I’m starting to think ahead to winter. It’s the season I spend the most time alone (the perils of living with a ski coach) and it’s dark and cold and people don’t like to leave their houses to hang out.

Which means I have a challenging dozen weeks from January until mid-March.

I’ll have volleyball, of course. I suspect the team will play on Tuesdays, but I’ll try to add a Thursday night option, as well, to correspond with Rudi’s being away. Or I could add another sport, but I don’t know that my knees are excited about the running involved in soccer or basketball.

I could start a game night. Rudi likes games well enough, but not enough, I don’t think, that he’ll feel bad if I have folks over to play. That will require finding people who like playing games or maybe seeing if the Board Room or Labyrinth have a meetup.

I’m mulling a hot chocolate quest, to identify the best purveyor in the District. That should bring some of my friends out with me.

The library or one of the local bookshops might have a book group. I haven’t tried one in ages.

Or maybe one of the local yarn shops has an open knit night.

Any other ideas for getting out of the house (or getting other people into it) during the winter months?

(Oh, and if you’re looking for the answer for what I was for Halloween, Karen was correct, and I was a blue jay.)

This is my Halloween costume, which, it turns out, was harder for everyone to guess than I expected it to be. I’ll let you guys guess in the comments and fill you in on the right answer tomorrow. I will say that anything below the skirt is irrelevant to the costume. (I played volleyball in a prototype of the costume, which had a different shirt (same letter) and a sort-of makeshift blue long-sleeve shrug over it Thursday night, because I needed things that would stay put while I moved around the court.)

It was a drizzly evening in D.C., which meant we had a relatively uneventful night on the stoop with our bucket of candy, holiday playlist, and jack o’lanterns. We did see a few small people, several dogs who were disappointed our available treats did not include biscuits, and a bunch of college-aged kids, many of whom were international students celebrating their first Halloween. Best group costume went to a group of girls dressed as m&m’s.

I hope you had a nice holiday!

Looking ahead, this week I need to get some solid cover letters written. I’d also like to swap out the summer and winter clothes (D.C. is probably done with 80s finally, which will make that possible.) and get the fairy lights up again now that the darkness is coming so much earlier.

I also have my usual coaching and volleyball schedules. (I believe this Saturday may be the final week for grass volleyball. Sand volleyball will continue for a few more weeks before we move indoors for the winter.)

I have lunch with a friend on Thursday. And Saturday night, friends are throwing a Halloween party, so costume planning will be part of the week’s off-hours.

I have a couple books out right now that won’t be able to be renewed, so I need to make some time to spend curled up with them.

And tomorrow, Rudi and I are going to drive out to the mountains of Virginia to see some fall color. I’ve heard it’s muted up and down the Eastern countryside, but some color is better than none.

I kicked off this weekend with an apple-picking and cider doughnut-acquiring trip with Sarah and Rudi. Rudi and I were going to quickly eat supper and then head back out to catch the first day of Art All Night, but I’d stayed up late getting some job applications ready to submit this morning, and between that and the day in the sun, I was done and utterly crashed on the sofa.

But the weekend stretches before us, and here’s what I’m hoping to fill it with:

• Baking with some of the apples we picked. There’s definitely a crisp in my future and maybe a quick bread or an apple cake.
• Playing volleyball. The last grass court volleyball season of the year kicks off tomorrow.
• Working in the garden. There should be more tomatoes to pick and I might try planting the potato that’s on the counter that started to sprout. It’s late in the season, but what do I have to lose?
• Picking up holds from the library.
• Taking advantage of the second day of Art All Night. I’ll be more awake, and at least some of the activities will be in our neighborhood, so even if I’m not…
• Going to my friend’s on Sunday.
• Shopping at the farmers market. We’ve got to be getting close to the end of peaches and corn.
• Getting the group baby shower gift for a friend sorted out.
• Knitting.
• Tidying up the kitchen. We found a small bag of potatoes had gone bad the other night, because it had gotten hidden behind some other things on a shelf. It’s time to get that space sorted out.
• Getting some sleep. And with that, I’m off!

It’s been a while since I’ve contemplated what I’m hoping to do with my week. But Rudi comes home and a new season begins, and it seems like an obvious time to consider what the next seven days might hold:

• Attending the seasonal volunteer training (my volunteer gig kicks back off next Monday)
• Playing volleyball
• Picking Rudi up at the airport first thing in the morning (and convincing him the next logical stop is the doughnut shop)
• Making a cherry tomato dish
• Knitting
• Cleaning
• Applying for a job
• Doing laundry
• Going apple picking with Sarah
• Planting some seedlings in and weeding the garden
• Catching some of Art All Night on Saturday
• Practicing getting up early a couple days so dogsitting doesn’t come as a horrible shock next week!

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The volleyball team has worked on leveling up together, meaning nearly all of us are better than we were at the start of the season. We chased down balls we would have let drop, we blocked shots, and we made smart hits to beat a really solid team this week, moving us up into third in our league to end the regular season and making for a very merry gathering afterwards.

2. We arrived in Salt Lake this morning and while Rudi was getting his hair cut, I checked out a new-to-me tea house. The single-estate Assam tea from Kenya I tried was wonderful.

3. We saw A Strange Loop, a musical about a gay Black playwright struggling with his inner critics and his familial expectations, in New York City last weekend and found it deserving of every award it has won. The acting was outstanding, the lyrics moving and cheeky by turn, and the mostly minimal staging effective. I will need to read the libretto at some point, because there are seven people on stage nearly all the time and some of them singing over each other, which means I definitely didn’t catch everything that was going on.

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