Tonight’s kitchen victory: salade Niçoise, always a delight, and always guaranteed to trash the kitchen.

Worked with Meghan in the front yard, neatening and trimming.

After Meghan pointed out the mille-feuille of rust in the old grill, along with other structural degradation, we went out to get a replacement that was less likely to catch fire and/or melt. Then we grilled sausages.

It was a little chaotic, but the dude and I baked a cherry pie this afternoon.

Had dinner out in the carport.

The dude had friends over yesterday evening (plus the bambina and a couple of hers), hanging out in the carport and playing games and drinking mulled cider.

Finished reading Lake of Souls by Ann Leckie, a collection of short stories. A handful are set, at least notionally, in her Imperial Radch setting, several are in the setting of The Raven Tower, and several others are their own things. I enjoyed all of them to greater or lesser degrees; The Raven Tower in particular seems perfect for short stories.

Meghan and I got the AC set up at Mom’s, I took care of a couple other tasks, and the four of us had dinner with her.

Mowed the lawn, then Meghan and I cleaned the carport.

One of my favorite purchases ever, several years ago, was a dozen foot-long extension cords from Monoprice; they came in a single bundle in the shipping envelope. We’ve used quite a few of them over the years, and gave a bunch away. My second dozen arrived today, and they were each in their own plastic bag, each with a tightly-zip-tied warning tag literally the same length as the cord, all in another bag, all in a shipping envelope: so much wasteful packaging that’s manifested in that time. I still love the idea of these extension cords, but I won’t buy them from Monoprice again.

Walked from the water taxi (passenger ferry) dock over West Seattle and down to the edge of Lincoln Park, then around along the shore back to the dock: 21k steps, 11 miles, something more than three hours. Adding up other walking getting there and back and in the neighborhood totaled 29k steps and 15¼ miles. Still not in great walking shape, but not bad.

Farmers’ market with the kids; Mom’s air conditioner doesn’t work after being used for one season; mowed the lawn after two months.

Last day of school for the bambina.

I have a handful of pile.org posts cooking: one perhaps-intemperate one about AI training, and one about coffee which has somehow become three. We’ll see if I end up posting any of them.

Finished rereading The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie. I love this fantasy novel, about gods and bargains and thoughtfulness, and its casual queerness is the cherry on top.