Blurt!Sben

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

May 23, 2025, 7:04pm

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.

May 21, 2025, 10:29pm

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

May 20, 2025, 7:15pm

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

May 20, 2025, 7:14pm

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.

May 14, 2025, 7:51am

On Sunday, the four of us went over to visit Meghan’s mom, for lunch and strolling.

May 13, 2025, 8:01am

I’ve been walking much more frequently these past couple weeks, as the weather has shifted — the most since the plaguetimes started, at least so far.

May 6, 2025, 8:03am

Finished reading A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett, follow-up to The Tainted Cup. Another fantasy-set murder mystery, this one with a clear anti-autocratic subtext. Bennett makes the subtext explicit in an afterword, laying into the fantasy genre, and A Song of Ice and Fire and its derivatives in particular, for their love of autocracies.

May 6, 2025, 8:02am

On Sunday, Mom and the dude came over for dinner. All the food turned out just about as well as I think I’m capable of doing.

May 6, 2025, 7:52am

Walked from the UW Seattle campus, along the south side of the Montlake Cut and the east side of Lake Union, to REI: 6½ miles, 2¼ hours.

Apr. 28, 2025, 8:02am

Greg and I watched Pink Floyd at Pompeii MCMLXXII, which was amazing — restored video, large screen, great sound. Highly recommended.

Apr. 24, 2025, 8:58pm (edited)

On Sunday I took a two-hour or so walk around Lynnwood and Mountlake Terrace.

Apr. 21, 2025, 5:47pm

On Saturday, the bambina and I met her cousin downtown, and then we bussed and walked around, ate doughnuts, and eventually made it back to our house.

Apr. 21, 2025, 5:47pm

Finished reading Thinking With Type by Ellen Lupton. This is a sort of introductory survey of all things typography and typesetting. Some of it was material I knew pretty well; a lot of the rest isn’t stuff I know well or have put into practice. (Though as I write this I suddenly am having a flashback to the high school newspaper.) This will definitely stay on my small typography reference shelf.

Apr. 17, 2025, 8:25pm

On Sunday, the dude came over for dinner (Belgian beef stew).

Apr. 14, 2025, 11:18am