Welcome back for the second day of the Virtual Advent Tour. If you’d like to host a day on your blog, vlog, or Instagram, leave me a comment.

Enjoy today’s highly danceable holiday song, “Ring out the Bells” by Sarah Connor:

See you back here tomorrow, and enjoy your Saturday!

Rudi is spending July doing a bucket-list cycling vacation in Europe, which means I am spending the month on self-care. Here’s a baker’s dozen activities I have on tap for this week:

Play volleyball
Go to the movies with Sarah
Cheer on my teammate Katie in the Congressional Women’s Softball Game
Swim
Send in a job application
Get quarters from the bank
Read outside
Deal with the strawberry patch in the garden (and see if I can find tomatillo plants anywhere)
Catch up with friends on the phone
Make a batch of macarons
Clean the kitchen and bathroom
Learn to replace a bike tube
Attend an outdoor concert or movie

How’s your week shaping up?

It’s a three-day weekend for the federal government, which means D.C. has emptied out quite a bit. But some of us are still here. What do I hope to squeeze into the next three days, you ask? Let me tell you:

• Start my #1000WordsOfSummer project (That’s kind of a misnomer, because it only lasts for two weeks. But the idea is to write 1000 words each day over the next fortnight and to jumpstart or reinvigorate or put a solid dent into a project. I finished it last summer and am going to give it another shot, this time with the actual intent of continuing on through July.)
• Decide if I’m going to do #ChristmasInJuly this year and sign up if I am (I probably will.)
• Bake something with cherries (a cobbler or a pie, most likely)
• Play volleyball
• Swim
• Water the garden and plant beans (and maybe tomatillos)
• Go to supper at a friend of Rudi’s
• Shop at the farmers market (peaches!!!)
• Clear out the refrigerator (honestly!)
• Finish a book or two
• Sit outside at a cafe (maybe with my writing project or maybe with a book or maybe with a knitting project)
• Vacuum
• Send some mail
• Check in with some friends
• Do laundry
• Eat tons of fresh berries because it’s the best couple weeks of the year for that!

How about you? What are you hoping to do this weekend?

I had a nice weekend and I hope you did, too. I didn’t get to everything I’d hoped to, but such is the way of life. I did manage to squeeze in quite a bit:

We picnicked at the Kennedy Center and watched Raiders of the Lost Ark under the stars.

I spent time at the garden, outside in a pool, and on the patio of a cafe.

I bought a flat of strawberries at the farmers market.

I played volleyball, both in the sun and in the (what was quite a bit more than expected) rain and got in some miles on the bike.

We cooked (veggie) hot dogs at home and made daiquiris and went out for ice cream with my friend Chris. And we shopped at our local Japanese market and treated ourselves to some buns and soup.

How was your weekend?

I was supposed to take part in a volleyball tournament on Sunday, but, alas! it’s been cancelled. Worry not, though, I’ve got other things I’m hoping to do:

• Play volleyball (I mean, just not as part of a tournament)
• Go to a baseball game (it’s Star Wars Day at Nats Park and some of our friends want the free Hawaiian shirts they’re giving out)
• Plant the rest of the seedlings I bought yesterday (I’m down to five plants — three members of the gourd family, a tomato, and some kind of pinkish flower — that need to get into the ground)
• Shop at the farmers market
• Do laundry
• Bake something
• Take down the Christmas cards
• Send some mail
• Switch out my winter and summer wardrobes (All the clothes are out, which makes for unmanageable piles everywhere)
• Read

How about you? What’s on your weekend to-do list?

We had a day of rain today and expect another full day of rain on Sunday. What does that mean for a weekend plan when there probably won’t be any volleyball, but that also will not require watering of the garden? Here’s what I’m hoping the next couple days include:

• Stop at the library for the new T.J. Klune novel
• Buy strawberries at the farmers market
• Do laundry
• Take bins to storage
• Read
• Switch out the summer and winter clothes
• Bake cookies and maybe bread
• Drink lots of tea
• Get May birthday cards written and in the mail
• Knit
• Deal with some of the paper recycling (how do we have so much of it?!)
• Maybe visit a local yarn store or an independent bookshop, since both of those types of retailers are being feted this weekend

What are you hoping to get up to this weekend?