Greg and kids and the dude and I played Magic, while Jocelyn hung out with Meghan and the bambina, and then Mom came over.

Tonight’s kitchen victory: pad kee mao, so good.

Played Magic last night with Greg.

The dude gets pretty mad when I use slang that he feels is too new or young for me to use, so naturally I do it every chance I get, ideally with an intentional slight misuse. Most recently, “check out this sweet whip”.

Speaking of sagas, this is very much a book that wants to be read aloud.

Finished rereading The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien, part one of The Lord of the Rings as I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, for something like the twentieth time.

One thing that strikes me from this reading is how economical it is — seriously! — with the important exception of the poetry, which felt self-indulgent. Pay attention to how much happens in any given chapter, and how short that chapter is compared to how it would have been written by a modern author. Inner lives of the characters, and even much of the outer lives, are pared down, leaving us with the scope of an epic.

Finished reading Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead, a followup to Harlem Shuffle, and equally delightful.

Ice cream at Mom’s with Greg and Jocelyn and family.

Walked up the Burke-Gilman from the U District and then home: four hours, 11¾ miles, about 24k steps.

Had to deal with the overnight ant invasion before I made coffee this morning.

Finished reading Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky does the same thing as he did in his previous, but with an additional element and resulting different themes. There was also a bit of horror — beyond the previous book’s simple arachnophobia triggers — such that I didn’t want to put the book down in those sections.

The bambina got her new bicycle yesterday. Somehow it’s the first adult-sized bike in our house?

Walked up the Interurban Trail to Lynnwood Transit Center: two hours, 13k steps, 6½ miles.

Finished reading The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, the only book he’s written solo that I hadn’t read (other than The Big U — is that any good?). Some amazing imagery, and carefully-thought-out social impacts of nanotechnology and post-scarcity that rhymed in some ways with Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota series.

The book has some vestiges of its time (e.g. some really dated stereotyping), and an abrupt ending characteristic of his earlier work, but the ending worked and overall I really liked the book.

“One of the insights of the Victorian Revival was that it was not necessarily a good thing for everyone to read a completely different newspaper in the morning….” — The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson, 1995.