My 17 year old daughter registered to vote today.

This is a big deal. I’m so proud. I just wanted to say that. She kind of looked at me funny while we talked about it, but this is something that’s hugely important for me; and a logical step in her progression as an informed and engaged American citizen, which, thankfully, she is, and certainly more aware of the socio-political issues of the day than I was at her age.

You folks that know me, that follow my ramblings in this space, you probably aren’t surprised. Every year, even on those small little local election years, I take the time on “the Tuesday next after the first Monday in the month of November” to vote myself, and to remind everyone reading this space to vote. I usually say something to the effect of “it’s the absolute least you can do”; and every year when I say that, I’m right.

Some of you may be wondering: seventeen. Yeah. However, according to the law of the land here in the Commonwealth of Virginia, per § 24.2-403, that’s the way things work. To wit:

§ 24.2-403. Persons under 18 years of age.

Any person who is otherwise qualified and will be 18 years of age on or before the day of the next general election shall be permitted to register in advance and also vote in any intervening primary or special election. Notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary, any person who is otherwise qualified and will be 18 years of age on or before the day of the next November general presidential election shall be permitted to register in advance of and also vote in any intervening presidential primary and any other primary held on the same day as the presidential primary.

So yeah, if you live in VA, are seventeen and will be eighteen before the next general election, go ahead and register now, and you’ll be able to participate in any primaries or specials in the interim. most other states have similar provisions.

This year’s going to be full of all kinds of milestones; we’ve already ticked off college acceptance. Graduation’s coming. She no longer counts for the child tax credit (dammit). But, of any of it, I’m probably most proud of the fact that this coming November, she’ll get to take part in Virginia’s gubernatorial primary and general election.

Yes, it’s Tuesday. I was sick yesterday. I didn’t go to work, I slept, and watched movies on the couch. One of those movies featured Daniel Radcliffe as a farting corpse being used as a jet ski. It wasn’t bad.

As for the weekend, we had a nice dinner out for the wife’s birthday. I rehearsed with the local group, and we wrote another song. I think it’ll be pretty okay. I sold my old Ibanez bass to somebody who is going to really enjoy making music with it, which made me feel good, and I got my full asking price, which takes a nice chunk out of the money I just spent on the new Telecaster, completing the two-for-one trade, bringing the musical instrument population down by one. I took the cat to the vet for a follow-up visit. He’s doing well, and healing up nicely.

Don’t really have large plans for the coming week. Mostly get rested up and shake this leftover bug that I’m still kind of dealing with. My contractor lead is sick today; some team we are. We still get our work done.

Hope everyone is doing well.

I’m going to close with a quick call to action: both my senators are on record as opposing the DeVos nomination for Secretary of Education, so I want to say thank you to them (and I did, via nice quick emails). If you’re in certain other parts of the country where there a couple of wavering Republican Senators who might vote “no” on DeVos, who is vastly unqualified (and I say this as somebody with a degree in education, who knows what he’s talking about) and is poised to do serious harm to America’s educational system, and thus, our children, you’ve got a couple of hours left to get on the phone or fax or whatever to try and swing them toward “no” – I point specifically to you folks in PA and NC; there’s likely some movement there. The Vote’s scheduled for noon – give ’em a shout!

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…