First of all, I would like to wish my lovely spouse and partner a very happy birthday. She’s already gotten her big gift (a fancy Irish solo dress for dance competition), though I hope we’ll have a nice evening and weekend to celebrate.

Otherwise, I’m happy to be putting this week behind me. There’s been some good stuff; I did my taxes early and have been applying my refund balance to some bills and a long overdue treat for me (I bought a new guitar, but I got rid of one and am in the process of unloading another, so I am downsizing), though I also had to cover some vet bills and some other dance-related things.

My office has been full of visitors this week; I’m hosting somebody else testing things for a change. They’re good people, but they drink a lot of coffee and forget to turn the pot off at night. They are wrapping up their efforts a week early, so I’ll be left mostly alone next week.

Anyway, happy Friday, happy February, and all that. Here’s some tunes.

1. “Everywhere” – Ex Hex
2. “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” – The Police
3. “Just My Kind” – The Julie Ruin
4. “Mickey” – Toni Basil
5. “Life Itself” – Glass Animals
6. “Enter the Glade” – Falconer
7. “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” – Tears for Fears
8. “Do You Still Love Me” – Ryan Adams
9. With You there to Help Me” – Jethro Tull
10. Life on Mars?” – David Bowei
11. “Good Things” – Sleater-Kinney

I didn’t have the best evening last night.

I spent it, along with a very worried nine year-old (last time I’m doing that) at the vet’s office to get a burst abscess on an eleven year old cat’s anal gland sorted out. $300, a handful of prescriptions, and a yet-to-happen follow-up this weekend, I’m kinda wrecked.

Montana the cat smelled a little funny on Monday, so my wife and daughter gave him a bath. In washing him, they noticed what looked like testicles in the usual place, which was funny, because he hasn’t had those for over a decade. A little research, and some poking and prodding at sore spots later, they figured it was probably an infected anal gland, and made a vet appointment. The vet, of course, couldn’t see him until Wednesday evening.

He basically chilled out around the house for the next two days, being a bit more sendentary than his usual rug-like self, but was generally okay. I took him to the vet last night, as the wife and older daughter had dance classes. In the meantime, the abscess back there burst, getting pus and other such pleasant biological matter everywhere, and leaving a big-ass hole* next to his usual regular-sized asshole. He felt better afterwards, but it looked like hell.

It actually freaked the vet out looking at it. Anyway, they did some feline manscaping back there, flushed the whole business out, and gave him a topical antiseptic, and sent him home with some pills and more cream, and directions to keep him away from clay litter and keep him, or anyone else, from licking at things back there.

So, he’s living in the bathroom with some shredded paper litter, and talking to the rest of the feline population through the door in yelps and taps like some prison movie. Otherwise, he’s totally chill.

I wish I was. Vet’s offices are close enough to hospitals that it throws me right off. Not if *I’m* ill, but if somebody I care about is the center of attention there, I’m a wreck.

Anyway, that problem is addressed. Didn’t help the overflowed toilet upstairs that had my ceiling temporarily raining I found shortly after I came home. That’s the one that totally sent me over the edge. Dammit.

At least a calmed down a little bit with the usual gang of hooligans watching the monthly online Mikey Mason show.

Cue the usual refrain: “It’s been a hell of a week”.

Yeah, I know, I always say that. This time, my extenuating circumstances include the previously alluded to financial stresses (thankfully abated now), the lack of a washing machine for most of the week (now also corrected), and the lingering not-quite-sick layover after having a kid running a fever most of last week (still going strong), and the need to venture up to Our Nation’s Capital’s Suburban Environs for my quarterly PowerPoint fest with my agency’s data exchange customers (successful, though draining).

All that shit, plus other various and sundry crap has been keeping me mostly exhausted, with burning sinuses and occasional coughing fits, and a nervous system that goes into random buzziness with alarming regularity.

Anyway, most of that crap’s out of the way now, thank goodness. I’m taking a bit of a short day today (thanks to a couple of days that were a bit longer earlier this week), and I’m planning on trying to chill a bit this evening.

