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.

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?