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?

Rudi was away this weekend, which meant a lot of my actions had to be justified to no one but myself.

Friday night, I picked up a pizza and soda and took it over to a school field where they were showing the latest Star Wars movie. It was a lovely night, and a good start to the weekend. I also started a new book, The Wrath and the Dawn, an adaptation of One Thousand and One Nights, which I’m enjoying quite a bit.

Saturday, I slept in and was lolling around the house contemplating a trip to the library when a friend texted to say he and his family were nearby and was I maybe interested in meeting them at the park. I gathered my library books to return and headed over, getting to spend a couple hours in a playground getting caught up. They dropped me off at the library on their way home, which was fortunate, because it gave me time to grab my holds and use the bathroom before the branch closed.

Peckish, I wandered down to Georgetown and stopped in at my favorite D.C. bakery. I think I’ve mentioned before that Baked and Wired serves their large hot chocolates in parfait glasses, topping them with thick, homemade whipped cream and chocolate chips. Because the line for the bakery side was half a block long, I picked from the four quick breads they keep on the coffeeshop side (conveniently line-free). The slice of cardamom coffee cake was light and moist and pleasantly spiced and was the perfect accompaniment to the rich chocolate drink. I started reading one of the books from the library, Jason Reynolds’ Ghost, named last week to the long list of the National Book Award in the young people’s literature category. Friday was Parking Day in D.C., when organizations and businesses can request to take over a parking spot for the day and turn it into a temporary park. Baked and Wired had taken part and had seen the merits of leaving extra seating up through their normal weekend rush. It was a pleasant way to spend the waning daylight.

This morning, I awoke early, arriving at the farmers market as they opened. We’re getting to the tail end of the summer produce season in the region, so farmers were warning this would be their final week or so of corn on the cob and peaches. I picked up quite a few of each, as well as two more bunches of basil to supplement last week’s batch of pesto. I ate breakfast, watched some tv, did some chores, and then headed down to the garden, determined to harvest my potatoes. I spent two hours in my plot, digging up potatoes, putting in some more that had gone by, harvesting some peppers, turning and supplementing soil, and planting some seeds for lettuces and winter greens. I returned home to find Rudi had just gotten back, and we headed to the park to enjoy the last of the weekend’s light.

How was your weekend?

Weekending along with Karen at Pumpkin Sunrise.