… for a moondance.

-Van Morrison

A long weekend is definitely time to look at life through rose(ate spoonbill)-colored glasses. Feel free to (Goeldi’s) monkey around — you deserve to goof off during a three-day weekend!

Here’s some of what I hope this weekend includes:

• Attend BookFest. I’d like to see Rainbow Rowell, Barbara Kingsolver, Ngozi Ukazu, RBG, Julia Alvarez, Madeline Miller, Pablo Cartaya, Shannon Hale, Jon Klassen, Juana Medina, Renée Watson, and Mitali Perkins, among others, but between the crowds and the schedule overlap, I’d be happy to cross three of them off my list. After the first year when they moved the festival indoors from the Mall and I experienced a panic attack at the crowds (200,000 people attended last year’s festival), I came up with a game plan that seems to work for me — go a little later, bring food, find corners where breaks can be taken, and be attached to no particular author. Mostly I’ve gotten to see folks, but I don’t wait in lines (other than the five minutes before a new talk begins) and I am willing to miss out on hearing pretty much anyone (rooms have fire code restrictions about how many people can be inside). (I’m already pretty much resigned that I will not get into the RBG room.) But there is rarely a period of time where I have no one who interests me and usually you can squeeze in someplace — particularly in the outskirts around the children’s stages.
• Swim. The outdoor pools close on Monday — just in time for our next heatwave.
• Send out some writing samples. I’m keeping options open for the future and have decided to start investigating freelance work. (I have no illusion that that earns one a livable wage at the outset, but one must acquire a first client somehow…)
• Plant some fall seeds. Our growing season easily lasts into November, and I often harvest all the way until the end of the year, so now is a good time to put leafy greens back into the rotation and try planting some more root veggies and a fall bean crop.
• Shop at the farmers market. I need milk and raspberries and maybe plums or peaches for a tart.
• Watch baseball.
• Do laundry.
• Send some thank you notes.
• Knit on my shawl.
• Finish another book.

How about you? What’s on your weekend wish list?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Rudi and I make the most of our mutual unemployment today, spending the afternoon at the zoo, checking out a new ice cream shop, and sitting on the patio at a bar I’m fond of.

2. After soliciting advice from many of my friends and outlining a detailed plan with one with expertise, I attempt something new and foreign and terrifying to me — and utterly fail. There are tears in public (although later, not in the moment of failure itself), but words of comfort and congratulations drift in from across the country for having been brave enough to try.

3. I made a new friend back in the spring and we have spent lots of time out together over the past few months. This weekend, she and her husband (and their dog, Molly) invited us over for supper and we spent hours chatting about their upcoming vacation, early computing languages (that was mostly Rudi and her husband), and how job hunting has changed since we were all young.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

I had hoped to have my shawl done by the end of August and to block it over Labor Day weekend, but I just haven’t put the time in on it the last few weeks to make that happen. Part because life and part because the rows are so long now that it takes almost half an hour to get a pair of them done. That said, Saturday is the National Book Festival and in rooms where I can get a seat (the children’s stages allow for standing because they’re in a cavernous room that extends a couple city blocks), I will be knitting while I listen and tweet. (I go by myself, so that’s how I make it a little less lonely and anxiety-inducing.) So I suppose it’s a possibility that I could still finish, but I won’t count on it. I’ve told myself that wrapping it up next week would still be within the two-month mark which is pretty good for me.

On the reading front, my lack of ability to concentrate on anything means I continue dipping in and out of books. Wordslut (nonfiction on feminism and linguistics) and The Kiss Quotient (adult romance) are both overdue at the library, so I should finish them up first. I’m nearly done listening to The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy (historical fiction), which is good because it expires over the weekend. The Dust Bowl Ballads and Shuri are both graphic novels and could be finished quickly if I put my mind to them. Tove Jansson’s memoir, The Summer Book, is topical and I’d like to start it soon. There There is important, but neither a format (connected short stories) nor a topic (mass shootings and racism) I enjoy, so I keep picking it up and then putting it back down (even skimming the ending didn’t really help). Girl Waits with Gun (historical fiction) is mine and I can read it in places where it might get wet. You see how things go…

If you want to see how some people actually progress with their goals, head over to As Kat Knits for the weekly roundup.

how you rebuild a bridge?

First, you need to drain the waterway so you can get to the footings.

In the case of the 31st Street bridge over the C & O Canal in Georgetown, built in 1867, they run the water from the canal through a series of tubes, holding containers, and pipes to give them a relatively dry section on which to work on the bridge. The wooden structure you see the water pouring back over is what the canalboat sits on when it’s not in the water.

They’ve mostly got the canal blocked further upstream because they’ve been doing repairs to the locks and the canal itself, so the water is already running pretty lightly and slowly through this section, but it was still impressive to see.

The bridge closed to vehicular traffic at the start of the summer and will remain closed until this time next year. However, they’ve built accommodations for pedestrians and cyclists to continue to get around the area, which has to be a huge relief to the couple dozen businesses and restaurants on the affected stretch of road. (It has the added benefits that the restaurants are super-excited to see foot traffic and that the two neighboring Italian restaurants often have samples of pizza at the maître d’ stands outside for passersby who might, for instance, be walking home from the movie theater.)