For example, I’d like to see my wife for more than the few minutes each day before she heads off to the dance studio (though I did get to see preliminary, pre-alteration modelling of the new -for her- Irish dance solo dress we made happen as an early birthday present. Very nice), which would be a nice development.

Nothing particularly draining planned for the weekend; I’m meeting with a group of friends/Dungeons and Dragons newbies who wanted to play and asked me to be DM for them on Saturday afternoon, and if I’m feeling up to it (I’m not entirely sure I am at this point), my buddy Steve is organizing a jam session/get-together at his place Saturday night. That’s always a good time; Steve always pulls together a great bunch of friendly and talented folks to while a few hours away with. We’ll see.

And that’s about it, really. Here’s are the tunes this morning backing my paperwork and one more annual refresher training:

1. “Zomby Woof (live)” – Frank Zappa
2. “Here I Go Again” – Whitesnake
3. “I Am Over Here” – Eerie Wanda
4. “Ziggy Stardust” – David Bowie
5. “Dangerous (Feat. Joywave) – Big Data
6. “Audio Movie” – Dweezil Zappa
7. “Guardians of Fate” – Ensiferum
8. “New Radio” – Bikini Kill
9. “Foil” – “Weird Al” Yankovic
10. “Police Blitz” – The Donnas
11. “18 and Life” – Skid Row

Today, based on the fact that all my regular meetings are cancelled and my email box is full of reminders, I am working through all my annual online refresher training modules; all part of life in the public sector.

First on the docket is the annual anti-terrorism refresher training, which remains pretty much the same every year. It’s tedious, but I kind of look forward to it, because it’s rather amusing.

After a few introductory slides, it basically becomes a chronicle of an anonymous bureaucrat’s worst business trip ever.

His luggage gets tampered with. His plane gets hijacked. His hotel is invaded by terrorists and his rental car gets a smoke bomb planted under it. He gets followed by suspicious characters on the drive to the facility he’s visiting, Once he gets there, he gets involved with a security incident at the gate. Then he gets taken hostage (leading to a discussion of Stockholm Syndrome) by fake delivery people at his new hotel (he changed it after the last terrorist incident), and eventually rescued after the threat of a chemical weapons attack.

Then he gets home after the trip and on his first day back, he receives a mysterious package wrapped in brown paper with oily stains on it in his office mailbox, leading to a building evacuation. After this, he starts getting really paranoid; carefully tracking the movements of janitorial contractors in his building, and starts turning his home into a secure bunker that would make the most paranoid doomsday prepper say “hey, maybe you should tone it down a bit?”

You know, if I were this guy, I think I’d have quit and found a less stressful career after the second terrorist incident.

To all you folks who marched all over the country (and perhaps the world – I think my net might actually cast that far these day) this weekend, I just want to say how proud and honored I am to know and love you. You’re good people.

We chose not to appear in person this time, thanks to sick kids and budget issues, though we were with you in spirit, and I enjoyed watching your reactions and photos on the social media feeds. This was, indeed, what democracy looks like.

As for my weekend, we stayed close to home, nursing our sick kid back to health, and trying not to get sick ourselves, and mostly succeeding, but not quite, as my cough and sinus issues will attest. We took it easy, cleaning house and doing laundry…

…that is, until our washing machine decided to up and die. Of course it happened on the tight budget weekend. Oh well, we have credit cards for emergencies, and a new washing machine will be delivered on Thursday.

I also watched some movies – The highlight being the little indie film All In Time, which was enjoyable in that earnest 90s indie film way (except for the fact that the writer-director-producer wisely decided not to cast himself in the lead opposite supermodel) with a couple of twists, one of which was particularly refreshing. The fun, however, was watching old friends and old stomping grounds show up, as the film featured the music of the Badlees (the movie was w-d-p’d by Chris Fetchko, the band’s long-time manager), featured a couple of members of the band in the cast, and used Lancaster’s Chameleon Club as a major location. Sure, the geography didn’t line up (Lancaster is a couple of hours from Wilkes-Barre), but it was a fun little adventure through my early adulthood in late 90s Pennsylvania with exactly the same sountrack.

