I am heading to upstate New York from just outside the City right now to join friends in our annual folk festival camping trip (where I hope to experience many more than three beautiful things). In the meantime, I leave you with three beautiful things from the past week (written a bit early):

1. Saturday was Western Market’s late market of the summer, staying open until 10. Rudi and I went around sunset to avoid the heat, but found little that piqued our fancy. (Lots of chunky jewelry.) But Woolarina was there with some cute project mini tote bags she’d stenciled. When I bought one that declares “She’s crafty!” Paula (the D.C. half of Woolarina) got very excited, which made me even happier with my purchase.

2. Sweet cherries are too sweet for my grandmother’s cherry cobbler recipe we discovered accidentally a few weeks ago. In the meantime, I bought some sour cherries at the farmers’ market, and they worked just great. Three nights of yummy dessert!

3. A group of my coworkers and I went out to lunch Tuesday to celebrate two recent birthdays. The birthday girls chose a local sports bar, where we sat at a tall table and gabbed. All of a sudden I realized that a Peter, Paul, and Mary song was playing over the speakers. Then some other oldies. I began to bop in my seat and hum and warned everyone that by the time we left, I could be belting the songs aloud. Sarah started singing under her breath. Then Cee-Cee. And Amani was keeping time. It was very funny but also very fun.

We’re at the theater right now, watching one of Erik’s recommendations. Tomorrow morning we head further north in New York to Howard County’s Hillsdale for our eighth Falcon Ridge.

Falcon Ridge is in a new spot this year, but otherwise it will hopefully remain its old reliable self. What I’m most looking forward to this time around:

1. Shelley, Mike, Daschel, and Irisa. It’s good to have traditions, particularly when they involve friends.
2. Old favorites, including Cheryl Wheeler, Christine Lavin (yes, I will sing along if she does a baseball song, Dad), Shawn Colvin — who was so endearing the last time I saw her when she opened for Sting because she was grateful that we actually seemed to want to hear her sing for a little while (post-show, I wished Sting had opened for her!), Tracy Grammer (it wouldn’t be FRFF without her), and Eddie from Ohio (Julie will have the loudest voice on the hill this year with Vance absent).
3. A better acquaintance with some previously heard artists, especially Susan Werner, John Gorka, and Crooked Still.
4. New acts. I’m particularly interested in hearing Modern Man, Winterpills, and emerging artist act Cletus Kennelly & Lori Kelley (who hail from here in the District). No new Connecticut acts this year, but there is an emerging artist from my birthplace (Eugene, Oregon) whom I might need to check out.
5. S’mores. ‘Nuff said.
6. The workshop stage. All the artists get solo sets at the main stage, the family stage, or the dance stage. The workshop stage is where they get to perform together, to feed off one another, and generally to impress the heck out of the crowd. Somehow I didn’t make it over there last year. I’d like to get back this time around.
7. The swimming hole. I finally made it to Copake’s Taconic State Park to swim last year and now it’s an extra six miles away (each way!) on the bike! Good thing I’ve been practicing.
8. Taste Budd‘s cocoa (made of chocolate ganache) and truffle budds. I would drive miles for these (but luckily they’ll be right there on the midway).
9. Sunflower Farm Pizza — whenever I want it.
10. New cds — enough to last until next year.

Yes, there’s still stuff to do before we head out on vacation tomorrow morning. (First stop: NYC to see The Drowsy Chaperone. Second stop: Hillsdale, NY, for the annual Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. Final stop: Turkey Ridge to see Gramma and the folks.) I haven’t assembled a “pretty” outfit for the theater tomorrow night. (Although fashion has scaled back over time, somehow I don’t think Broadway is ready to see me in my tank top-flip flop-shorts standard camping fare.) I don’t know where the headlamp is. I haven’t dug out (or cleaned) the cooler. I still have piles of stuff on my desk.

But my brain has already hit the road north, desperately seeking days of nothing that “has to get done” and cooler weather. So I’m going to clear off my desk, turn on the automatic email response, forward the phone, and head home to sort through the rest of the stuff there.

(It should be noted that while I have not packed any clothes yet for my adventure, several books and a knitting project were packed last night.)

I’ve got several posts ready to go during my absence, so feel free to check back while I’m away. (Comments are always welcome, but they won’t appear on the site until I’m back to approve them.) Live posting resumes Sunday night or Monday morning from my folks’ place in Connecticut.

I dropped David Weathers from my fantasy baseball team this morning. And I feel terrible for doing it.

I’ve said before that I’m not a cut-throat team manager. And my record shows that. I’m now 85 points behind the leader and more than 50 points behind my nearest competitor. I am losing by so much that it’s almost (bitterly) laughable.

