As the slight tweak to the title of this post suggests, it’s been another one of those weeks; not just for me, but for pretty much everybody I’ve come in contact with. Starting Wednesday, I’ve run into several people (who had no reason to talk to each other about this) refer to the day as “third/fourth Monday”, depending on what day it was; a weird sort of Baader-Meinhoff Phenomenon variant. Or maybe somebody said it last week on some TV show I didn’t watch, and I’m once again totally outside the American mainstream cultural zeitgeist.

Whatever, it’s not important; certainly not as important as waking this morning to find my internal monlogue thought voice replaced with that of a drunken cartoon Scotsman, which is making life way more interesting today.

In any case, I hope that “fifth Monday” turns out to be pretty uneventful. I mean, it’s already been kind of eventful with all the “Och!“s and “Laddie!“s punctuating my inner voice while driving to work and passing on a “well the worst I can do is ask” request for additional program funding (which got out of my inbox without a Scottish vernacular – I checked) to the boss this morning.

Last night was a bit more interesting; I decided that this was my year to take part in the dominant hobby of the rest of my family by joining the ceili class at HOI for the fall semester.

Prior to, I posted the following to social media:

Getting ready to take an irish dance class with my spouse. Hope the urgent care facility up the road is ready to accept casualties. #clumsy

I amused many online friends, and no one died. The most interesting bit was getting directed at one point by four little girls in at least five different directions at once. I didn’t do terribly, I guess – there are pictures out there if you care to look. I’ll try it again (I think my family enjoys me being there). Also, I earned my keep by fixing the sound system again – that’s really why they keep me around.

Beyond that, the rest of the week involved some biking, some reading, a long-overdue rehearsal with the ‘Riffs, and learning some new old stuff for the Humdingers’ gig this weekend.

Yeah – if you happen to be in the vicinity of Raleigh NC tomorrow around 3pm, swing by the Central North Carolina Pagan Pride Days Festival and catch our show. For this one, we’ll probably err more toward the “Bard Rock” ouvre (look here, as well as that link above to the Ravenscroft tune) given the crowd, but, because it’s us, some of the silly (and Fantastic Geeks… stuff, which is also generall pretty silly depending on who’s around) stuff will likely creep in. Anyway, this event is a pretty nice day, with lots of interesting vendors, entertainment, and pleasant company. I really enjoyed it last year, and am looking forward to doing it again.

Also, my kid’s coming home for the weekend; it’ll be the first time I’ve seen her since dumping her off at college a few weeks back. Being in NC on Saturday, I’ll miss some of the visit (though she’ll be busy too…shhhh), but I’ll be around in the evening, Sunday morning, and available to drag her back to the world of academia.

That’s really about it, I guess. Plans for the evening are up for debate – there may be a trip to Steam Bell Beer Works for music and drinks, or not, depending on weather and such. I dunno; we may be busy enough.

Anyway, here’s some tunes. A bit 80s today, wrapping up not unlike Real Genius, only somebody forgot to bring the popcorn:

1. “The Ocean and the Sea” – Bird Dog
2. “Safety Dance” – Men Without Hats
3. “American Girl” – Tom Petty
4. “Boys Life” – Small Black
5. “Dr. Feelgood” – Mötley Crüe
6. “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ – Michael Jackson
7. “Nanook Rubs It” – Frank Zappa
8. “De Toekomst Lonkt” – Heidevolk
9. “Adore” – Amy Shark
10. “Pavane” – Ian Anderson
11. “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” – Tears for Fears

As you guys undoubtedly know, I occasionally struggle with, among other things, impostor syndrome, wherein I doubt my ability and suitability for whatever activity I find myself doing, whether it be work, parenting, or playing in a nerdmusik/wizard rock band.

Although the Blibbering Humdingers have been dragging me around with them to all kinds of things and putting me on records and such for over five years, I still most often refer to myself as the “Adjunct Humdinger”, in part because they’ve been at it as long without me as they’ve been with me, plus, as the rest of the band is married to each other, I’m always going to be a little bit of a third wheel* in at least some regard, no matter how much we all love and appreciate each other in a totally platonic way**.

