again. Yay.