It’s primary day here in Virginia.

As it is every year after a presidential election, Virginia will pick a new Governor in 2017 (it’s always a new one – that office is term-limited, no more than one four year stint, at least sequentially), and the media always focuses on the race as a litmus test for how the Republic is feeling about the newly elected administration.

The most common story this year is the Democratic primary for Governor, which a lot of people are categorizing as a fight “for the soul of the Democratic party”, as one candidate (Lt. Gov. Ralph Northham) represents the establishment, at least by convention, as he’s got the support of all the statewide elected officials (Gov McAulliffe, Senators Kaine and Warner, and AG Herring – all of VA’s statewide offices are Dems right now – thanks, interstate corridors!), and is touting his understanding of the Virginia political landscape as a way of getting things done, and another (former Congressman Tom Periello) is running as the populist upstart, with the endorsements of folks like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth (swoon) Warren.

Three folks are running on the Republican side, but former RNC chair Ed Gillespie seems to have it all but wrapped up.

Also on the ballot is Lt. Governor (lots of former federal lawyers and state senators), and all the House of Delegates seats, and various and sundry other things.

My personal ballot’s only going to have the Statewide candidates (no primary for my House district; it’s possible the incumbent will be unopposed…argh); unsurprisingly, I’ll be picking the Democratic ballot, and casting my primary vote for Periello for Governor, mostly because I like the populist streak, and Liz Warren’s endorsement means something (not that Kaine’s doesn’t, but c’mon, Warren’s a superhero). I also like his position regarding creating jobs via localization of food and energy production (he uses the example of local craft breweries in VA revitalizing so many communities). That said, he and Northam are both very good candidates, and I’ll happily vote for either one in November.

For Lt. Governor, I’m going with Justin Fairfax, because I like a lot of his positions on small business (echoed by most of my business owner friends), the Democracy For America (PAC growing out of Howard Dean’s 2004 run) endorsement, and the endorsement of my congressional representative, Don McEachin, who’s done pretty well by my district since getting elected last year. Again, though, everybody looks pretty good overall.

My other bit of excitement about this one is that my daughter’s eligible to vote in this one (if you’ll be 18 by the general, they let you into the primary), which is a big deal to me.

So if you’re in VA, VOTE!

Lots of big stuff happening this past week…Obviously, the *biggest* news was what happened in the last post. So far, the kid tells me she doesn’t feel all that different, which is understandable; this big event, to be honest, probably has a lot more to do with how other people see you than how you see yourself; at least that’s the way it was for me (assuming I have an accurate memory of life twenty-five years ago) – I was ready to get it over with and on to the next part of my life. I think she’s kind of just taking a breather for a couple of days, and playing with the fancy hot-rodded laptop we got her as a graduation present.

The other big “event” (I guess you’d call it that) was my hitting my first system-generated weight loss goal; based on the tracker and data from the scale, there is a little more than ten percent less of me than when I began this process back in mid-April, a total of about 35.3 pounds gone, if you use the starting point as the average between those first couple of days in order to shake out the signal-to-noise ratio:

I’m feeling much better than I did before I started, I’m back to cycling an average of 40 miles a week, and thanks to the chemical assistance of this program, I’m not really feeling like I’m missing anything in terms of food or indulgence (brain chemistry is a strange and fascinating thing). The next goal it’s setting for me is maybe a little ambitious (and really feels like it might be too low -I haven’t weighed under 230 since high school!), but I’m going to aim for it for now, and I’m due for a follow-up with the doc in a week or so, so I’ll get her opinion then and adjust accordingly. In any case, I’m rather proud of myself.

I’m also feeling better about the work setback I alluded to the other day. We’ve got a plan to get the delay sorted out reasonably, and some more of that awesome I was talking about got waved around Wednesday while I was gone, so some of the sting came out of the situation. Gotta admit, it was a pretty stressful couple of days. The other bit of good work news is that the organization found me another chunk of budget that’ll let me throw some more resources at some lingering problems in the next fiscal year, so that’s a load off of my shoulders.

As for the weekend, I don’t know what’s up, really. My usual Saturdays this time of year involve some biking and the farmers’ market, so that’ll probably happen. A friend and band-mate of mine is having a birthday get-together on Sunday afternoon I’ll probably pop in for, and I’ve had an unopened copy of Logan on blu-ray sitting next to my center-channel speaker since Monday morning that I’d like to get around to watching some day.