In any case, in spite of my occasional personal doubts, It’s really nice to see my place validated in things like band bios online, and, in a cool development, on the official filk track flyer for this year’s Dragon*Con:

I wish I would have grabbed one of these for posterity, unfortunately, they got “cleaned up” (which could mean actually taken off the table by housekeeping, or got beer spilled on them by con drunks overnight and unceremoniously dumped somewhere) from our merch table overnight before I could file one away.

Oh well.

Anyway, thanks to all for validating my belongingness to this interesting business we call show – I really do appreciate it.

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* – Not, I repeat, NOT, a sex surrogate, despite what Scott said during that one really weird Sunday morning show at ConCarolinas.

* – Seriously…no matter what Scott says; we all know I’m too hairy and too not-John-Barrowman for that anyway.

With the big geek labor day celebration behind me, I returned to the mundane world of public sector information technology program management on Thursday, and was pleased to find that that the place didn’t collapse in my absence. Well, my corner of it didn’t, anyway. Looks like one of my EDI trading partners’ feed shit the bed, though my team found the problem and are working with the middleware folks to fix it. Of course, the entire email and intranet system for the East Coast also shit the bed (in a way that has nothing to do with hurricanes even), to the point where I don’t even know if I have meetings (one of my folks showed up yesterday afternoon for a meeting I didn’t know existed to talk about documents I never received, for example, but we made it work) today. I suspect there’s one with someone I don’t particularly like to deal with about something that’s not really my problem anyway, but if my calendar won’t load and emails won’t come in, I can’t exactly confirm it exists, or if it does, I can’t get to the phone number to call in anyway, now can I?

Glad that’s settled.

Weekend should be pretty mellow – I’m not going anywhere except for maybe the market and the park tomorrow (post D*C chill, kids recovering from first week of school and it’s forcing a return to diurnalness, and my wife recovering from some end-of-week migraines), but I think we’re probably going to go Pokemon raiding in Williamsburg on Sunday for a few hours with our friends in that part of the world.

Anyway, here’s some tunes – pulled out of Pandora, though I also re-loaded my car USB library last night, shuffling some stuff in and out, including adding a bunch of cool stuff I’ve picked up recently, including a bunch of cool tunes from Crystal Bright and the Silver Hands whose show I caught this weekend and got *chills*. I bought their thumb drive library, which ended up being accidentally blank, but Crystal made it right pretty quickly with a nice dropbox link. Turns out I’m also friends in passing with a few of the rotating cast of Silver Hands, so it’s cool. I’ll be listening to that a bunch over the next week or so – I highly recommend checking them out!

1. “Southern Cross” – Crosby Stills and Nash
2. “Gone for Good (Alternate Version)” – The Shins
3. “A Forest” – The Cure
4. “Curse of Darkness” – Dragonforce
5. “Powerslave” – Iron Maiden
6. “Is There Something I Should Know?” – Duran Duran
7. “Queen Bitch” – David Bowie
8. “Inside” – Jethro Tull
9. “Ha Ha Ha” – the Julie Ruin
10. “It’s a Mistake” – Men at Work
11. “Holding On” – The War on Drugs

As far as today’s Stranger Things business goes (because these go to Eleven, remember?), I saw some pretty good ST-related costumes at Dragon*Con this year, including an adorable young Eleven, though it turns out my photo is blurry as all get-out. Dammit. Trust me. It was awesome. In the meantime, Barb frowns on my misfortune:

…and reminds you to check out the cool Evil Dead homage retro poster the folks over at the show posted this week as part of their whole series of these things.

So, that’s another DragonCon for the books. After four years of doing this (and the rest of the band having an extra year on me besides), we seem to have both figured out logistics and a few tricks for, as well as developed a pretty decent following at, this event; things went pretty damned smooth this year, if I do say so myself, which I finally feel safe doing after being back home and sleeping in my own bed for a couple of days.

