Three things I’m excited about today:

1. It’s my birthday and I’ve taken the day off to spend how I’d like. No, I haven’t quite figured out how that is, but still…I’m optimistic I’ll figure it out as I go along. It will definitely involve pizza at my favorite local pizzeria.
2. It’s also my friend Jason’s birthday, which hopefully means we’ll get to talk. I’ll likely hear from some other folks, too, which is always nice.
3. My online book club meets at noon. And the Cybils winners will be announced at 12:30.

Three things I’m excited about this coming week:

1. It’s a long weekend for Presidents’ Day.
2. Black Panther opens. My friend Shawn is planning on going to see it five times, so I’m hopeful I can tag along with him on one of his viewings. If not, I can totally watch a movie on my own. (Rudi’s going to be away coaching and then he does not have a long weekend.)
3. Sunday is the Chinese New Year Parade. I’ve never attended in the 15 years I’ve lived in D.C., but I’d really like to go this year.

Three things I’m excited about this coming month:

1. Two movies based on books I’ve loved, A Wrinkle in Time and Love, Simon, open in early March.
2. We still have another 11 days of Olympics and Ravellenic Games knitting. Did you see Shaun White and Chloe Kim?! And, then, less than a week after the Ravellenic Games knitting wraps up, Sock Madness begins!
3. Obsidio, the final book in the Illuminae trilogy, comes out next month. I have loved the first two ephemeral doorstoppers in this sci fi series and have high hopes for the final one.

What are you excited about coming up?

Today was a rather Mondayish Monday. It started shortly after Rudi departed for work as I was getting dressed, when I noticed a dark mark in the channel separating two tiles near the window. We live in a basement and it periodically floods when we get a lot of rain, which we did over the weekend. I’d checked the area yesterday and it had been dry, but apparently the rain we got overnight or early this morning tipped the balance. The water hadn’t spread far, but it required moving several things in order to get newspaper underneath the shelf the tv sits on, which I could see had water underneath it.

I had bought a birthday card last month for my brother, which I’d put aside for when it was closer to the date, but I needed to get it in the mail. I looked on the desk once, twice, and in various other spots where it shouldn’t have been, but could have been, before the card chose to reveal itself … right on the desk where I’d hunted.

Work included an email that was snide in tone, but I don’t think that was intentional. It also included a reminder about self-eevaluations and job descriptions, which is a pointless and frustrating experience at my office.

I forgot to do laundry earlier this evening, which means that the clothes I need for tomorrow’s volleyball game are not likely to be dry when I head to work in the morning.

And when I dug out my favorite sweater from the garment bag in the hall closet where I’d carefully placed it a couple years ago (I’d worn through the elbows and then worn through the patches and had put it away until I could figure out what to do with it), I discovered the bag had been damaged somehow and the hole breached by moths. I spent an hour with a lint roller removing worm casings and detritus. I can see several new holes, but I’m hopeful that the majority of the sweater can be salvaged after some mending.

The day was not all bad. I assuaged my frustrated feelings at the office by buying French fries from the deli next door, which I shared with my coworkers. Rudi made a delicious Tom Kha soup for supper, which we ate while watching the Olympics. There were gingerbread cookies for dessert and cocoa with Valentine’s Day sprinkles. And I knit several inches on the sleeve of my sweater, which felt very satisfying.

Here’s to tomorrow being a Tuesday (volleyball!) and Mardi Gras and Pancake Day all in one package!

I was supposed to spend the last two days figuring out what I want to do on my birthday Wednesday, but I end the weekend as clueless as I entered, having only “take day off” and “eat pizza for supper” on the list. What do you think I should do on my day off prior to suppertime?

The weekend did include some knitting and some reading and some napping; a walk in the rain and one in the heat (it nearly reached a very humid 70 today!); chats with friends; trips to the library, the grocery store, and the farmers market; a lot of Olympics watching; and the eating of tasty treats, including this heart-shapped chocolate mousse from the French baker who comes to the market.

How was your weekend?

I couldn’t help but be struck by this tree’s resemblance, with its bare branches covered in raindrops, to a spiderweb.

Okay, so I wanted to post my reviews for January’s reads today, but then I realized that there were seven books and they’d take time, so I decided to write this shorter post instead about what’s going on around me:

Tasting: Tea and cookie butter, which I was eating out of the jar with a spoon before I picked up the computer.

Hearing: Rudi’s rhythmic breathing. Traffic outside. Occasionally, the breeze. Corey groaning in his sleep.

Smelling: Nail polish. I just painted my nails with new polish that I bought back at Thanksgiving because it was a small company and it said it lacked the nasty chemicals that make nail polish one of those things we all should feel more guilty about using. Apparently those chemicals aren’t the thing that give nail polish its distinctive odor, though. (And, yes, I do realize the folly of painting my nails shortly before bed, particularly since Rudi just put clean flannel sheets on the bed earlier this evening. By morning my nails may be purple *and* fuzzy.)

Seeing: Fairy lights around the room. Corey asleep on the recliner (usually he wakes up when he hears me typing because he wants to help — or because the laptop is warm). The pile of laundry still on the rocking chair from the weekend. Wonder Woman: Warbringer lying open next to me. The still glistening bushes blowing outside.

Feeling: Grateful. I’m really lucky to lead the life I do and I take a lot of it for granted. But suddenly I am reminded of that, and I appreciate it all. And tired, so I shall hope the nail polish is dry enough and head to bed. Good night!

My weekend did not include everything on my list, but it did include a lot of it.

On Saturday, I slept the morning away and then spent the afternoon in Georgetown. I did a little shopping, visited the library, and took myself out to lunch. There were vegetarian tacos and hot chocolate and reading outside and in. Rudi and I spent the evening watching a video, Pirate Radio, about one of the ships in the mid-1960s England that played rock-and-roll radio because the BBC refused to do so.

Today, I went to the farmers market and another library, hung out with the cats, did some laundry and some tidying, and knit a little. Rudi and I had raclette for supper before he called it a night. I stayed up for cocoa and cookies and worked on a blog post for later in the week.

A quiet weekend, but a nice one.