It was a lovely afternoon yesterday and so Rudi and I spent the latter portion of it outside, hanging out at the popsicle shop. I’m at the final couple rows of my shawl, so I was able to knit and read at the same time.

For the first time in ten months, the fact that it’s the weekend means something. While I worked hard to keep celebrating Saturday and Sunday’s arrival during my period of unemployment, in reality there wasn’t anything particularly that set those days apart for me personally.

But now I’ve put in four long days of meetings and learning and getting up in the morning and putting on dress clothes, so I deserve the next two days. I’ve earned them.

As such, I hope to:

• Watch the Nationals play.
• Put in some time in the garden.
• Attend my teammate’s housewarming brunch.
• Bake. (So I don’t show up to the former activity empty-handed.)
• Stay up late for Art All Night.
• Celebrate the Kennedy Center’s new expansion at the Reach Festival.
• Finish my shawl.
• Read.
• Wash the kitchen floor.
• Sleep. (I. am. so. tired. Good night!)

How about you? What are you hoping this weekend includes?

Thursdays mean it’s time to reflect back on some of the beautiful things from the week before. Here are three from my last week:

1. People have been so supportive of my new job. Thank you all for your comments here, in person, on Twitter, and on LinkedIn, where tonight I received a sweet message from my favorite college professor.

2. One of my volleyball teammates invited me to her housewarming party.

3. Because I opted to head home for a final weekend before my job started, I missed a goodbye party for some friends who are taking an assignment in London for a year or two. Julia took some time out from packing to meet me on Monday so we could say farewell.

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

I swear that I will have get back to regularly scheduled content soon. But I dozed off on the couch earlier and now I just want to get to bed. Working is hard!

Today was my first day at the new job. It went fine and everyone is very nice, but god I needed a nap when I got home. Unfortunately, I dozed longer than I should have and missed the movie showing I’d hoped to attend, as well as the coffeehouse’s patio hours. But I did not miss the sunset, so we shall look on the glowing side of things.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic at That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share ten books on our TBR lists/piles we’re avoiding reading and why:

I finished Early Riser last week, six months after starting it, so that is NOT a book I’m avoiding. However, there are plenty more:

1. There There by Tommy Orange: I started it. It’s about mass shootings. It was too much. Yes, I feel guilty, so I haven’t returned it yet. But I will.
2. Pumpkinheads by Rainbow Rowell and Faith Erin Hicks: It’s about fall and I want to wait until the season kicks in.
3. Hope Rides Again by Andrew Shaffer: Biden is running for president now and his real-life presence in my life disallows my feeling nostalgia for him. That got in the way of my caring enough to keep reading so I could determine if the author was trying too hard and had turned a fun romp into a pulp potboiler. I did return this one to the library.
4. The Body Papers by Grace Talusan: Written by the sister of someone I went to college with, I felt like I should read this memoir, but it’s about incest and again, I just didn’t feel up to it. I feel horrible about it and will likely give it another go.
5. My Twenty-Five Years in Provence by Peter Mayle: He’s dead and there will be no more books by my favorite Provençal transplant.
6. Daughter of the Siren Queen by Tricia Levenseller: I just finished another book about the daughter of a pirate king and it felt too soon to read another.
7. The Summer before the War by Helen Simonson: There’s a war coming at the end of the book.
8. Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman: Karen read it and suggested the recent adaptation is too close to the text to read it so soon after watching the series.
9. Me Before You by Jojo Moyes: I know how it ends.
10. Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling: I love everything of hers I’ve read, but I’ve heard this books is a downer. I don’t want to not love it.

How about you? Are there books you want to read, but just not right now?