Overall, we played some pretty great shows. I would say that it’s kind of exhausting playing *FOUR* shows in one day like The Humdingers did on Sunday, especially when we’re leaving every last bit of energy and enthusiasm on the stage for each one. People *really* dug what we were laying down, so to speak, and we had some seriously excellent audiences who laughed in all the right places and fed us the energy to keep putting on the kind of shows that make everybody present, both performer and audience, have a better time for the interaction. Special shout out to all the great folks at Sunday night’s show*, both the long-time fans, and the new folks who showed up – you really made that one special for me. SO MUCH FUN.

Additionally, I want to offer up special thanks to the folks from the DragonCon Filk Track, who are always such great hosts and work really, really hard to make sure the performers sound their best, and everybody present has a great time. Also, the fortune cookies are awesome. This year, as well, the track went above and beyond, posting hours and hours of video showcasing all the great live performances on Filk Track Facebook Page. I highly recommend checking that out. Robbie, Amber, Madison, Walt, and all the rest, you guys throw a great party!

As always, it’s definitely worth thanking all our fellow performers on the track and elsewhere, including (but certainly not limited to) old friends like Mikey Mason, Gray Rinehart (both of whom excel at the tango!), Brobdingnagian Bards (aka Andrew McKee and Marc Gunn), Tom Smith, Nick Edelstein, Hawthorn and Holly, Valentine Wolfe, Foot Pound Force, Metricula, The Long Losts, as well as new friends like Pyrate Queen, TimeCrash, The Extraordinary Contraptions, Toucan Dubh, Crystal Bright and the Silver Hands, Nathaniel Johnstone, and probably a bunch of other folks I’m forgetting. You’re all excellent and inspiring performers and people.

Finally, thanks to everyone for saying such awesome things about Kirsten’s amazing new song we really worked hard putting together, “Elegy for a Nerf Herder”; I know she’s totally humbled and honored by everyone’s praise (especially Marc’s suggestion about The Pegasus Awards – totaly worthy) , and I absolutely love it myself – can’t wait to put it on the record!

As for the con itself, we had an enjoyable time beyond the performances – all the amazing cosplayers who wandered around and poppped by our table; you guys are awesome. Also – thanks for buying the stuff and digging our music. We got some songwriting done behind the table, enjoyed the scenery, and had some fun celebrity encounters…

Yes, Sunday was when we got this year’s official con story we’ll be telling for years (at my expense). After we’d gotten set up Sunday morning, we were sitting around waiting for the day’s festivities to get rolling, a pretty redhead stopped by the table to comment on some of the wares and express admiration at Cerine the merch girl’s Flying Spaghetti Monster hat. As I looked up from whatever I was doing (breakfast, phone, something…), I commented to my bandmates that “this one really ought to cosplay as River Song!”, only realizing as I finished my statement that the person in question was, in actuality, Alex Kingston herself.

I am dense sometimes, though I’m glad my relative density can provide entertainment for my friends and co-conspirators.

I’m sure there’s more to share, though I’ve honestly probably gone on long enough. We had a great time. Thanks to Scott and Kirsten, as always, for having me along. Hopefully we’ll get to do it again soon!

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* – not that all our shows weren’t awesome – I just had a blast watching those newbies in the front row – you know who you are!

Wednesday is my last work day before taking a few days off for my annual march to Atlanta with The Blibbering Humdingers for Dragon*Con, where we’ll be playing a bunch of shows, vending, and generally taking in the sights and catching up with dear friends and co-conspirators.

