End of the school year: Meghan helped the dude move out of the dorm.

Finished reading Slow Horses by Mick Herron, first book in the series that’s the basis of the TV series I’ve been meaning to watch. Anyway, it was really good — clever, and deeply cynical in the way an espionage novel can be cynical (maybe not quite as much as Le Carré), which I do enjoy every so often.

A word of warning: This edition of the book was horribly copyedited, with search-and-replace typos, quotation marks instead of apostrophes, and missing and incorrectly-placed paragraph breaks. Mostly just eye-bleedingly obnoxious, but sometimes it actively hindered my understanding of the story.

From the water taxi dock, over West Seattle to the Coleman Pool, then around the shore and past Alki Beach back to the dock: about 12 miles, 4½ hours. A beautiful day!

Finished reading Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer. This is a history of the Italian Renaissance, and something of a history of a history of it, and shifts at the end to address “progress” and what that means. Casual in tone, but rigorous in structure and argument; quite readable, but long, and I needed to break it up with a couple other books.

A neighbor — thankfully far enough away — has a rooster.

Visited Mom and saw the dude today.

Today I took the day off, loafed around a bit, and took a short(-ish) walk to Kenmore.

This past weekend’s kitchen victory was a hat trick of grilling: bratwurst, huli huli chicken, and steak fajitas.

Walked for a bit less than two hours, from Loyal Heights past Golden Gardens to the Ballard Locks.

Dug up my 15+-year-old digital camera.

Last night, Mom and Meghan’s mom came to see the bambina’s final band performance of the year.

Finished reading Things Become Other Things by Craig Mod, which I attended an event for the other night. The book is partly about a walk around Japan’s Kii peninsula, but more a memoir about Mod’s childhood in a similarly economically depressed area. Very well-written and heartfelt.

Last Friday I went to Third Place in Ravenna to see Craig Mod talk about his new book, Things Become Other Things.

Meghan and I spent this past weekend in Victoria — a great time — while the dude came over to stay with the bambina.

I have a pretty tall (conceptual) stack of books to read, but I’m starting to think I need to insert rereads of Le Guin’s Always Coming Home and her version of the Tao Te Ching, up towards the top. It won’t do anything to keep the world from curdling, but maybe I can help my little corner.