Book completed

Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson. Reread. The first of the Mistborn books; I think it's now called The Final Empire, in the way that Star Wars is now called A New Hope.

For a thousand years, the people in the Final Empire have struggled under the oppressive rule of the Lord Ruler, but Kelsier is determined to bring him down. He's a master thief, but he's organized his thieving crew around this new goal, a political revolution. Young Vin, an abused street waif, is also a thief, but Kelsier shows her that she has special skills, just like he does - the magic/technology of using flakes of different metals, each of which temporarily creates or enhances an unusual ability, like pushing or pulling metal objects or enhancing others' emotions. Now it's Vin's job to pose as a young noblewoman and infiltrate fancy balls to make strategic connections with the aristocracy. All the while, ash belches from massive volcanoes, piling up everywhere, as it's done for a thousand years - they've never seen the stars, and the only plants are brown. Can Kelsier's team save the world?

Day 1048: Plodding along

It doesn't feel like I got a lot done today. We'd earlier thought about seeing Everything Everywhere All At Once, which has returned briefly to a local theater, but J. was still coughing, and I was tired, so instead we'll probably watch it from a streaming service on Valentine's Day.

Since I procrastinated planting my new daffodil bulbs for months, but I'd read online that "end of January" is actually okay though they'll bloom relatively late, and since today was finally warm and dry enough again to get them into the ground, I thought I'd be announcing an experiment here - does February 1 work? Unfortunately, though I did plant them, they had a lot of mildew, and I didn't get them anywhere near deep enough either. Oh well.

We did hear some good news, though - our friend DG had his university job reclassified from "research associate" to "assistant research professor." So cool!