Why is it that after a long weekend that the workweek, which should feel short feels twice as long as normal, and the next weekend, which should feel like a typical two days feels like you’ve barely had time to get home from work before you’re heading back in?

Anyway, this weekend started with two-thirds of the original Ghostbusters (I misjudged the start time) at the park near my house. (My main thought while watching it? Why is it that those guys didn’t have to prove their prowess to people once they started catching ghosts? Why did everyone just assume they were? Did the writers of the new Ghostbusters film feel their crew had to justify what they were doing because we are more jaded and suspicious than we were 30 years ago or because they were women? I get it’s fiction, but it made me think.)

Yesterday I slept in and then read from about six different books. I took myself out to dinner when Rudi had a volunteer thing, and then I went grocery shopping. I painted my nails, drank cocoa, and (after my nails were dry) ripped the problem sock back to before I screwed it up and got it sorted back out.

Today, we went to the farmers market, watched the final stage of the Vuelta a España, and then went out for the afternoon. We walked over to the Adams Morgan Day Festival, which was more scaled back and focused locally than it’s been lately, and ate cookies from The Cake Room (where we ran into our garden manager) and Indian food from Jyoti.

We then headed to the garden, where we watered, harvested some tomatoes (I may have crowed over two plum-sized tomatoes the squirrels hadn’t bothered to eat), four beans (two long ones and two purple ones), basil, and a potato, and ripped out a couple of tomato plants that had gone by, as well as the kale decimated by bronze beetles. I did not harvest a cicada I originally mistook for a weird pepper. We concluded our outing by heading up to Politics and Prose for their member sale, where I bought some presents. We returned home for a traditional summer supper of corn on the cob and capreses.

As I said, over too fast!

How was your weekend?

Today’s post is part of Karen’s Weekending roundup and Carole’s Ten on Tuesday meme:

We started the weekend with a picnic at the Yards. It was Julia’s birthday, so Sarah picked up cupcakes. I have not been feeling especially social lately, so I’d given myself permission to leave anytime after I’d wished Julia a happy birthday. I stayed until the park closed when we all went our separate ways.

I admired a rather spectacular sunset. I understand Hermine made for gorgeous evenings up and down the East Coast. (It was also lovely on Saturday as I was driving over the Key Bridge.)

Rudi and I went to the pool on Saturday. It was in the 70s and breezy and there were clouds that kept covering the sun. It was not crowded. We returned today for the final day of the season, and it was mobbed. So crowded that they’d run out of sign-up sheet space and just waved us in. The water was chilly, but the deck pavement was warm. I may have napped in between swims.

We did some grocery shopping. We picked up important things like whipped cream and Oreos and olive oil and cat food. We also went to the farmers market, where we bought more important things like tomatoes and celery and onions and milk.

We tried to go to an outdoor movie in Rosslyn, but it turned out to have been canceled. (That part was poorly advertised.) We came home and watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban instead. Last night, I stayed up late and watched 13 Going on 30. I’d forgotten Mark Ruffalo was in it. He seems like a nice guy, so I might watch more of his films just because he’s in them.

I got to see the Netherlands Carillon. It was … fine. One would assume it’s more impressive when someone’s playing it. The views from it of D.C., however, are stunning.

I slept in this morning. I probably could have slept more, but it felt productive to get up before 11.

I washed a lot of laundry and a lot of dishes. I put some things away. I probably could have done more of that, too.

We watered the garden and picked basil and three potatoes I could see poking out of the ground.

I read Clare Legrand’s Some Kind of Happiness. If you liked A Monster Calls or A Bridge to Terabithia or Wildwood, I’d recommend this.

How about you? What did you get up to this weekend?

This was both a productive Bout of Books and weekend for me, and I just wanted to share a little about each before moving on to this week. (Writing a separate blog post for each should have been on my weekend to-do list, but alas!)

My goals for Bout of Books 17 were to finish three books, take part in four BoB activities, and visit two fellow participants a day. I’m happy to say I finished three books (The Heist, The Rest of Us Just Live Here, and Friday Barnes, Girl Detective), started a new audiobook (Boy Meets Boy), and put in some more mileage on a fourth book that I finished a couple hours after BoB finished. I took part in both Twitter chats, didn’t get around to any of the challenges, and blogged twice, which gets me across that finish line, just. I didn’t visit fellow participants every day, but did several days, so I’m counting that as a victory, too. All in all, another good Bout of Books! I’ll be back for the next one, which is in early January.

As for the weekend, on Saturday, I started the day with the Bout of Books Twitter chat. We were out of easy food, and I still had some blueberries in the fridge that were okay, so I made us pancakes for breakfast. I don’t particularly like pancakes without blueberries, but I’m fine with waffles, so I would have gone that route if we’d been without.

