This morning the heat came back and this afternoon the humidity joined it, leaving air that you felt might be possible to slice into like a pie — and just as oozy.

I’d invited Rudi to come up to the park before I’d actually left work or else I might simply have gone straight home. Sitting on the park bench felt neither cool nor refreshing, but the colors of the evening sky did make the extra few blocks’ walk worth it.

Tomorrow evening we’re going to watch Crazy Rich Asians from an air-conditioned movie theater, but Wednesday night we both have outdoor activities planned. I’m hoping for a mid-afternoon thunderstorm and a breeze to make things cooler by then. I hope more temperate weather is gracing your lives, too.

I spent a lot of time outside this weekend.

On Friday night, we took ourselves out for pizza and sat out on the patio admiring the moon.

On Saturday, I was out the door by early afternoon, which is good for me. I wandered over to the 17th Street Festival, where I bought some tea towels and some homemade muffins, sampled some local lemonade, and ogled handmade jewelry. I decided it was too nice of a day to spend on metro, so I biked down to the Wharf, where I saw one of the final dragon boat races of the day. That’s Boat #1 above, which was the ultimate winner of the community contenders category of the 2K distance. (Dragon boats have 20 paddlers, a steerer or sweep at the back of the boat, and a drummer at the front beating out the cadence of the paddling.)

Today, I headed over to Virginia to protest the Kavanaugh nomination to the Supreme Court. Have you called or emailed your Senators yet to ask them to vote no on his confirmation yet? Senate offices are reporting they haven’t heard from an overwhelming number of constituents on this issue, so it’s particularly important for you to have your voice heard. Hearings are due to start a week from Tuesday, so this will be a critical week to reach out, particularly if your Senators haven’t made a public statement about their stance.

Why is there no term for that level of relationship between acquaintance and friend? Pal, maybe? Anyway, my pal Joanne and I went out for lunch afterwards to a place that served what they called meggrolls (and that I probably would have said was a deep-friend empanada). I opted for a veggie pizza roll and a summer fruit cobbler roll, each of which I ate half of and then brought the other half home for a tasty mid-week lunch treat.

Since I was in Alexandria already, I stopped at the local charity shop to see if they had any frames for some artwork we have. They were having a half-price sale on art, so I came home with two frames I think will work for our purposes. I’m excited to take them apart and see how our prints look.

The weekend also included pool time on both days (today was the last day the pool closest to me was open for the summer), gardening (we harvested lots of tomatoes and basil, cut back some of our overgrowth, and enjoyed the local fauna), and evenings in the park. There were mid-afternoon naps, a Twitter chat, and cuddling with cats. We caught up on Elementary and started watching the Vuelta a España bike race. We ate suppers that featured veg we’d grown, and I knit and read (so far I’m enjoying listening to The President Is Missing). All in all, a very full, but lovely weekend.

Here’s what I’m hoping this weekend includes:

• Take part in the Bout of Books Twitter chat tomorrow morning.
• Watch some of the Dragon Boat Regatta.
• Go to a neighborhood festival.
• Swim at the pool.
• Protest the Kavanaugh nomination.
• Make sauce or soup from the tomatoes I bought this week and a dessert from the plums from last week.
• Do laundry.
• Send some mail.
• Spend lots of time outside.
• Drink daiquiris.

What are you hoping to get up to this weekend?

While I have a traditional weekday work schedule, Rudi’s current job has him working Tuesday-Saturday, which means we don’t get much of a chance to hang out. So we decided late in the week to see if I could get today off in order for us to head to the beach.

Friday night we went to one of the nearby parks for their final Friday night outside movie — Black Panther.

Saturday was filled with my normal weekend activities — pool, garden, laundry, cleaning. After a trip out to catch the last of the sun, we came home to have tacos for supper and watch a film on Netflix. I offered Rudi the choice of two literary adaptations — The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. He picked the latter and we agreed that it was absolutely adorable.

Sunday morning, Rudi went for a bike ride and I went to the farmers market. Then we headed to Delaware to catch Mamma Mia 2 at the old single screen movie house near our favorite beach town, stopping for ice cream at a farm stand along the way. We concluded the evening at a brew house in Rehoboth, where we ate fish tacos, drank beer (mine was of the root variety), and played a game of giant Connect Four.

This morning, we headed to the beach, expecting the low clouds to burn off by noon as the forecast had promised. Apparently Mother Nature doesn’t pay attention to the weather forecast, because the clouds hung around until nearly 5, even occasionally dripping slightly on us. The water was rough and with most of us who were without boogie boards opting to splash, rather than swim. We saw two swimmers need to be rescued from the rip tides by lifeguards, after being unable to explain that you need to swim parallel to the shore, rather than trying to swim toward it in that situation. (I imagine even if you knew that information, your panicking brain could chase it from your memory as you realize you aren’t making progress, but are getting more and more tired trying.)

The sun emerged briefly just before 5, but was chased back behind clouds for another hour or so, by which time I’d given up on being chilly and damp and had changed out of my bathing suit. We ate the drippiest ice cream cones ever and did a little shopping and then headed home, tired but happy.

I’m eager to be heading to bed, so this will be a quick sketch of what I hope the weekend includes:

• Swimming at the pool.
• Finishing my sock. (I had to rip the toe back again. These socks are way more persnickety than the cat they’re named after.)
• Picking tomatoes and basil from my garden.
• Partaking of a festival.
• Watching a movie.
• Doing laundry.
• Making something with my plums. (I have yellow ones in a white colander and purple ones in a yellow bowl. If they weren’t a haven for fruit flies, they would be ideal counter decorations.)
• Heading to the shore.
• Painting my toenails.
• Dancing.
• Cleaning the kitchen.
• Enjoying a thunderstorm.

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

With just over two weeks left in August, three weeks until Labor Day, and about five weeks until the autumnal equinox, it seems a good time to think about what I’d still like to do this summer:

• Get back to the beach again.
• See a few more movies outside.
• Swim at the pool twice a week until it closes for the season.
• Explore Teddy Roosevelt Island, the Arboretum, or the Aquatic Garden (since I’ve never been to any of them).
• Find a park where the trees are the right distance for hanging our hammock. Barring that, spread out a blanket and read all afternoon.
• Finish knitting a second pair of socks.
• Relax over strawberry daiquiris.
• Attend the National Book Festival and a few neighborhood festivals.
• Check out the two new ice cream shops that have opened nearby.
• Watch the dragon boat regatta.

How about you? What are you hoping to accomplish before summer comes to an end?