Anyway, here are some tunes, which is just reminding me I have a CD or two to rip into the digital library, including a copy of “Scary Songs to Play in the Dark” from The Long Losts, who played on the bill in Charlotte with us last weekend, and were really awesome. Check ’em out!

1. “Don’t You Want Me” – Human League
2. “Separate Ways (World’s Apart)” – Journey
3. “Take On Me” – A-ha
4. “TKO” – Le Tigre
5. “Take Me To The Backseat” – The Donnas
6. “The Whistler” -Jethro Tull
7. “Ditmas” – Mumford & Sons
8. “Guten Tag” – Varg
9. “The Torture Never Stops (live)” – Frank Zappa
10. “Celebrity Skin” – Hole
11. “Float On” – Modest Mouse

Edited a few hours later because this is awesome: Finally, in today’s Stranger Things/Eleven news – the soundtrack is getting a release on cassette (a cassette that’s packaged to look like a VHS tape!?!) this summer. Honestly, that’s just about perfect.

So this happened today. I am proud. Also a bit jealous, because she’s heading off to one of the most interesting times of her life now, and that’s really cool, exciting and frightening. But the next couple of years are gonna be amazing for her, if my experience of age 18-24 or so is any indication. And, I get to keep watching, as I send this amazing person (who I had a hand in creating) out into the world to make it a much cooler and better place, because I know that’s exactly what she’s going to do.

Congrats, Kid!

So, first off, Concarolinas was awesome. Both bands had some decent shows, and I got to make lots of great music with my friends. It was tiring, but a really good tired.

After a day of rest (always take the day after the con off of work…trust me), I went back to work today. I got to spend most of the day showing off all the things my team has done over the past year or so to make the organization way more awesome.

Then, in the last hour of the day, it came up in a meeting that one of the developers hit a snag and an important work product in an important project is going to fall a bit behind schedule, in part because of something I missed. This happened in front of the visiting project branch lead (aka one of my bosses) who was in town for a couple of days this week…did I mention that?

Yeah, that sucked. Totally destroyed the high from the first seven hours of the day. It doesn’t matter that the scale of this project will probably make this delay irrelevant in the end (the product doesn’t deploy for over a year; this delay will most certainly get eaten up in the slack), I still feel kind of awful right now.

I feel a little better after some meditation (aka ten brisk miles through the woods on the bike), but yeah. The timing of that piece of information couldn’t be any worse.

Oh well.

So, this weekend is ConCarolinas, a con in Charlotte, NC I’ve done the last couple of years with The Humdingers, which has always been a pretty good time; usually a bunch of our musical friends are there, and we get up to all sorts of mischief (usually the good kind). This year is no exception, there are almost a dozen musical acts on this year’s schedule, including great folks like Mikey Mason, Valentine Wolfe, Hawthorn and Holly, Nick Edelstein, Gray Rinehart, Metricula, Gild the Morn, Aurelio Voltaire, and several folks I’m probably missing, as well as two groups I’m performing with, the aforementioned Blibbering Humdingers and Dimensional Riffs.

I’m going to be busy, but I think it’s a good busy. in case you happen to be around, here are the events I’m scheduled to be involved in:

Dimensional Riffs:

• Friday, June 2, 6:30pm – Lakeshore III/IV
• Saturday, June 3, 3:30pm – Fountainview

Blibbering Humdingers:

• Saturday, June 3, 1:30pm – Fountainview
• Sunday, June 4, 10:00am – Lakeshore III/IV

Assorted Other stuff:

• Campfire Songs: Friday, June 2, 11:00pm – Walden – filk circle
• The Potterverse is Alive and Well: Saturday, June 3, 12:00pm – Lakeshore II – panel I think I’m on
• Filking the Night Away: Saturday, June 3, 10:00pm – Walden – filk circle

Otherwise, I’ll be bumming around the con, probably mostly around the musician’s merch tables (where we’ll probably end up in some impromptu hallway performances that Mikey will turn into a hit single – he does that kind of thing with alarming regularity) or trying to see some of the other great acts listed above play. It’s always possible I get pulled into someone else’s show too – it happens.

I’m really looking forward to it, and am very happy to have the Monday after the con scheduled off for recovery after all this damned performing. I’ll have earned it.

I am at work for three days this week, before heading down to ConCarolinas for all the gigs on Friday. I have found that the experience of time dilation coming off a long weekend is profound; I expect both coming from and heading into one will be even more so. The next three days will probably feel like a decade.