I’m looking ahead to a pretty typical week, except I have to go to DC tomorrow for my quarterly all-day dog-and-pony show brief. It’s generally pretty low-key and useful, though it’s a long day, no matter how you slice it.

Good morning, such as it is. Hasn’t really been so far, except that it hasn’t killed me yet, despite at least one earnest attempt. Stay tuned.

I originally said I wasn’t going to belabor the issue of what’s happening today a couple of hours north of me. I then proceeded to add my couple of paragraphs to seemingly endless wasted ink, airtime, and electrons. So be it, here it is:

It’s happening, and what will happen because of it’s going to happen. Doesn’t mean we can’t influence things (and I hope we will). Though I’ve chosen not to agonize over results like so many of my friends and acquaintances. I’m gonna give the guy a chance to fail (likely) or succeed (stranger things have happened…) on his own. We don’t have to like him (I don’t), but as I’ve said before, he’s what we have until we don’t.

As one might expect, I don’t anticipate much good, though I have a strange feeling, based on some of the unsaid stuff in many of the stories in the news, that the complete lack of interest in policy or allegiance to established political positions on the part of the new Chief Executive might throw those of us on the left the occasional bone. This’ll likely be by accident and in spite of the Republican establishment, though I kind of hold out hope that once the White House looks at things, stuff like single payer healthcare might actually rise to the top as the most cost-effective “replacement” for Obamacare.

And if that happens…you know what? I’ll let them take credit and do the victory lap like it was their idea if people get the care they need.

Or it could, as many expect, a complete clusterfuck. That’s the thing, we don’t know. I’m just going to watch closely, but I’m not going to waste any more time wailing and gnashing teeth and wallowing. When there’s something that needs done, I’m going to get out there and do it.

I’m also not going to resist the cheap joke, so I post this, like everybody else of a certain stripe is bound to today:

Okay, that’s enough waltzing around politics. My week’s been weird and unpleasant. My kids have been sick, which has put me off a bit. Work’s been work, with the usual crap surrounding a test cycle and an impending dog-and-pony show in DC next week once the people from the first couple of paragraphs clear out. My friend’s dog died. Some unexpected expenses made money tighter than I’d like for the next week. I’m developing a cough, which can’t be good.

This morning’s been really, really weird and unpleasant. I left for work at the usual time, but ended up turning around after realizing I forgot my work ID (without which I can’t access my computer, or even get onto the facility), and, more significantly, having my nerves totally fried after nearly getting caught up in a big pile-up on the interstate because of a thrashed, disabled vehicle sitting in the middle of southbound I-95 with no lights on it. Luckily, I swerved out of the way (thanks, responsive steering and brakes!), and had a clear lane to swerve into, and avoided sudden highway death due to extreme deceleration.

So, I limped slowly home as my nerves and muscles slowly uncoiled, grabbed my identification card, sat for a few minutes to cool down, hugged my wife, and tried again. I made it to work without incident (avoiding that stretch of interstate), a little later, but alive and more or less resigned to face this already weird Friday and whatever the hell else it throws at me.

Anyway, here’s the music I’m listening to while all that stuff goes down. Got weirdly appropriate there in the back half:

1. “Ophelia” – The Lumineers
2. “What It’s Like” – Everlast
3. “Peaches in Regalia” – Dweezil Zappa
4. “Pass it Around” – The Donnas
5. “Don’t Stop Believin'” – Journey
6. “Ditmas” – Mumford & Sons
7. “The Hour of Defeat” – Unleashed
8. “The Man Who Sold The World” – David Bowie
9. “Money” – Pink Floyd
10. “Slepp Meg” – Lumsk
11. “Archie Marry Me” – Alvvays

So, that’s another Marscon down.