In case you’re in the area, here’s where I/we will be:

Our big Filk Track and Concourse shows:

• Fri 10:00 PM – 11:00 PM Hyatt Hanover F/G
• Sun 12:30pm – 1:00 PM Hyatt Concourse
• Sun 10:00 PM – 11:00 PM Hyatt Hanover F/G

Other places we’ll likely be:

• Fri 2:30 PM – 3:30 PM Meet, Greet, Filk Hyatt Hanover F/G
• Fri 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM Filk & Cookies Hyatt Hanover F/G
• Sat 2:30 PM – 3:30 PM Everything is Filk Live Podcast Hyatt Hanover F/G
• Sat 10:00 PM – 11:00 PM Concert – Star Wars Tribute Hyatt Hanover F/G
• Mon 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM Songs for the Road – Open Filk Hyatt Hanover F/G

Art Show – Hyatt Regency Exhibition Level (I’ll be sitting in on some of these background music sets once we sort the sets):

• Saturday – 11:30 AM
• Sunday – 2:30 PM
• Monday – 11:30 AM

Otherwise, we’ll likely be spending most of our time at the merch table on the Marriott Marquis level; we usually play some ad-hoc music and other tomfoolery there throughout the day to entertain ourselves and passers-by. Stop on by and say hello!

So, thanks to a one hour meeting turning into a nearly three hour meeting, and some nasty weather, I didn’t make it to the park with the kid yesterday evening. I’ll manage to make it up to her soon (Howl-O-Scream anyone?). I wouldn’t have been my best yesterday anyway, as my emotional state was swinging like a crazy pendulum. I’m a little better today after a good night’s sleep (and a Xanax).

In an attempt to try to get my head into the DragonCon game for this weekend, though, I was looking through some band photos and found some nice evidence of some of the good stuff that’s happened relatively recently.

I submit to evidence the following hastily-produced image combining two photos:

The photo on the left is from one of our shows at Concarolinas 2016 (that’s June of last year). The photo on the right was taken at our gig at Gray’s book launch this past weekend. While I’m clearly having a lot of fun in both photos, I know which version of me I prefer.

As I said yesterday in this space, in my head, I’m still the fat guy, but this comparison and some of the other physical evidence I’ve encountered definitely helps to disabuse me, at least temporarily, of that feeling.

yep, that’s just me channelling my inner TS (actually, while I haven’t been keeping up with all this, they song is kind of catchy, and apparently she’s a bad girl now? I don’t get it. Also, Madonna did all this stuff better 30 years ago).

Whatever.

I had a weekend. It was a pretty good weekend, all told. Friday after work, I took a nice bike ride, then went and bought myself new pants. After losing almost the weight equivalent of my youngest child, it was time, although I’d been kind of avoiding it, because buying new clothes is making the commitment that I’m going to continue to fit in them and the weight isn’t coming back. Yes, I know this makes no sense, since I made the commitment to lifestyle changes to drop 75 pounds, but I don’t know, buying pants makes it seem, I guess, real, in a way that actually doing the hard work didn’t.

Anyway, after trying some things on, it turns out I made my waist measurement six inches smaller. I am wearing the same size pants I wore in high school.

Problem is, I still feel like a fat guy, no matter what I do. I’ve been that most of my life, on and off, so that’s the general mindset, even though I know logically that I’m probably in the best shape of my life right now, and I get catcalled by teenage girls and have been told by my youthful bandmates in Dimensional Riffs that I’ve become “the hot old guy.” I’m sure there’s a cool german word for this feeling (a strange, almost-antonym for kummerspeck or something), but I don’t know what it is; it’s definitely related to impostor syndrome though.

Heading into Saturday, despite my triumphant small pants expedition, I awoke seriously feeling the weight of the depression I talked about earlier last week. As I was largely uncommited for the day, I kind of gave into it for at least a few hours. I went out to do the grocery shopping (had nice experiences at the local farmer’s market and at Lidl, the new German chain that’s coming into the states and opened a couple of stores in the area – if you have the option, give it a try – and a less optimal experience at Wal-Mart, which is always pretty awful), then came home, put some laundry in the system, then settled down to crash on the couch with the cat for a couple of movies (Predator and Alien: Covenant). I did go with the family to our dance friends’ pool party in the afternoon, where I did some socializing, but mostly hung out with the dogs (who are my friends now, since I did their family a solid on Friday by checking in on them while they were out of town) and watched everyone else do their thing.

