Woke up to snow, and it kept snowing basically all day, finally letting up now. Accumulation was never more than an inch or so, and roads were basically fine; it was just a (cold) pretty day.

Windy yesterday evening: lost power before bedtime; it came back in the middle of the night, about six hours altogether.

Had Mom over for pot roast.

The dude had a band concert tonight; Meghan and I brought Mom.

Last Friday, Greg and I had dinner and Basque cider at Oak. Talked for a good three hours.

My Valentine’s gift to Meghan was walking from Northgate to Wallingford via Blue Ridge and Ballard, about ten miles.

Finished reading Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global by Laura Spinney, a survey of our understanding of the Proto Indo-European language and its descendants. I knew bits and pieces of this, but Spinney wove it together into a clear, compelling whole. This was one of my fastest non-fiction reads in quite a while.

Meghan and I finished watching season 1 of Slow Horses.

Meghan and the bambina and I finished watching The Return of the King.

Posted a review of my 2026 2025 RPG reading.

Finished reading Civilizations by Laurent Binet, translated by Sam Taylor. This was an alternate history where the losing emperor of an Incan civil war conquers much of Europe, introducing religious tolerance and maybe a kind of proto-socialism in the process. I loved the first half of the book; the third quarter kind of lost any sense of stakes, and I started to feel like Binet was writing cleverly rather than well. The end of the book turned me back around, with a sort of epilogue that I haven’t quite fully absorbed. Overall quite good, even if not quite as good as I thought when I started.

Had brunch with Amy and Dave yesterday, then the four of us went to see the exhibits at Cannonball Arts.

Current earworm: “Truckin’” by the Grateful Dead, pushing out another earworm which outstayed its welcome two weeks ago.

Finished reading Real Tigers by Mick Herron, book 3 of the Slough House series, a couple days ago. Another fun read, continuing the humorously cynical tone but this time with a bit more optimism for the slow horses.

Finished reading The Mills of the Gods by Tim Powers. Classic Powers (Phoenician gods + Paris + Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and Pablo Picasso), executed … well, acceptably. Not one of his great works (start with Last Call or Declare, not his later books), and a little heavy-handed on the Catholicism (were all of his books like this?), but includes a truly harrowing oil lamp–lit journey through the Paris catacombs.