As always, I had a good time, catching up with friends, making music, and generally engaging in the nerd love-in for a couple of days. the energy this year was, according to pretty much all concerned, weird, though no unified theory as to why really emerged. For the second year in the hotel, they made a couple of changes to the way things go (games got moved upstairs, secondary music room got moved out of the sweet small auditorium, con suite adjustments, etc), but everybody generally felt it was more than that.

Lots of compelling theories abound, from the snow earlier in the week throwing everyone off, to the political situation in the world bringing us all down, to the fact that many of us are going to be right back in exactly the same place in a couple of months for Ravencon, and it might all be too much. I dunno.

That said, despite the weirdness (and some serious social circle drama coming to a head which I won’t discuss because it’s really not my place to do so), there’s still a lot to love about this con. The attendees are great people, I love the way music has become the focus/highlight of the event for so many of us, and I love the cool, creative, and accepting atmosphere that gets maintained. I hope the strange energy works itself out; in a lot of ways, this event is the highlight of my year (and not just because I get to be a little bit of a celebrity for 48 hours or so), and I have a vested interest in keeping it awesome.

Our shows went really well, particularly Saturday night’s Naughty show, where we played all the slightly risque dirty joke songs together, which we don’t get to do very often. Also, thanks to some social lubrication, a lot of the subtext became text, and people had fun, laughing in the right places and singing along. We had fun.

Pictured above, you can see a shot my friend Chris took of the Sunday afternoon round-robin performance, where we all play stuff together and enjoy each other’s company. This year was interesting, as we had three(!) bassists on stage for the round-robin, and sadly, we couldn’t come up with a quickie arrangement of Spinal Tap’s “Big Bottom” – next year, Braxton and Michael, we need to make that happen.

Beyond the music, I got some quality gaming time in with one of my favorite game masters ever, who I don’t get so see so much anymore since our regular gaming group fell apart a bit, which was wonderful. Also, had some pleasant conversations with folks I haven’t seen in a while. I really do miss so many of you.

Once again, since I’ll be busy packing and traveling for the regional nerd social event of the year tomorrow, here’s the playlist a day early.

It’s been a weird week; started out covered by seven inches of snow, but with temperatures in the 60s the last two days, it’s all gone. The kids go back to school today, and almost all of my meetings for this week have been cancelled without explanation. My schedule’s been kind of hosed because the kids being off of school for snow, for values of “yes, absolutely” and “WTF??!?” depending on the day, the early release scheduled for Friday has been axed in favor of a full day, so we won’t be getting on the road as early as we’d like.

Otherwise, we’re getting stuff done at work despite the weird scheduling, I’ve managed to get some serious rehearsal in at home for this weekend (I wanna be tight for the “hometown crowd”), my son has, in the last 24 hours, put down the video game controller in favor of…a book! (Asimov’s I, Robot) without complaint, and in the best news I got all week, my child’s future home for higher education has decided my eldest spawn is worthy of a pretty hefty endowment scholarship that’ll knock the not-inconsequential tuition down by probably more than half, before we even start dealing with things like state and federal grants and loans and other merit based sort of things.

That’s worth celebrating.

Otherwise, that’s what I got. I’m hoping for lots of fun, shenanigans, and tomfoolery this weekend.

For today’s playlist, it’s kind of typical for what I get out of Pandora these days; I should probably shake up the mix again. Highly listenable, though:

1. “Wig Wam Bam” – The Donnas
2. “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” – Simple Minds
3. “Every Breath You Take” – The Police
4. “Eternal Flame” – The Bangles
5. “San Ber’dino” – Frank Zappa
6. “Water” – Ra Ra Riot
7. “Water Under The Bridge” – Adele
8. “Joke” – Chastity Belt
9. “One Headlight” – The Wallflowers
10. “Look Into The Sun” – Jethro Tull
11. “Crazy for You” – Madonna

Oh, and I haven’t done a Stranger Things reference in a bit (other than having adopted eleven as the usual number), so here are the most important thirty seconds of the Golden Globe awards from the other night. Yeah, Glenn Close got the news, but…

Okay folks, this weekend is kind of the weekend I live for every year. Marscon, a weekend celebration of sci-fi, fantasy, general nerd stuff, and, as has become the tradition of the last half-decade or so, music.

