家庭

Besides finishing up the Faulkner, I also got to the end of Das eherne Schwert and Veronica Mars. But, as usual, I'm sacrificing the short-term satisfaction of a brief review post of each in favour of a grand one comparing one or both with The handmaid's tale, which I'm almost done with--a post which I will never write, of course. I'll mull it for a couple days, get distracted, remember with some regret when I'm too tired to contemplate writing anything, and then move on.

Meanwhile, kumazuki is in town--and sick. I'm glad I planned some time with him early in his stay. I got to introduce him to Persian cuisine and monshu, albeit sequentially. After dinner, I took him back to Pod Klonami and showed him around the grounds. Everything we planted last weekend--the Eryngium, the Persicaria, and the Epimedium--is flourishing, but then none of it has really been tested yet. This is longest stretch without rain we've had since early last month and it's predicted to end tonight. A week or two of real hell in August and we'll see what's truly suited to the spots I've put it in.

Since he knows Japanese, we put him to work trying to puzzle out the Old Man's newest acquisition, but he had no more luck than I did. That did lead to a fun conversation about script styles (he has a particular affection for 九疊文 or "nine-fold script" of the kind found on official seals) and I showed him my intriguing but unusable dictionary of archaic script styles. By 9:30, however, we were both pretty pooped and the Old Man was heading to bed, so I pointed him in the right direction and noodled on the computer briefly before heading down myself.