Oh well, I shall survive, working, biking, and locking down the last few tunes before doing my shows this weekend, and engaging in general musical tomfoolerly and hijinks with my musical friends.

This past weekend was largely chill; I got some biking in when it wasn’t raining, I celebrated getting down under 260 pounds with a dinner out with my wife (understanding that said meal out, while responsible, kind of blew progress for one day, though I landed right back on track the next, and more importantly, stayed under 260), and totally failed to make it to the Okilly Dokilly show on Sunday night, because frankly, neither my wife or I could fathom staying out to 2am, even if it did mean watching five guys dressed like Ned Flanders play loud heavy metal and scream, as cool as that surely would be.

We are secure in our oldness; it’s okay.

And in the little things that make me feel amazing department, over the weekend I found a reasonably-priced tempered glass screen cover for my phone to replace the weird, gummy, “self-healing” one that the phone store threw in when we upgraded a few months back. I installed it this morning while doing the morning email, and while it looks slightly small for the screen (I believe this is the result of accounting for the curved edges of the screen on the Galaxy S7), the sheer pleasure I get from the tactile sensation compared to the old one is considerable. So smooth! So responsive! I am unreasonably happy about this, but I own it. I get excited about odd things, but most of you knew that already.

It’s actually been a slow week, at least compared to the last few. With all the folks above me in the program office off at a big senior management gathering in the midwest, almost all the usual meetings have been cancelled this week, which let me get some necessary paperwork and programming for my team done with almost no interruption. I’ve also wrapped one of the online courses I need to take in order to check the box for the next level program management certification for my current position. I’m also fishing with the certification people to see if the maxed-out contracting certification (the top-end of which was comparable to graduate level course work) qualifies as equivalent for the couple of piddling 100-level “contracts for dummies” courses included in the PM requirements, because I’d really rather not take those if I don’t have to.

With the crappy, rainy weather most of the week, I haven’t been on the bike since Monday, though I have been habitually briskly walking a little over a mile every day at lunch on a little course I’ve plotted for myself over at the Petersburg National Battlefield, which is conveniently located a short drive across the highway from my workplace. I’ve even managed to catch clear weather for most of it (except for Tuesday when I got absolutely drenched when the skies opened up on the last 100 yards back to the car. This afternoon and weekend look nice, so I’m hoping for at least a little biking over the weekend.

Otherwise, I’ve done a little audio system consulting work for the folks over at the dance school, since their sound system speakers crapped out last week, had a really productive practice with The ‘Riffs the other night, have had several people tell me how skinny I’ve gotten (I’m noticing a little bit – like I said, I’m down 25 pounds, but I’ve kind of hit the wall for dropping the easy stuff, at least temporarily. I’d really like to dump another 15 if I can manage it), and for some unexplainable reason, been sleeping really badly most nights this week. Sometimes that just happens. I’ll manage.

As for the Memorial Day weekend? I have very few plans, save catching what promises to be a really bizarre and interesting musical experience – Okilly Dokilly, Beatallica, and Los Ramones at the Camel in RVA. You might have heard of the headliners, the world’s first “Nedal” band, who play energetic thrashy metal inspired by, well….

See? The other bands are a mash-up band combining the Beatles and Metallica, and a group that describes themselves as Tus canciones favoritas de los Ramones en Spanglish!, so it ought to be fun (also, thanks WNRN for the tickets!).

Anyway, here’s some tunes. Happy long weekend!

1. “Spring Dance” – Korpiklaani
2. “Going to California” – Led Zeppelin
3. “Space Oddity” – David Bowie
4. “Rebel Yell” – Billy Idol
5. “Dirty Denim” – The Donnas
6. “Ends of the Earth” – Lord Huron
7. “Dirty Knives” – Bangs
8. “Too Young to Fall In Love” – Motley Crue
9. “Don’t You Ever Wash That Thing (live)” – Frank Zappa
10. “Short Version” – Wild Flag
11. “Hungry Like The Wolf” – Duran Duran

So this happened Tuesday evening when I sat down to run through a few tunes:

As I was tuning up the guitar, I grabbed the tuning machine for my D string, and the knob fell off in my hand. Surveying the damage, I noticed the whole thing was slightly bent out of shape; I don’t remember doing it, but I must’ve bumped the headstock someplace in the last couple of days. It happens.