Rudi and I moseyed over to the 17th Street Festival, where we bought some baked goods from the senior citizens having a bake sale and a half-off gift certificate to a restaurant I’d been wanting to try. It was hot, though, so once we’d covered the three blocks, we decided to head to a local cafe and have cold drinks.

In the evening, we ordered a pizza and picked it up and took it up to Carter Barron Amphitheater, where they used to show free plays in the summer. The Shakespeare Theatre pointed out that it was not especially helpful to low-income residents in other sections of town to hold free productions out in the woods near the well-off neighborhoods, so have moved their free play to a more central, mass-transit friendly location. Unfortunately, no one else has stepped up to put on plays, free or otherwise, at the amphitheater since then. They do, however, show a couple movies during the final week of August every year, and on Saturday, it was The Lorax, which we hadn’t seen. Watching a movie about the spirit of the forest while surrounded by trees seemed appropriate. It was still early when we got home, so we concluded the night by saying farewell to Inspector Lewis.

On Sunday, we slept in, rising just in time to catch the moment of nature at the end of CBS Sunday Morning, before heading out to the farmers market. We ate a leisurely breakfast (edited to add: and I painted my toenails a sparkly purple), then we got in the car and headed out to the library, the grocery store, and the D.C. State Fair. We ran into a friend, enjoyed some music, ate some mediocre ice cream from a vendor, and sampled some quite good rhubarb pie, a finalist in its category. It was fun, but it was held in a paved lot, so it was doubly hot, and after an hour, we were cooked.

I dropped Rudi off at home and headed down to water the garden, pick basil for dinner, and float in the pool for an hour. We ate supper and watched Help!, and I knit on my sock. After Rudi went to bed, I finished the book I was reading and put the laundry on, concluding the weekend with clean clothes and a completed to-do list.

How was your weekend?

Recognizing we’re already partway into Saturday afternoon, here’s what I hope to accomplish this weekend:

• Participate in the Bout of Books Twitter chat Saturday morning.
• Make breakfast.
• Go to the 17th Street Festival.
• Picnic during The Lorax at the Carter Barron Amphitheater. (It’s possible that by picnic, I mean pizza, but I may mean more traditional picnic food instead.)
• Swim.
• Paint my toenails.
• Attend the D.C. State Fair. (They’ve moved this further away, so, with weekend track work and a gimpy Rudi, this one may not happen.)
• Shop at the farmers market.
• Pick up Jacqueline Woodson’s memoir, Another Brooklyn, at the library.
• Water the garden.
• Do laundry.
• Watch the final Inspector Lewis episode.

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

This weekend was a quiet, pictureless weekend filled with heat, heat, and more heat.

We watched the end of the Tour de France. It was an enjoyable bike race, and I’m now looking forward to the Olympics in a couple weeks’ time.

I went to the pool and enjoyed playing in the water. That’s where we were on Saturday evening, when a rainbow appeared in the sky.

We did some laundry. (We did not fold it and keep moving the lump of clean towels and blankets from the bed to the sofa. I assume we’ll deal with it properly tomorrow.)

I went to the farmers market and to the grocery store and to the library.

I picked our first larger-sized tomato from the garden. (We also grow currant tomatoes, which are roughly the same size as a pea.) It’s not fully ripe, but I lost two earlier in the week to either a squirrel or a hornworm, so wasn’t going to take any chances.

I read some (I’m two-thirds done with Modern Lovers, which is overdue.) and knit some (the shawl did not get finished by the time the Tour riders reached Paris, but I am in the stripes), but did neither enough.

We fixed the blender and had our first daiquiris in a couple years. We’re either out of grenadine or it’s hiding well in the back recesses of the fridge, and I forgot to buy whipped cream, but otherwise it was very good, and I had two glasses over the course of the weekend.

I did dishes and slept, and I’m now going to do them both again.

Weekending along with Karen and Carole:

1. Missed the thunderstorm and got to picnic with Shawn and Sarah. We saw gigantic catfish and ate ice cream cones.
2. 

   Witnessed nature’s fireworks (a good thing since the manmade ones ended up being canceled after the ballgame went late.

3. Picked up some books and my latest summer reading prize at the library.
4. 
   

   Read and ate doughnuts along the river with Rudi.

5. Started a new knitting project for the Tour de France knit along and watched a lot of bike racing.
6. Went to the farmers market.
7. 

   Pulled out imitation strawberries and other vines from my garden. Ate peas. Checked on the blackberries growing on the fence. (This week…)

8. Slept in.
9. Saw The BFG at the cinema. We both really liked it.
10. 

    Biked down to the Lincoln Memorial and watched the fireworks through the fog and drizzle. (If you were watching A Capitol Fourth, you saw fireworks from previous, clearer years.)

How was your holiday weekend?