It is Friday. Just Democrats left in the upper house. I’ve got my head phones on rocking out to a mix of Stones, Catie Curtis, Traffic, Amee Mann and Warren Zevon. Don’t ask. I’ve discovered this as a good way to transport my self in time and place, get work done and cheer myself up now that bills are falling, stumbling by the side of the marble race track, falling out of windows and finding themselves buried deep in storage closets. The budget is constricting like a corset just as we start setting state employee pay. My desk is struggling to stay orderly under a weight of notes passed in committee, secrets told behind hands and echoes falling through cracks in closed door meetings. Mid wives stop me in the hall. People streaming in this morning to speak so eloquently about our bill on Divestment from the Sudan. The place feels simultaneously like a benevolent father and a ticking bomb.