The juncos are building a nest in the carport again.

This dose wasn’t as bad as the first: I had the aches and exhaustion, but at least not the Shakes.

Got my second shingles vaccination; let’s see how this one goes.

Just a couple years slow, I finally had the upsight that Ted Gioia’s The History of Jazz is structured like a jazz tune: The overall history of the music is the melody, and the occasional biographies of important figures are the solos.

Finished reading Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel, followup to Wolf Hall. I very much enjoyed this. It feels like the political parts of A Song of Ice and Fire, but with a wry sense of humor, and without the fantasy elements (obviously) and glorified cruelty that became increasingly central to that series. (Or, rather, probably vice versa: That series clearly drew some of its inspiration from these historical events.)

Amusingly, the stylistic tic of Wolf Hall was transformed into a different tic which eliminated almost all pronoun ambiguity. It felt forced at the beginning, but it gradually won me over.

As a birthday gift, my delightful family sponsored the characters U+2615 HOT BEVERAGE (☕︎) and U+2697 ALEMBIC (⚗︎).

Walked to Discovery Park and the lighthouse: 31k steps, 16 miles, 6½ hours including stopping for espressos and lunch.

The bambina’s passport finally arrived.

The crows have rediscovered our birdbath. Today, they’ve soaked and then eaten several slices of bread, some kind of small mystery things (peanuts? gummy bears?), and half a slice of pizza.

Finished reading Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett. This was a charming story about two academics — the titular Wilde, junior and diligent and quite possibly neurodivergent, and a tenured professor, lazy and charming and (Wilde suspects) prone to falsifying his research. Seasoned with little bits of horror, but still quite fun and cozy.

Smoke detector went off; firefighters used their “special wizard machine” (their phrase; presumably a term of art) and determined it was a false alarm.

I am reminded, after closing my account about a decade ago, how transactional everything about LinkedIn is.

Yard work today.

Finished reading The Language of Power by Rosemary Kirstein. This is clearly not the end of the series, though it ends on an adequately-satisfying note, but it’s the most-recently published. (Kirstein is apparently continuing to write.) Less Le Guin–esque than the others, but still reminiscent. I’ve enjoyed all these books.

Finished reading The Lost Steersman by Rosemary Kirstein. This was a little more harrowing than the previous two, but (or thus?) a little more compelling.

These books are self-published, and could have used another pass from a copyeditor, but nothing that ruins the read.