We stepped out on the balcony to look at stars & ended up watching as the 1st ship pulled away & the paddlewheel one take its sweet time pulling up to the walkway.

Slightly drunk book quest was a success. My feet hurt & I have a huge blister on one of my toes but it’s been fun so far. We have retired to the room & I am forcing @darklament.bsky.social to watch Bring It On.

@darklament.bsky.social & I ended up with $524 of credit at Powell’s. My first haul of books. There’s a high chance of us doing some slightly drunk book shopping later this evening.

RIP to the Spartacus on Burnside. I did a full hand to my chest, gay gasp. I've been visiting Portland for decades & walking past Spartacus on my way to Powell's always made me laugh.

Sitting outside on a lovely night, watching Too Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. Crows keep circling lower & lower. I think they can smell the free popcorn.

I'm a day late here but ... Happy Birthday to my dear Jefferson, @darklament.bsky.social. I love you, 🥰😍😘

Time to box up the books @darklament.bsky.social & I are taking to trade for credit at Powell’s this weekend. About a year & half accumulation. 20 yrs of moving books from rental to rental has made me choosy about what books I keep. Maybe 1 in 10 gets a place on my permanent bookshelves.

Post a random picture or else everything will go bad in July. It's me.

A KitchenAid mixer (c. 1982), a bread knife, and this nutcracker that my mom passed down to me. I asked for all of them when my mom was cleaning out her kitchen. I use the knife all the time because it slices bread so much better than any bread knife I’ve ever had.

@darklament.bsky.social & I are watching The Book Graveyard, a show about old pulp books. This one is a long discussion with Paul Giamatti. It’s fascinating just how much Giamatti knows about pulp novels. He referenced this book which has one of the funniest covers I’ve ever seen.

The latest episode of Widow’s Bay presented a nice illustration of how many children died before pasteurization & vaccines. Rosemary, an expert on local genealogy, went through the family tree of a founding family beginning in the 1600s. Every single branch had a litany of “Dead baby. Dead baby.”

It’s too rainy to do yard work & I managed to get all my housework done over this past weekend, so I decided to make what my Midwest born mom calls Chinese New Year cookies. Here’s the full recipe. I did a half recipe since both my freezer & microwave are small.

@darklament.bsky.social took me out for dinner at Jack's BBQ so I could have my favorite cocktail as my first alcoholic drink in 34 days (couldn't drink while on antibiotics).

@darklament.bsky.social & I went to Georgetown for dinner, where I saw the Bacon Strip poster with the best drag queen name ever listed. Then we stopped in at Full Throttle Bottles to get something special for Sunday, when I can drink alcohol again. I've been on antibiotics since my surgery.

Bookish Scavenger Hunt Stack 💖 🐦‍⬛ animal in the title: Alchemy of a Blackbird 💚 color in the title: Greenwitch 🤴 less than 300 pages: The Magpie Lord 🪨 one word title: Devolution 🧌 number in the title: Nine Goblins 🩷name in title: The Unlikely Pursuit of Mary Bennet

The socks shop had a final online sale of buy 2, get 2 free so I bought yet more cute socks.

Pick a Bond from the photos you already have on your device. @darklament.bsky.social looking Bond-ish here. ❤️

I really like this description of life in Widow's Bay. There's a sense of everyone playing their parts because it's all happened before & it's connected to the urban legend/folklore nature to the goings on on the island. Also, I'm starting to think Rosemary is running the whole damn show.

My first day back to work after my surgery was a half day because my brain is still glitching from the anesthesia. This was the fifth time for this particular surgery & I always forget that it can take a week+ for my brain to recover.

Evidence for my theory that Jane Pauley has ironclad editorial control over CBS Sunday Morning. That's why it hasn't been enshittified like the rest of CBS news.

A socks shop in Bellingham is closing up & had a buy 2, get one free sale, so I got me some new socks.

This one goes out to you Late Night with Seth Meyers Jackals. Doug Jones as Mac Tonight

I spent the morning reading through the amazing Absolute Wonder Woman. It is the best Wonder Woman comic I’ve read. Period.

To aid in my recovery, a friend sent me medicinal Lestat photos.

This pilated woodpecker flew up to the living room window & hung on the edge of the window for a few minutes, just checking us out. I've only seen photos of them, so I had no idea how huge they are. #birds

Never has someone I’ve never met described me so well. Happy Birthday, Terry Pratchett.

Without downloading anything new, where are you mentally? #1: how I feel mentally & physically #2: the cause

It sounds like something the villain of an action movie would do ... run a car ferry full of passengers, including many Naval personnel, aground ... when in reality, it was mechanical failure. Though, I can now honestly say I've heard the words, "Brace for impact" in real life.