My main strategy in fantasy baseball (as I’ve mentioned before) is to acquire as many Mets and former Mets players as I can and to create a team out of them. There are some exceptions. Pudge Rodriguez has never played for the Mets, but he seems like a nice guy and I have a thing for aging catchers (in this instance when I say aging I mean two years older than I — how sad!). Preston Wilson never played for the Mets, but his dad, Mookie, did. Livan Hernandez is my nod to the hometown Nationals (although if he doesn’t start picking up his pace a bit, or if he gets traded away, I might consider dropping his 5.87 ERA (earned run average) pitching arm from my team).

Last year I managed to pick up lots of Mets. This year, they seem to be in higher demand (fair-weather managers!) and Yahoo picked some other random players for me, including a closer who quickly went onto the DL (disabled list). When they did that I consulted my magic list of “Mets who don’t play for the Mets” pitchers and came up with David Weathers, who was the de-facto closer for the Reds. It was rumored he wouldn’t stay in the position for long, but he started the season strong and I wanted to give him a chance. He’s always seemed like a player on the up and up, respected by his teammates and not dissed by the overly harsh and powerful New York City media and fan bases.

Last year Weathers pitched a decent 3.94 with a 7-4 record and 15 saves. With him in the closer position, I hoped for similar or better this year. But with his ERA hovering dangerously close to 5, Weathers recently was demoted back to middle reliever. The Reds have acquired a new lefty who will replace both Weathers and Todd Coffey as closer, at least for the time being. Weathers is just pitching an inning or two a game thrice a week, which is hard on a fantasy manager, particularly when the pitcher also misses out on getting a notch in the hold category.

And my original closer came off the DL to pitch two innings of shut-out ball.

My heart broke a tiny bit when I clicked the “Drop this player” button. But I clicked it anyway.

What does that say about me?

I am sorry, David. You don’t know me. You didn’t know you were on my fantasy team, or, probably, on any fantasy team. And you’ve just been dealt a tough blow for a pitcher, being demoted back to middle reliever or, even worse, right-handed specialist. I didn’t make your day any better, even if you didn’t know it. Thanks for all the good memories, and I’ll be rooting for you. Good luck.

Well, we did not go to the beach to visit Karen and Michael today as we’d hoped to do. The stars just didn’t end up aligning properly to encourage that scenario to work out.

However, we tried to quench our disappointment with other fun (and productive) activities that we wouldn’t have gotten to do otherwise:

1. See Russian Dolls (Les Poupées Russes) at the Avalon. I loved L’Auberge Espagnole (Russian Dolls picks up a couple years after L’Auberge left off) when it came out a few years ago and the ability to see foreign, art, and limited-release movies like this is one of the best parts of living in the city.
2. Shop. I went to the farmers’ market this weekend and came home with corn on the cob, shallots, potatoes, seconds tomatoes (Rudi wants to make gazpacho), squash, peaches (to make a pie), milk (to use next week when we come home from vacation), cheddar, and a pepper. We also got to buy some of the provisions we’ll need for the camping trip.
3. Cook. Dinner was a broccoli-cheddar quiche followed by leftover cherry cobbler topped with French vanilla ice cream. All (except the ice cream) made by me.
4. Clean. (Okay, this part was not as much fun as the rest, but it was necessary.) I am ashamed (but not so much as not to share) that we have not finished cleaning up following last month’s floods. But today the bottom futon went back on the bed. The last chair we’d been meaning to drag out to the street got picked up by someone who was excited to have hand-me-down furniture. Laundry was done, including some winter stuff that ought to have gone into seasonal storage months ago. I found that we own a butcher’s block under all the mail that had piled up. Rudi was terribly productive and packed all his vacation clothes already. (I am not that productive, although I have decided on what knitting project to take with me…) We aren’t done yet, but we’re both feeling much better about where we stand tonight as compared to Friday.

   Two-plus days and counting until vacation….

Did you know that people get up early on Saturdays, leave their homes, and go and do things?

No, neither did I.

But this morning we were hoping our mechanic could do a quick oil change on the car and look at our non-working A/C before we head north 8 hours on Wednesday in 99 degree heat. Unfortunately either the person Rudi talked to on the phone Thursday was confused or they ended up being short mechanics because there were 30 cars ahead of me when I arrived at the shop at 8:10 this morning. So, no go. We’ll probably track down a Jiffy Lube or some such thing out in Virginia this week instead.

But when I came home, since the bike was already out of the Burrow and so was I, we decided to take a quick spin out along the river. 8.5 miles, half a bagel and an orange juice later, we’re back and it’s not even 10:30!

Now I’m going to jump into the shower before I head over to Western Market to see what wonders they can offer me. I’m hoping to find Christmas presents that I can squirrel away. It’s a possibility, right?

Other than that, we’re going to do some tidying this weekend and maybe drive out to the Maryland shore tomorrow to catch up with Karen and Michael who are heading down here on vacation. Laundry and other such nonsense must also be taken care of so we have clean clothes to wear to the theater and to Falcon Ridge.