My recent anxiety dream was trying to train a chatbot with an inadequate corpus.

Set aside After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000–5000 BC by Steven Mithen. I’m enjoying it, but it’s a big chonk of a book, and I have other library books due back soon. I’ll return to this while I’m between other books.

Brief snow flurry this morning, dusting the streets.

The book referenced several books and authors also referenced in The Old Ways, not entirely surprisingly.

Finished reading Imaginary Peaks by Katie Ives. The core of the book is a mountain climbing hoax, but it extends outwards to cartography and its difficulties, hoaxes more generally, and colonialism, among other things.

Walked down the Interurban, along Phinney, through Fremont, around the west and south sides of the lake, and up to Capitol Hill: 21K steps, 11½ miles, about 3½ hours.

My recent wikidive was old basketball figures: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of course was a nemesis to my hometown team as I was growing up, and then back to Bill Russell, Elgin Baylor, Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain, George Mikan, and the Harlem Globetrotters. Also enjoyed three video clips of Dr. J doing his thing.

On Saturday afternoon, I walked up to Bothell (about 2½ hours and eight miles) and met Greg for a Magic event that evening.

On Saturday morning, we went with Katie’s family and Billie to the Burke Museum; the last time we were there was in their old building.

TV update: We’re caught up with The Mandalorian (including The Book of Boba Fett), and watched Kenobi.

Also watched The Owl House, which the kids love dearly and Meghan and I definitely enjoyed, and are partway through season 2 of Avatar: The Last Airbender, which we have more mixed feelings about.

To get to the point, though, Meghan and I watched the first two episodes of season 12 of Doctor Who, the first time we’ve watched it since the Before Times.

Current earworm: “Money for Nothing” by Dire Straits.

Today’s kitchen victory: loaves of bread, for the first time in months. This time the dough was significantly easier to work with than it was in the past, probably because I kneaded it longer.

Also, the bolognese sauce was great, but was about two hours too late for dinner, so had to use an emergency jar of pasta sauce instead, so we’ll call that a partial victory.

Huh, it’s snowing lightly.

Finished reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. This was a big chonker of a book, about Thomas Cromwell’s rise from son of a blacksmith to most trusted councilor of Henry VIII (Henry the Butthead). Very enjoyable. I had one significant kvetch: Whether a writing tic or a stylistic choice, there were many passages with ambiguous pronoun references; sometimes I had to reread multiple times to understand what was happening.

Went to Mom’s for brunch, with Greg and Jocelyn and the kids.