Last weekend’s list was overly ambitious, particularly since I was sick. This weekend’s to-do list is shorter, if not actually more scaled back:

• Do a couple last Coffeeneuring bike rides.
• Dig up my potatoes.
• Clean the bathroom and the kitchen.
• Sort through my clothes.
• Complete my socks.
• Finish Exit West

I’d like to include watch a movie on this list, but Rudi caught my cold, which caused us to cancel not one, but two, movie plans this week already and I just can’t bring myself to make it three.

How’s your weekend looking? What are you hoping it includes?

Here’s what I hope my weekend includes:

• Get some sleep. I think I’m fighting off the cold that’s going around the office. Also, drink a lot of orange juice and tea.
• Procure quarters.
• Do laundry.
• Go for a coffeeneuring bike ride.
• Meet Sarah for Crafty Bastards (the big annual craft fair)
• Write the Virtual Advent announcement post.
• Read.
• Finish my socks.
• Watch a movie.
• See what survived tonight’s frost/freeze at the garden. (I stopped on the way to work this morning and picked all the remaining tomatoes, peppers, and ground cherries.)
• Send out my Christmas party invitation.
• Clear off my desk and the coffee table.
• Bake a cake. (This one, above all the others, is contingent on not getting sick.)

How about you? What do you hope to do this weekend?

Some Halloween photos from around town:

(My colleague made these witchy cake pops.)

(Our IT department set up a haunted technology graveyard.)

This is this year’s Halloween costume. Only a very small percentage of people knew who I was … and mostly women of a certain age. I have faith in my readers, though…

Between being out of town last weekend and last night being lost to sheer exhaustion after a two-day work meeting, I have lots of plans for this weekend:

• It’s the first week of Coffeeneuring, the annual informal holiday period in which people ride bicycles in pursuit of hot drinks. So I’ll be doing that. Maybe twice.
• I have a dvd that didn’t get unlocked when I picked it up and I have books on hold, so a trip to the library is in order.
• We’re now in mid-October, so it’s fair game to hang up my Halloween lights.
• We’re nearly out of milk and eggs and probably need greens, so the farmers market is on the agenda for Sunday morning. We’re also out of cat litter, so that means a trip to the store.
• I chopped off my hair ten days ago and am still lacking in hair gel for my short ‘do. I’d like to rectify that.
• There is a mountain of laundry in the bedroom. Either we have to wash some of it or name it as a significant geological feature of the area.
• I think I can finish either the edging of my shawl or Little Pumpkin sock #1.
• Apparently, today is National Dessert Day. While I’d like to make a dessert, I’ll settle for eating some.
• The Freer/Sackler Galleries of the Smithsonian are putting on IlluminAsia this weekend.
• No one has checked on the garden in a week. Probably someone should do that. Probably that someone will be me.
• I need to get to a yoga class before my pass expires.
• Complete my Cybils nominations before tomorrow night’s deadline.
• Trombone Shorty is playing at the new Anthem club down at the Wharf development along the river. He’s been on my like-to-see list for a while and tickets are reasonable, so maybe we’ll go check him out.

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

This past weekend was desperately needed, so of course I packed it jam full, and now I need another weekend in which to recuperate. On Friday, I got out of work early enough to see the sun set and to do some reading in the park. On quieter evenings, you can hear “Taps” played from the Naval Observatory (where the vice president lives) a mile or so up the road, so I stayed past that point and to where the brilliant cotton candy clouds began to fade into darkness. Rudi and I spend the evening watching The Grand Budapest Hotel and both enjoyed it quite a bit. Should you have missed it back in 2014, it’s a Wes Anderson-directed, star-studded gem of a film about the relationship between a concierge and his latest hire, a young immigrant lobby boy, at a luxury hotel in a fictitious country at the beginning of World War II. While its tongue is planted firmly in its cheek, it also has a surprising amount of heart and, while it doesn’t take itself seriously, it does take seriously the situations and relationships of its characters. There’s a heist, some social commentary, and a delicious dessert I’m eager to make, and generally I just recommend it, even if you don’t always like Wes Anderson’s movies (I often don’t).

Saturday morning I slept in, then got up, read some over breakfast, and did some chores. In the late afternoon, Rudi and I got to see the second of four Mets-Nationals baseball games happening over the weekend. While the Mets did not win, they narrowed the gap enough you thought they might, if only they’d had another couple innings in which to play. We spend the afternoon at a friend’s 40th birthday party, which featured far less drinking than his 30th. Ah, age! Our friends had rented out a local clubhouse for the party, and it was a gorgeous evening to spend relaxing on the porch.

On Sunday, Rudi awoke with a cold, so I headed to the farmers market alone to buy breakfast and some produce. We ate muffins and raspberries and watched the end of the Vuelta bike race (it’s the Spanish equivalent of the Tour de France). I ventured out to the garden and pool for a while, but had to return early to make dinner (since Rudi was under the weather) before heading out with Sarah for the final baseball game of the matchup. It was actually a make-up game from July — when Sarah and I spent three hours at the ballpark waiting for a game that never came — so it was perhaps understandable that there weren’t a ton of people in attendance. Unfortunately, the Mets had used up all their winning earlier in the day, but I got to eat fried dough and cotton candy for dessert and enjoy the uniforms and nicknames everyone was sporting for the weekend. The game began late and the new metro schedule cuts off service at 11:30 on Sunday nights, which means that the final train pulls through the nearby station 45 minutes before that. So, I was prepared for the game to run late and me to have to get back across town on my own. Luckily, D.C. has a bikeshare system, so after Sarah and I walked back to her neck of the woods, I put on my helmet and hopped on a bike and took a populated route back to mine (the advantage of a city is that there is often a populated route). There was time for a cup of tea and some audiobook listening and then I went off to dreamland to prepare for another workweek.

How was your weekend?

While four weeks remain until Labor Day weekend and six to the summer season, it’s helpful to remember that time is fleeting and I should make the most of it, rather than sleeping until noon every weekend. Or, if I do, I should leap out of bed and on to my tasks at hand. This weekend that includes:

• Put the apartment back to some semblance of order. We’re still hanging the rug out to air, so furniture and containers are all over the place. I’d like to see all of them back in place, on top of a washed floor, by Sunday night, because until that happens, we have nowhere to dry laundry. To accomplish this task, I’ll need to buy a new Swiffer, since our first generation one finally disintegrated. I should probably also track down some new vacuum bags, since our last one has been loaded down with baking soda.
• De-stone whatever fruit remains in the refrigerator and freeze it.
• Go swimming. Because summer.
• Write an Into the Stacks post
• Refill the tea canisters, so I can have more choices again.
• Finish my library book and return it and several others, all overdue, to the system.
• Turn the heel on the sock you see above. It’s a Christmas present for Rudi. From last Christmas.
• Go to the garden. See if my tomatoes survived the deluge. Pinch back the basil. Maybe plant some beans.
• Buy corn, peaches, and tomatoes (also, maybe grapes) at the farmers market, because what meal is complete without at least one of those these days?
• Find out if the sunflower fields in Maryland are still in bloom. We were supposed to head out there on Tuesday, but then we returned to a flooded apartment, so now we’re aiming for Sunday.
• Attend the Miles Morales (Spiderman) book launch party at the comic book shop in my neighborhood. I’m really excited to read it, and not just because author Jason Reynolds is living in D.C. right now.

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