My day off: walked to Northgate, caught light rail to Capitol Hill (12 minutes station to station), walked Pike and Pine, got espresso and lunch and a haircut, walked Broadway, got a decaf espresso, caught light rail back to Northgate, walked home: almost ten miles.

Walked to Carkeek Park and back, something more than ten miles. It was a great day for walking, cool with just a couple brief sprinkles.

Finished rereading King of Sartar by Greg Stafford. It’s something of an anthropological study of Stafford’s RPG setting Glorantha, which inevitably reminds me of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home. But while the vast majority of game designers aren’t Greg Stafford, it’s also true that Stafford wasn’t Le Guin. I enjoyed the book, but can only recommend it to a vanishingly-small slice of readers.

Current earworm: “Something About You” by Level 42.

Turned on the new heat pump for the season sometime last week, maybe September 29 or so.

Finished reading The Will to Battle by Ada Palmer, the third book of the series.

This was a faster, more intense, I think better book than the first two, which (aside from the faster part) is saying something. I don’t know if it’s due to my growing familiarity with the baroque setting, the improvement of the author’s craft, rigorous editing on the part of her and her editor, or the plot itself.

Very much looking forward to the fourth and final book, which will be published later this month.

The carport gutter got clogged, so it pulled away from the carport, so Greg helped Meghan and me jury-rig a fix. Then I cleared the clog, and the rush of water from the downspout overwhelmed the rain barrel and spilled onto my legs and feet.

Greg and kids came over, and the dude and I played Magic with them in the carport.

Last grilling of the season, probably: brats in sauerkraut, with zucchini and squash.

Walked home from Edmonds, a little more than seven miles.

Went to Tom and Mari’s for brunch, with a whole bunch of Meghan’s family.

Set aside The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon about a quarter of the way through. I wanted to like this, and probably would have finished it if I’d read it ten years ago, but today it feels more drawn-out and portentous than I’m willing to tolerate.

The bedtime conversation with the bambina covered Bose–Einstein condensates (I was on uncertain ground) and the Kelvin temperature scale (more confident here).

Current earworm: the piano bit from the second half of “Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt” by Pharoah Sanders.

Finished reading The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker. A couple quibbles aside, I loved this book, set in Manhattan c. 1900. It felt like a puzzle where all the characters ended up fitting together just so (and I think the quibbles are where I didn’t feel like the fit was quite satisfactory … but they were minor characters). Recommended.