I’m starting to think ahead to winter. It’s the season I spend the most time alone (the perils of living with a ski coach) and it’s dark and cold and people don’t like to leave their houses to hang out.

Which means I have a challenging dozen weeks from January until mid-March.

I’ll have volleyball, of course. I suspect the team will play on Tuesdays, but I’ll try to add a Thursday night option, as well, to correspond with Rudi’s being away. Or I could add another sport, but I don’t know that my knees are excited about the running involved in soccer or basketball.

I could start a game night. Rudi likes games well enough, but not enough, I don’t think, that he’ll feel bad if I have folks over to play. That will require finding people who like playing games or maybe seeing if the Board Room or Labyrinth have a meetup.

I’m mulling a hot chocolate quest, to identify the best purveyor in the District. That should bring some of my friends out with me.

The library or one of the local bookshops might have a book group. I haven’t tried one in ages.

Or maybe one of the local yarn shops has an open knit night.

Any other ideas for getting out of the house (or getting other people into it) during the winter months?

(Oh, and if you’re looking for the answer for what I was for Halloween, Karen was correct, and I was a blue jay.)

This is my Halloween costume, which, it turns out, was harder for everyone to guess than I expected it to be. I’ll let you guys guess in the comments and fill you in on the right answer tomorrow. I will say that anything below the skirt is irrelevant to the costume. (I played volleyball in a prototype of the costume, which had a different shirt (same letter) and a sort-of makeshift blue long-sleeve shrug over it Thursday night, because I needed things that would stay put while I moved around the court.)

It was a drizzly evening in D.C., which meant we had a relatively uneventful night on the stoop with our bucket of candy, holiday playlist, and jack o’lanterns. We did see a few small people, several dogs who were disappointed our available treats did not include biscuits, and a bunch of college-aged kids, many of whom were international students celebrating their first Halloween. Best group costume went to a group of girls dressed as m&m’s.

I hope you had a nice holiday!

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Rudi and I went for a hike on Tuesday at Seneca Creek State Park in Maryland. It was a lovely 4’ish mile walk around a pond and the color, while muted, was pretty.

2. Two of my dearest college friends came down to visit from New York for the weekend. I hadn’t seen Eri since the fall before the pandemic, which is probably the longest that we’ve ever gone between visits, so I was particularly glad to finally connect with her. We had lots of good conversations, ate many tasty things, and just really got to enjoy each other’s company.

3. I didn’t mean to get all my Christmas holds in mid-October, but apparently no one else was thinking that far ahead.

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

This week, That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share a Halloween-themed Top Ten Tuesday topic. I don’t like scary reads, but periodically I do enjoy a book that includes a ghost or spirit as one of the characters. Here are ten of those:

1. Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
2. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
3. Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune
4. Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Racculia
5. Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
6. The Greenglass House by Kate Milford
7. Me by Amber McBride
8. Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez
9. Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan
10. The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling

How about you? Do you have any books that include ghosts or spirits you’d recommend?

Looking ahead, this week I need to get some solid cover letters written. I’d also like to swap out the summer and winter clothes (D.C. is probably done with 80s finally, which will make that possible.) and get the fairy lights up again now that the darkness is coming so much earlier.

I also have my usual coaching and volleyball schedules. (I believe this Saturday may be the final week for grass volleyball. Sand volleyball will continue for a few more weeks before we move indoors for the winter.)

I have lunch with a friend on Thursday. And Saturday night, friends are throwing a Halloween party, so costume planning will be part of the week’s off-hours.

I have a couple books out right now that won’t be able to be renewed, so I need to make some time to spend curled up with them.

And tomorrow, Rudi and I are going to drive out to the mountains of Virginia to see some fall color. I’ve heard it’s muted up and down the Eastern countryside, but some color is better than none.

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Mondays, I coach in a kids’ afterschool volleyball program. Usually, I end up with the littlest kids, but this week, there were only two adults. The other woman doesn’t have much volleyball experience, so she asked if I’d take the preteens. I thought we ended up having a pretty good practice, and while I got a little attitude at the beginning, I thought I dissipated it pretty quickly.

2. I knit a bulky-weight hat this week, so I could wear it while playing tonight if it felt cold enough to need it. (It didn’t.) I didn’t check stitch gauge and it’s a little bigger than I’d like, so I’m going to reknit it on slightly smaller needles. But it felt so good to actually finish something enough that it could be worn.

3. I had a meeting this week with the president of the company that organized the scavenger hunt my friends and I did earlier this month. He was looking for feedback on how our experience with the game and I was happy to tell him how much we’d enjoyed it. But he also offered to make any connections he could with local nonprofits in his network as I’m continuing my job search, which was such a surprising kindness.

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