While I am not normally a list maker (although, to be fair, my blog may suggest that claim is false), I do enjoy how productive a weekend game plan makes me feel. I like to build in lots of things I was going to do anyway and make at least half of them fun, because it is, after all, a weekend.

So here are some things I’d like to do this weekend:

• Publish an Into the Stacks post (I’d love to get caught up this month, but I’m about 40 books behind, so it may carry on into December)
• Spend time outside (Capital Weather Gang says this is our peak color weekend, so I’d like to enjoy some of it; also, it would be good to get in a Coffeeneuring bike ride or two)
• Attend Upshur Street Books’ birthday party (Sunday evening, I think)
• Return a couple books to the library (Stressful feelings make me take out all the books, and I think it would be good to give a few of them back)
• Make dough (Hopefully pie. Possibly cookie. Related note: buy more butter)
• Finish a knitting project (Any knitting project)
• Shop (There are two Christmas markets at European embassies tomorrow and my farmers market on Sunday.)
• Clear off my desk (Our holiday party is four weeks from tomorrow; we need to start cleaning)
• Write some (thank you notes, birthday cards, bad poetry, anything really)
• Do some laundry (Related: get more quarters)
• Get some sleep (There’s a whole extra hour this weekend, after all!)
• Do an hour’s worth of calling for Hillary (I really don’t actually want to do this, but I loathe and fear the idea of a Trump presidency even more than calling strangers who don’t want to be bothered, so…)

How about you? What’s on your weekend wish list?

Wishing you all a very happy Halloween!

Here are some of the things I’m hoping to do this weekend:

• Paint my nails.
• Pick up some necessities at Target with the coupon that expires tomorrow.
• Buy milk and yogurt and maybe local peanuts at the farmers market.
• Make pie dough (possibly, also a pie, if I’m feeling ambitious).
• Publish an Into the Stacks post.
• Ride my bike to some hot drink purveyors.
• Check on the garden.
• Practice with my volleyball team.
• Watch Fail Safe at the Hill Center. (They’re showing free classic, politically-themed films every Sunday this fall.)
• Do laundry.
• Shop for my Ninja Book Swap partner.
• Do laundry.
• Finish a book.
• Take five books to one of the nearby Little Free Libraries (I’m really bad at letting any but the absolute worst books leave my collection).
• Knit on a sock and a shawl.

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

We headed up to Connecticut for a long long weekend, the benefits of which have worn off after a mere day of being back in the office. Such are the perils of the working girl!

What did I do while I was away, other than sit in a lot of traffic, you ask?

We listened to two losing Nationals games while driving. This makes me think that the Nats would prefer it if I would not listen to tomorrow’s game.

We got to be Amani and Marcus’ first guests to their new home, which was all in order after a mere week of occupancy (mine would have been cluttered with boxes forever months). They served up hot drinks, ice cream, and freshly baked scones and caught us up on all their news.

I slept in and generally caught up on sleep. There was also a mid-day cat nap on Monday.

I baked cookies, helped my mom peel apples for a pie, and made scones with my dad.

We celebrated my dad’s birthday.

I visited with Karen.

I admired the foliage, which was just beginning to pop along the state’s northern border. (This coming weekend will probably be lovely!)

We watched the film Sing Street, Lin-Manuel’s appearance on Saturday Night Live, the season premiere of Supergirl, and the second presidential debate.

I read Avi’s School of the Dead, which my dad had taken out of the library and kept so I could peruse.

We discovered two new sources of cider doughnuts.

T’is the season for apple picking:

Be careful that when you’re selecting your fruit, that you grab an apple to pull off the tree …

… and not a snake.

You have been warned.

This week marks the official turn from summer to fall, probably my favorite season of the year. To mark the occasion, Carole has asked us to focus our collective Ten on Tuesday attention on the five best things we did this summer and five things we’re looking forward to doing this fall.

The five best things I did this summer:

1. Saw Danny.
2. Received surprise free tickets to the Billy Joel concert.
3. Knit a pretty shawlette — and finished some brightly colored socks.
4. Witnessed beautiful sunsets and impressive lightning storms from Yards Park (and a rainbow from my local community pool).
5. Kept putting one foot in front of the other. (Carole specified best, not favorite.)

The five things I’m most looking forward to this fall:

1. Getting to visit with Karen. And my folks. But I’ve seen them more recently than her. This may be the longest we’ve had between visits since … college?
2. Attending the National Book Festival this weekend. (The hordes of people that attend and the confined space of the convention center ratchet my anxiety up to nearly unbearable. But to spend a whole day listening to people read to me, I’ll cope with it.)
3. Going apple-picking and going on a cider-doughnut excursion. (In the northeast, this is as easy as driving to your nearest farm stand, but down here it requires Sarah and I plan ahead.
4. Watching Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them and A Man Called Ove at the cinema.
5. Listening to post-season baseball. While the Nationals have not yet hit their magic number for clinching the NL East, and while the Mets are mired in a three-way contention for the wildcard spots, I expect to listen to a certain number of games. I grew up listening to baseball on the radio, and am always happy to enjoy a game that way. (Even, sometimes, when I’m at the ballpark.)

Honestly, I’d love to say a trip to the beach will happen this fall, but I’ve no guarantee that’ll happen, so I’m going with surer stuff.

How about you? What were some of the best things you did this summer? And what are you looking forward to this fall?