We had a nice weekend. The bartender at our local grocery store/bar was super helpful in picking out some birthday present beers for Rudi on Friday night (it was luck that someone who knew Rudi’s taste was working the check stand when I stopped in), which I wrapped while he was out on a bike ride Saturday.

Rudi had requested scrambled eggs for his birthday breakfast, and I’d hoped to combine it with fresh sourdough bread. But I clearly did something wrong when assembling it in the breadmaker, because instead we had a sourdough brick. I mean it was tasty (particularly with jam), but it was impossibly chewy and dangerous to try to slice. I’m going to turn it into pain perdu (aka French toast) or maybe bread pudding. Anything that will soften it up.

We did some video chats with friends, ate Chinese takeout (the ginger snowpeas I added to the order were the surprise hit of the night), and Rudi blew out the candle on his homemade strawberry shortcake just before midnight.

This morning, I toured the farmers market, bringing home a variety of tasty spring things, including cream, strawberries, fiddleheads, and asparagus. Then I drank half a pot of tea and dozed all afternoon on the sofa. (I was pretending to read.) I managed to rouse myself in the evening to head to the garden, where I planted a few things, marveled at my six-foot-high pea vines (I also have pods, but they need a few days to fill out), and picked a bag full of arugula, kale, and spinach. We need to get back in the next day or so to get our garden snails drunk, so they leave our strawberries and spinach and basil alone. I checked in with my folks and with Grey Kitten and his husband and got in some walking. And I ended the evening by finishing my Veronica Speedwell novel while sipping on hot chocolate.

Five more days until a long weekend and the unofficial start to the summer. Remember way back in February when we thought it would be eons until our next official holiday? How right — and wrong — we were!

I did not get any reading done today, although I did listen to Nic Stone talk about her novel, Shuri, which I’m really looking forward to reading, as part of the Gaithersburg Book Festival, which will be broadcast on YouTube over the next four weekends.

Today’s Bout of Book challenge invites us to consider any goals we set for ourselves at the outset of the readathon, and if we didn’t to think about a mini one for today.

I had not set any challenges, so I don’t have to figure out how to live up to past me’s expectations. Present me thinks that I can probably finish one of my current reads before I head to bed tomorrow night. I’m down to the last quarter of The Cruelest Month, for instance, and have several print books that could be crossed off with a little focus. Seems challenging, but reasonable, don’t you think?

[Editor’s note, Sunday night: Success!]

… to my favorite fella, who turns a prime number today.

I know this isn’t how you’d choose to spend your birthday, going on solo bike rides and drinking with your buddies over the computer. But you’ve dealt with the past couple months with grace, translating your multitudes of experiences into positives for essential workers, for the local political scene, and for us at home in the Burrow.

May you soon get to go riding up mountains with your friends, stopping at country stores for ham biscuits and beer gardens for refreshing libations, in places further afield than the 25 square miles you’ve stuck to the past couple months.

But in the meantime, have a most wonderful May 16th. Happy birthday, Rudi!

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The drug store had name-brand Easter candy for 90% when we stopped in last week, which meant big bags of candy were 45¢. Rudi carried the heavy bag home.

2. One of the farms that specializes in tomatoes was selling flats of seconds at the farmers market. I came home with more than a dozen huge greenhouse tomatoes that looked just perfect to me.

3. Rudi procured both dish soap and quarters for the washing machine this week. (Who would have guessed $30 wouldn’t have been enough to get us through this?) I don’t love chores, but I definitely prefer to be able to do them when they need doing.

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

The leg of my second Smock Madness is nearly done. It suffered a bit earlier in the week from my tiredness when I blithely knit along in what I thought was the right smocking pattern until I looked at it and thought, that doesn’t look right. Luckily it was only a half dozen rows, plus some tinking a little while later when I forgot to wrap some stitches. But I have a listening work call at the end of the day tomorrow, at which point I expect to be ready for moving on to the heel. Exciting, right?

I finished the print book I was reading last week, so am now cycling back to another book I started at the beginning of the pandemic, when I didn’t have the fortitude to read, A Murderous Relation by Deanna Raybourn. I’m also listening to a mystery, The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny, but it’s a contemporary, so it feels okay to dive into a second, since it’s set at the turn of the last century. Plus, the Veronica Speedwell novels are part mystery, part romance, and part adventure tale, so it’s really not the same as a straight-up police procedural, no matter how literary it is.

Head over to As Kat Knits for more knitting and reading progress from around the world!

In his middle age, Corey has become a lap cat. Specifically my lap cat. (To be fair, Rudi’s lap is much leaner than mine.)

He will escort Rudi to bed but then come back out to the couch and bed down.

He prefers it when I am reclining more, so he can stretch out the length of my torso, but he’ll take what he can get. but he’s definitely grumpy if I curl up on my side.

He prefers to snooze on the couch, but he’s not above an evening nap snuggled on the bed curled up in the crook of my knees under a blanket or dozing off on my lap during a work video call in the rocking chair.

He doesn’t mind if I read or am on the computer, although he draws the line at two computers, which makes the work I need to finish before going to sleep a little challenging.

In Bout of Books news, earlier, I listened to some more of Yes, No, Maybe So while doing some chores. I don’t know if I’ll finish it this week, but it may happen if this is the only night where I’m working in the wee smalls.

Today’s challenge asks:

Which book(s) would you like to see made into a movie (or TV show)?

Ooh! Here are a half dozen off the top of my head:

Sherry Thomas’ Lady Sherlock series should definitely be adapted as a costume drama by the BBC. They’d need to a fundraiser, though, just to cover the dessert budget line. Also, I’m going to be super critical about casting in this film.

Jasper Fforde has said that he will not adapt his Thursday Next series for the screen, because it will never live up to what’s on the page. I know the BBC (or maybe ITV) adapted the first book of The Last Dragonslayer, though. I’d love to see that — and if it’s good to have them do the rest of the series.

Michael Scott’s The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series would make a fun series with its international settings and its cast of literary characters.

Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus was optioned, but I’m guessing it fell through. It would make an amazing movie, but should mostly be filmed in black and white, with only specific circus-themed scenes in color.

Brian Selznick’s two other prose-illustration tomes have been made into well-received films, so I definitely hope someone is working on one for The Marvels.

Finally (just because I need to finish that work and go to bed) speaking of Marvel, they keep pushing back their Ms. Marvel film adaptation. With so many of this summer’s films moving to a 2021 release and no work being done anywhere on new shoots, I can only assume this is going to push its release back even further. I mean, they did eventually film me a Black Widow movie before Scarlett Johansson totally aged out of the role, so here’s hoping…