I’m proud of myself that I didn’t panic; I merely put out a call to Guitar Works in Carytown, perhaps the best luthier I’ve ever dealt with (these are the only folks I’ve ever found who were able to get the intonation set properly on my ’64 SG Special and it’s finicky non-Tune-o-Matic stop tailpiece so the G string didn’t buzz; that makes them wizards in my book), who informed me that it was, as I expected, easy fix, most likely, if they happened to have a matching replacement in the shop, which was a crap shoot to determine over the phone.

Having rehearsal scheduled with Dimensional Riffs on Wednesday night, I dug out my backup acoustic (hiding in Mary’s room), and threw both instruments in the back of my car yesterday afternoon after work (shop is more-or-less on the way to the rehearsal space), figuring I’d hope it could be fixed while I wait, but be prepared for it requiring an overnight stay.

As usual, the folks at GW came through for me. Buried in the shop junk drawer was a perfectly matching piece, save the “Takamine” sticker on the bottom of the tuner barrel. Ten minutes and five bucks later, my blonde Takamine Jumbo was back in action and ready to rehearse the new tunes we’re putting together for ConCarolinas next weekend; and belive me, there’s some really good stuff in there.

So, musical crisis averted. Not much of a story, I guess, but it’s something that had been consuming a lot of my brain cycles for 24 hours or so. It’s a common problem, but one I’d managed to avoid for about 30 years of active guitar playing, so I guess it was my turn. Thanks for listening.

Seriously! LOCKJAW!

I know people have been kind of dismissive of Marvel’s upcoming Inhumans tv series coming this fall; it’s a very weird corner of the Marvel Universe, traditionally more Shakespearian than even Walt Simonson’s Thor, full of arch, scenery-chewing Game of Thrones-style royal family backstabbing involving women with prehensile hair and a guy named “Blackagar Boltagon”, for Uatu’s sake. This of course, could be fun, though the fact that the Inhuman royal family looks to be kicking around Hawaii for most of their scheduled eight episodes, and the costuming (oh, the costuming) has people a little worried.

The weirdest piece of Inhumans’ lore, though, by far, is Lockjaw, the giant teleporting bulldog. Thing is, people love Lockjaw, because he’s awesome, most recently doing a great supporting stint in the excellent Ms. Marvel series:

If Inhumans are going to work, they have to get Lockjaw right. It’s a moral imperative. That said, I like the look of this very blurry screencap; he doesn’t have the tuning fork on his head, but it’s suggested in the fur pigment (which I guess works), and he’s as big as a Mini Cooper, which is about right.

I really *want* to love this. This picture, small hint as it is, gives me a little bit of hope.

Also, we are now one step closer to Pet Avengers, which would be brilliant.

So Tuesday I return to work after a nice, self-imposed long weekend. I generally feel mostly rested and refreshed, kinda. I have another couple of long weekends coming up as well (Memorial Day, and ConCarolinas), though this one was just for me, because.

I accomplished a few, small things – had a couple of very nice bike rides (totalling almost 40 miles) before the weather went to crap, admired lots of wildlife on the trail (snakes, turtles, squirrels, woodpeckers, doves, deer, groundhogs, and all kinds of birds), though I did end up running over a squirrel’s tail with the bike yesterday morning (poor thing did a weird direction changing juke after I swerved to dodge him)…I hope he’s okay. Seriously, I’ve spent more time thinking about this small interaction than I probably should have. I feel like my karma’s out of balance. Oh well.

Otherwise, I spent a lot of time with the dance folks and Jamie and Chris from Fusion Fighters working on the #createnothate project video (I carried some things, drove the car, and did some work fixing the studio’s sound system anyway…). The girls had a blast working with these guys this week, and Mary in particular will miss her older English boyfriends when they go back to the UK later this week.

Otherwise, I worked some new tunes with Dimensional Riffs, did a bunch of laundry, got some great stuff at the farmers market, and washed, waxed, and (mostly) detailed my car, which was way overdue, and the result makes me unreasonably happy (my spouse and children just don’t understand…).

This week, it’s back to the grind; at the office, I’ll keeping my work projects rolling, continue the ongoing professional certification online training I’m taking, and generally living the public sector project manager life. Outside of work, it’s the usual maintain a house/practice music/entertain kids and cats routine, and keep the weight loss project rolling – I’m down almost 25 pounds from where I was at my worst, and am within ten pounds of the first big goal of dropping 10% of my total body weight as measured in mid-April. Progress is slowing (I think I’ve dumped the “easy” stuff now), but it’s still steady, and my trend lines still have me hitting that goal by the end of this month. That feels good.