Book completed

Ship of Magic, by Robin Hobb. Book one of the "Liveship Traders" trilogy. This is a reread; I've read them once before and was just in the mood for it. I'm enjoying them a lot. They're set in the same world as the "Fitz and the Fool" books, but they can be read entirely separately.

One thing I especially appreciate about this series is that of the two "villains," each of whom is "bad" for very different reasons, neither of them is evil. One of them thinks he's good, and by his society's standards he's no worse than neutral; the other has more personal issues and is one of our point-of-view characters. And at the beginning, all of our "good" characters have definite room for growth or improvement. Nice, vivid writing, too.

Day 58: Neighborhood conversation

Today in the early evening, after making progress on a particularly tiresome work task, I went for a neighborhood walk with J. for about 20 minutes. We especially looked at irises and dianthus ("pinks"), which was fun. Down at the corner of our street, we saw our neighbor M and wandered toward his house to see if he was out - he'd waved at us and gone in. But at the end of our walk we encountered him on his own walk and stopped for a 40-minute conversation (at an appropriate distance). M is both delightfully chatty and quite interesting, and he doesn't have many people to talk with these days, as his wife is an ICU nurse who works nights and sleeps in the day and has been living in a trailer in their driveway for the last 52 days. So it was great to stand there at the side of the road chatting with him. His cousin is the Washington Post writer David Ignatius, who's also written numerous spy novels, and who broke the Michael Flynn story originally, so we heard about him some. M had also recently invested in a virtual reality system so he and his younger son can do mountain hikes, play tennis, and visit tourist sites worldwide without leaving their livingroom.

Here's a very good article about what's currently known on COVID-19 risks. Fortunately for me, buying groceries and socializing outside are very low-risk activities. Sitting in an interior space with other people and typical office or restaurant air circulation is bad, as are singing in a choir (because of the way you inhale so deeply) or being near someone who is coughing or yelling (like at a sporting event).