On Saturday, we went to Amy’s farm for their open house; met people, saw old acquaintances, and encouraged some kids who were pressing apples for cider. Nathan looked sharp wearing my peacoat.

Deleted my eight Twitter accounts.

Finished reading The Lola Quartet by Emily St. John Mandel, another book featuring an obsessive, helplessly-passive (up to a certain part of the book) man-child. (To be clear, I enjoyed this, as I have her other books so far, and there’s a clear progression from Last Night in Montreal through The Singer’s Gun to here.) It might be interesting to reread Station Eleven at this point, her next book in publication order, but I probably won’t.

I almost quit the book early on, as the main character’s particular form of self-destruction made me incredibly anxious, but I managed to power through.

The air has been smoky more days than not for the last five weeks or so, but today is the worst yet — barely a hint of blue behind the beige sky. It’s supposed to clear out this weekend, but they’ve been wrong about that several times already.

I took a break to read some RPG stuff, but back to regular books! Finished reading City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett, sequel to City of Stairs that I read earlier this year. That book was good, but this was more compelling, about war and trauma and regret. (Very strange how I’m finding myself relating to older characters these days.)

Gamed with Nathan and friends last night, the actual first session, in and near Samarkand.

For the last couple months, I’ve been pulling mediocre shots with the espresso maker, fast and barely manageable at even the finest grind. It coincided with a new batch of beans, but persisted through various batches and roasters; maybe I’d changed my technique? It got even worse a few days ago, impossible to pull a tolerable shot; it turned out that the grinder’s burr had gotten unseated and was producing coarser and wildly-inconsistent grounds. We overnighted a new housing for the burr, and everything is great again.

Went over to good friend Nathan’s house for the first (or zeroth) session of an RPG that’s finally getting off the ground.

Current earworm: “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by the Who.

Got my bivalent covid booster.

Ant update: We’ve continued to see a few scouts. Yesterday, Meghan caulked over some small cracks under the sink and behind some drawers. We’re now waiting to see if this has helped.

Finished reading A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers, a novella that I made short work of. I realized, several years ago, that I should be as kind to myself as I try to be to others, something that is very hard for me. This book is, in part, about that.

The bambina was down with a bad cold, and now I’ve caught it, though so far not as bad as she had it.

Finished reading Permutation City by Greg Egan. Lots of things to like, e.g. digital clones living in a hacky simulation that is more than an order of magnitude slower than the real world. The special relativity section of my brain rebelled against one significant plot point (though I’m not sure I understood it correctly). Very strong Philip K. Dick vibes from the story.

Nasty smoke today — yellow sky, bits of ash in the air — but it’s supposed to clear out tomorrow.