The ISP’s tech guy figured out that our fiber line was cut, so needed to run a new one, but he couldn’t get the access to a neighbor’s yard that he needed. After some wrangling with support, they promised that somebody would be out next Wednesday again. I have never experienced such awful customer service as this outage with CenturyLink; they have taken the crown from Comcast.

Nathan came over for beers and dinner on Tuesday, and we met with some of his friends to talk about starting up an RPG.

Had Mom over for dinner (grilled salmon) last night.

Drove down to Portland yesterday to spend time with Phil and Wendy and their daughter after Phil’s mother passed away.

The ISP never sent a technician, and didn’t even have any record of our outage, so we won’t get somebody here to look at the outage until next Wednesday.

Finished reading Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, a pre-COVID “most people in the world die of a plague” novel. The story starts during a performance of King Lear at the start of the plague, and then follows two people — the actor playing Lear, through the before-times to that point, and a young girl also in the production, through the after-times in a traveling company performing Shakespeare plays. I read Last One at the Party about a year ago, and think this one is so much better it’s almost unfair to compare them. If you can stomach the premise, read this.

Finished rereading The Wine-Dark Sea by Patrick O’Brian, book 16 of the Aubrey/Maturin series, and the fourth and final book of their circumnavigation. Neither Aubrey nor Maturin has great success in this book; oddly, this felt satisfying enough that even a deus ex machina ending wasn’t a disappointment.

Finished reading The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison, a followup to last year’s Witness for the Dead. I enjoyed this as much as the previous. Addison draws her fundamentally-decent but painfully-introverted protagonist with compassion, through grim events of murders, child pornography (handled as tastefully as possible), and a malevolent spirit.

Meghan and the bambina and I came down with a cold, probably from the dude. Meghan seems less severely hit that the rest of us. (Covid tests are negative.)

Fixed the typography of some abbreviations and acronyms in older posts here.

Home internet went out this afternoon (maybe the ONT died?). The ISP won’t be able to send somebody out until Wednesday.

Finished rereading the collected Sandman by Neil Gaiman et al., volumes 1 (Preludes & Nocturnes) through 10 (The Wake).

This still basically holds up, which I was a little concerned about. (There’s more reference to rape than I remembered, but at least it doesn’t involve protagonists, and justice of a sort is generally done.) Some of stuff that was profound when I was in my 20s feels a little trite, but overall it still seems to achieve what it’s aiming for.

Walked to downtown Bothell and back: more than 13 miles, almost 4½ hours. I’ve been kind of a slug for the last several weeks, and I was dragging by the time I got back home.

Current earworm: “St. Louise is Listening” by Soul Coughing, finally unseating “Made of Stone” by the Stone Roses.

This weekend’s kitchen victories: pesto made with basil that Meghan grew in the greenhouse, and strawberry fool.