Since I don’t have to spend all weekend working, the next few days stretch before me luxuriously. Here’s how I hope to fill them:

• Sleeping in: No obligations tomorrow and Rudi is off on a bike ride with friends.
• Gardening: The back section of my garden is out of control. Plus, Now is the time to put in seeds for lettuce so that I have plants by the time the cool weather comes around.
• Finishing my sock: And thinking what to work on during the Tour de France this year.
• Reading: I’m quite enjoying the book I’m reading, even if it isn’t all happy. Also, I should probably head to Arlington to return my book.
• Going to the farmers market: I wonder what Rudi would think about getting a box of seconds tomatoes for saucing.
• Doing laundry: Doesn’t it feel like I should have less clothing to wash during the pandemic? (Other than masks, of course.)
• Holding an ’80s dance party: It’s been a while, and it’s time.
• Making dill pickles: Our bread & butter ones came out really well, so it’s time to expand our repertoire.

What’s on your weekend to-do list?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Just a few buildings up from ours, we pass a foraging albino squirrel.

2. Local green grapes are now in season!

3. The weather has been cooler this week (high temperatures in the 80s, lows below 70, and sometimes even reasonable levels of humidity). It has made such a difference in my mood.

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

I had the afternoon off today and swore to myself that I would not work for any of it. I packed a bag of supplies (bug spray, long sleeve layer, headphones, several books, and, it turns out, not my knitting), swung by the farmers market for snacks, and took myself up to the park. I did not grab my chair because I had a plan — I was going to use our hammock.

Last summer, I’d tried to use our hammock at the park, but couldn’t find trees that were close enough for the length of straps we have. However, I hadn’t given any thought a handful of smaller trees by the fence, and this summer I have seen several people with hammocks using them. Today was my day.

First, I pulled out Eoin Colfer’s Highfire. It started with a chapter about an anti-social dragon, which boded particularly well, but then switched focus to a teen boy and then a crooked cop. I’m sure it’ll be great when they all get on the same page, but until then I just wanted more dragon.

So I switched to The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise by Dan Gemeinhart. I think this middle-grade novel might be the next right read.

On the knitting front, my sock hasn’t had a lot of work done on it this week, but I will wrap it up in the next few days. (See forgetting to pack it above.) The Tour de France kicks off next weekend, so I’d like to go in with a recent FO under my belt. I haven’t decided what I’d like to knit, but I do think it will be a fresh cast-on, rather than the resumption of a project. I’m looking forward to it.

Head over to As Kat Knits to see what others have been reading and crafting lately!

Bout of Books 29 kicked off at the start of the week, and I’m intending to take part again.

The Bout of Books readathon is organized by Amanda Shofner and Kelly Rubidoux Apple. It’s a weeklong readathon that begins 12:01 a.m. Monday, August 17, and runs through Sunday, August 23, in YOUR time zone. Bout of Books is low-pressure. All reading-in-place times, Twitter chats, and exclusive Instagram challenges are completely optional. For Bout of Books 29 information and updates, visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books team

Yesterday, I started off the week by finishing Oona Out of Order shortly after midnight. Now I can get it back to the library.

Last night, I read the first chapter of Undercover Bromance, which succeeded in pissing me off by having the main character be remarkably attractive and rich and successful, but unlucky in love. I’m going to give it until the main female character is introduced to see if it has any redeeming qualities, but I’m not holding my breath.

This evening, because I was reminded about it in raidergirl3’s blog post earlier, I started When We Were Vikings. The start of the story makes me uneasy and I’m not sure I want to keep reading it if it’s going to leave me stressed out all the time.

My rest of the plan for the week involves reading the first chapter or two of each of the library books I currently have out to see which can be returned to the library. Including the two above, I’ve started nine, none of which has captured my fancy (but also none of which, so far, has made me want to give up).

I have (ahem) 15 out that I haven’t yet given a shot. If you’ve read any of them and recommend I start there, let me know:

• Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson
• Homerooms and Hall Passes by Tom O’Donnell
• The Night Country by Melissa Albert
• Each Tiny Spark by Pablo Cartaya
• On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
• Another Word for Home by Jasmine Warga
• The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise by Dan Gemeinhart
• Don’t Date Rosa Santos by Nina Moreno
• The Beast Player by Nahoko Uehashi
• The First Dinosaur by Ian Lendler
• Highfire by Eoin Colfer
• Adequate Yearly Progress by Roxanna Elden
• Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell (I really want to find my copy of the first book in the series and reread it before starting this one)
• Dreyer’s English by Benjamin Dreyer
• The Travelers by Regina Porter

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic at That Artsy Reader Girl is Top Ten Books That Should be Adapted into Netflix Shows/Movies.

With one glaring exception, I am opting not to include anything that, to my knowledge, has already been adapted, even if I haven’t yet seen it (the Cormoran Strike series and The Last Dragonslayer, for instance). By and large, I’ve also excluded novels I absolutely adore, because they’ll just never be done well enough to suit me (the Lady Sherlock series, The Night Circus, Thursday Next, and others).

1. Pumpkinheads by Rainbow Rowell and Faith Erin Hicks (imagine how adorable this graphic novel would be as a Halloween romance!)
2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (because as much as I love the BBC version and like the other versions, there is always room for another adaptation)
3. Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan (sweet but also serious — think of all the famous gay people they could get to be the chorus!)
4. The Marvels by Brian Selznick (of his three illustrated novels, I think this is the one that would scale best to the small screen)
5. Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann (a documentary obviously)
6. The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karina Yan Glaser (this and its sequels are just begging to be turned into an ongoing family tv series)
7. Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu (I think someone (Reese Witherspoon, maybe?) is adapting this feminist YA novel to film and I want it NOW)
8. The Port Chicago 50 by Steve Sheinkin (another documentary — I don’t know why I think that nonfiction that makes me furious should be adapted, except that I guess I want more people to be angry, too)
9. The Great Greene Heist by Varian Johnson (a multicultural middle-grade caper — this is just waiting for someone to option it)
10. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (how has Masterpiece not grabbed this gothic mystery as an adaptation already?)

Come back another day and I could probably give you a completely different list. I could probably give you a week’s worth of Christmas books that should be adapted…

How about you? What books would you like to see come to the small screen near you?

I just came back from moving the car. After Rudi came home from a late-evening drive to the grocery store and garden, he parked it on one of the two streets we live at the corner of. It’s the one that has designated weekday rush hour no parking zones, and while they may be lifted during the current emergency, we aren’t so positive there won’t be enforcement that we’re willing to risk the ticket.

We forgot to take the keys with us when we went out to the park after work ended for me tonight and Rudi told me not to worry about it when I went to grab him the key when we came home.

Obviously he meant I shouldn’t worry about it because I could just move it later before I came to bed. (Actually, I’m glad I suddenly remembered it. We have only forgotten to move our car … twice maybe? … in the seventeen years we’ve lived here. But it’s not a lesson you really need to learn more than once a decade.)

Anyway, I wore a mask out to move the car because our stairs up to the sidewalk parallel the sidewalk, so you just never know what’s going to be waiting for you in the city, even after midnight. But once I was in the car, I took it off, and I didn’t have to put it back on for the block and a half it took to walk home from where I parked the car legally.

That’s the furthest I’ve walked outside without a mask since April.

Who could have imagined the world we live in right now?