Sunday was a great experience, though. We got up early and headed down to Cary NC to do a bit of pre-DragonCon rehearsal with the Humdingers, then take the band across town to play a couple of short sets at our friend Gray Rinehart’s book launch party (I have talked about this book previously) that afternoon. A great time was had by all, and we played some pretty good music.

I really needed that.

This week, I’ve got a short one – I’m heading down to Atlanta (by way of Humdinger Central in NC) on Thursday for our gigs at DragonCon through Monday. This means I’m putting all kinds of things around the office to bed before disappearing for a week, settling in some end of FY stuff I’ve been bitching about to everyone, and trying to get into the mindset for the con – I know I’ll enjoy the experience, but I just haven’t gotten into the headspace for the experience, which is considerable and needs the adequate outlook.

Maybe heading out to Busch Gardens tonight with the youngest for a few hours (gotta wring the last bit of value out of the fun cards) to ride a couple of roller coasters will help. I hope it does, because that’s what I’m going to be doing. It might be just the release I need after yet another review of a statement work work I have to do this afternoon, and after coming in to find one of the curmudgeons in an adjacent department spent his Saturday throwing a temper tantrum on the work email system.

I don’t get it.

As indicated earlier, ’twas my birthday week this week, and it was…okay.

The rest of the week was full of weird stresses I don’t always hit. Work was extra stressful (it’s the end of the fiscal year, and they keep on changing the rules about getting my contracts sorted, plus the series of tubes shit the bed earlier this week, and we’ve been chasing what turned out to be electronic ghosts all week, which sucks and wasted a lot of time when i don’t have much to spend until the calendar flips). The house is one body emptier, and although that technically gives us more room, it still feels weird. All indications are that she’s having a great time and embarking on a great and enlightening adventure, and it’s part of life that we send her off to do that, but I still miss her around.

Anyway…I get to make some music with my friends this weekend, both to rehearse for our shows at Dragon*Con coming up next weekend, and to celebrate the release of my friend’s novel at the launch party on Sunday where we’re booked as the entertainment. It should be a pretty good time.

Anyway, not much else coming along this weekend – that’s probably enough. I just have to do some grocery shopping, bike riding, and relaxing, really. I’m bagging my friday a few hours early to get started on that…the weather looks to be very nice today.

Anyway…tunes. Double Donnas – usually I skip repeat performers when I run this, but I’m digging it today, and it’s my blog, so there:

1. “The Man Who Sold The World” – David Bowie
2. “Fool For Love” – Lord Huron
3. “Beat it” – Michael Jackson
4. “Take it off” – The Donnas
5. “Restart” – BNQT
6. “Under Pressure” – Queen w/David Bowie
7. “Ethica Odini” – Enslaved
8. “I Don’t Want to Know(If You Don’t Want Me)” -The Donnas
9. “Skirnir” – Falkenbach
10. “Tides” – Swimming Tapes
11. “Crew Slut”- Frank Zappa

Totally didn’t post on my birthday yesterday. Oh well. Lots of my friends sent me well wishes on social media, which is where so much of the action is these days. I’ve been posting things in this space (and it’s predecessor) for fifteen years now, I kind of run out of things to say.

So, 43.

I usually save my reflections for the end of the calendar year, though my year as the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything wasn’t bad. I released two records with two different bands, played a bunch of great gigs, successfully graduated a kid from high school and sent her off to college, got marginally better at being an IT program manager, rode a few hundred miles on my bike, enjoyed many great adventures, and lost over 70 pounds.

I’m also kind of down today, depression’s a bitch. Birthdays and kind of missing my kid (who started official classes today) will kick that off, but I’m getting through it. I successfully faked being outgoing for two hours during a big multi-agency dog and pony show (I can manage to give good phone when I have to), and I’ll get through the rest of this week.

I have a gig and a rehearsal with the Humdingers this weekend (I’ll post about that tomorrow), and Dragon*Con coming up next weekend, so I think I’ll have plenty to distract me.

Here’s to another year of interesting adventures.