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.

Meghan and I watched the first two episodes of Slow Horses, as good as the book.

Meghan and the bambina and I finished Fellowship and started The Two Towers.

Walked from the Federal Way light rail station to the Tacoma train station (with two unexpected detours), partly along the BPA Trail: 38k steps, 19 miles. A good dumb walk to end a year of them.

Finally finished rereading Ursula K. Le Guin’s version of the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, reading her translation/rendering notes this afternoon. I don’t understand most of this, but most of what I understand resonates, and a lot of what I don’t makes me think.

Meghan and I watched the first half of The Fellowship of the Ring (standard edition) with the bambina. She has identified it as the origin of three well-known memes (so far).