Once again, for the fourth year running, I’m playing bass with The Blibbering Humdingers all weekend. Back in 2014, I made my performance debut with Scott and Kirsten at this con sitting in on a couple of tunes, which has led to playing for tons of appreciative nerds up and down the east coast with a repertoire of almost a hundred tunes and a couple of records to show for it. I thank the maker every day that they let a weirdo like me hang out with them and make noise. Since then, I’ve been welcomed into the community of musicians that’s formed around this event and others like it, for which I feel privileged and honored. I’m the ascended fanboy, which I guess isn’t the worst role to find myself in.

Anyway, in the interest of informing the public, here’s the programming schedule for this year, and below, I’ve highlighted the events that I’ll definitely be taking part in:

• Friday, 11pm, consuite: “Harper Hall Gather” (aka “filk and cookies”) – this is where we all sit around, drink a bit, and make music until they kick us out. This might also be the convention debut of The Jenny Hendricks Experience as well.
• Saturday, 2pm, room 8: Blibbering Humdingers show – our more low-key, intimate show in the small music room.
• Saturday, 10pm, large auditorim: Blibbering Humdingers (PG-13) – we’re going to play some of the more risque stuff, and some of the ususal subtext may become text.
• Sunday, 2pm, large auditorium: Muscial Round Robin – this is where all the musicians close out the convention on stage together; always a wonderful time.

As always, if I’m not at one of these, I’ll be around the convention space engaging in some short of shenanigans; definitely stop by and say “hello!”

This all said, I’m kind of frustrated this morning; in spite of it being 45° outside when I left for work at 5:30am, and the roads being so clear and passable that my car felt downright sporty hugging the pavement through corners, my kids are off of school again today. Also, given the weather-related cancellations earlier this week, the scheduled early release on Friday (which was going to get us to Williamsburg early) has been converted to a full day, so my planned schedule is screwed. Argh. Rest assured that we’ll get there, though not as early as we’d have liked.

I’m not entirely sure what it is, though I’m having serious doubts today.

Not to get too specific, but work is especially frustrating, and not just in the “why the hell don’t they plow my parking lot” kind of way. For the last year, my team’s been analyzing the shit out of things and generating a lot of really good data for a lot of people that, if used effectively by those people, will save the organization a shitload of money, which is good for the organization, the taxpayer, and pretty much everybody.

The problem is that nobody’s doing a damned thing with it, but I’m spinning wheels, testing and analyzing, with nothing much to show for it.

It’s frustrating.

I think it’s justifiable frustration, certainly, with this situation, and the overall weird organizational culture I have to deal with. I dunno. Could be that I’ve just been in this chair longer than I’ve had any other position for the last seven years or so, and I’m restless. I dunno. I’m just having a hard time getting enthusiastic and excited about what I’m doing right now.

Might also be that it’s the second week of January, there’s snow on the ground, the powers that be are reacting to it badly, and I am, on some level, jealous of my kids who haven’t been at school all week and probably won’t go tomorrow in spite of the fact that it’s supposed to get well above freezing today and tomorrow.

Whatever. I’ll deal. I even have kind of a plan, and since I’m kind of in charge, I can make it happen.

Y’see, I have all kinds of things I could be doing which will make life easier for me in terms of maintenance of the channnels I’m in charge of, and will make my team look like good team players with the rest of the larger program and department (and will take advantage of some existing administrative structures that will push the responsibility for improving numbers over to a different area, where people already have to justify their existence to an agressive authority once a month).

So I’ve kind of decided, after all the frustration I’m dealing with, to focus inward for the next couple of months and do the things that make my life better rather than trying to please everybody else.