To accompany the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympic Games, I had a Korean feast tonight. I stopped at one of the local bibimbop shops and bought myself a vegetarian bowl, a Choca Pie (which is similar to a moon pie), and a Sac Sac Grape, which turned out to have real grapes in it! (I was really relieved what bumped into my lip when I took my first sip turned out to be a grape!)

The ceremony was lovely, as expected, and I cast on a Ravellenic Games project, which I’ll tell you about tomorrow.

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. We’re going to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in New York City in May!

2. My coworker brought me a couple of the fudgey cookies she made over the weekend.

3. Olympic coverage began this evening, so we got to watch some winter sports before the Opening Ceremony had even begun.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

Okay, so I wanted to post my reviews for January’s reads today, but then I realized that there were seven books and they’d take time, so I decided to write this shorter post instead about what’s going on around me:

Tasting: Tea and cookie butter, which I was eating out of the jar with a spoon before I picked up the computer.

Hearing: Rudi’s rhythmic breathing. Traffic outside. Occasionally, the breeze. Corey groaning in his sleep.

Smelling: Nail polish. I just painted my nails with new polish that I bought back at Thanksgiving because it was a small company and it said it lacked the nasty chemicals that make nail polish one of those things we all should feel more guilty about using. Apparently those chemicals aren’t the thing that give nail polish its distinctive odor, though. (And, yes, I do realize the folly of painting my nails shortly before bed, particularly since Rudi just put clean flannel sheets on the bed earlier this evening. By morning my nails may be purple *and* fuzzy.)

Seeing: Fairy lights around the room. Corey asleep on the recliner (usually he wakes up when he hears me typing because he wants to help — or because the laptop is warm). The pile of laundry still on the rocking chair from the weekend. Wonder Woman: Warbringer lying open next to me. The still glistening bushes blowing outside.

Feeling: Grateful. I’m really lucky to lead the life I do and I take a lot of it for granted. But suddenly I am reminded of that, and I appreciate it all. And tired, so I shall hope the nail polish is dry enough and head to bed. Good night!

I’m currently enthralled with three books: Anthony Horowitz’s Magpie Murders, which I’m listening to on audio and which is a mystery set inside a mystery; Leigh Bardugo’s Wonder Woman: Warbringer, about the ill effects of an encounter between our favorite Amazon and a descendent of Helen of Troy; and Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, about a young woman who survived a horrific event as a child and who is now looking for love. It took me a bit to get into, but it’s now occupying a good amount of my brain.

The knitting is the sock I cast on during the play on Saturday. It’s Marathon North Pole yarn, which I’ve knit from previously, and which is doing some interesting wavy things in the jacquard section of the sparkly self-striping yarn.

Visit As Kat Knits to see what other folks have been reading and knitting this Unraveled Wednesday.

This is mostly just interesting to me, but I figured I’d record these stats here so I can find them later on:

Books read: 79
Pages read: 23,203
Paper vs. audio: 66/13
Library vs. owned: 65/14
Female author vs. male: 20/56/3 (male and female co-authors)
Translated works: 2
Re-reads: 1
New-to-me authors: 53
Genres:

Fiction: 58
Nonfiction: 9
Poetry (or verse novel): 4
Graphic novel/comic collection: 6
Picture book: 2

Fiction genres:

General fiction (including contemporary and historical fiction): 36
Mystery/caper: 12
Fantasy/sci fi: 10

Audience:

Kids: 2
Middle grades: 14
YA: 34
Adult: 29

#OwnVoices authors/illustrators: 37
5 star/4/3/2: 8/36/33/2

It was a weird weekend. Friday night Rudi had to work, so I told him that morning that I’d make lasagna for supper. I did, in between watching Agents of SHIELD (I did not love the reveal in this week’s show, although it wasn’t anything I hadn’t been expecting).

I slept in both Saturday and Sunday. Yesterday I’d meant to get up a little earlier to take advantage of the morning sunshine and to get up to one of the other farmers markets where my favorite King Cake baker was going to be, but alas! I did get going early enough to take the soiled duvet to the dry cleaners and to stop by the bagel place (where in a true Saturday miracle there was not a single person in line when I was passing) and Starbucks for a cup of tea to take with me to the library. I had seen an advertisement for a free play reading, so thought I’d spend the afternoon watching live theater.

If you’ve never seen a staged reading (and I hadn’t until a couple years ago), it’s different from a play performance in that the cast is essentially just reading from the script at microphones at the front of the room and someone (in this case, the playwright) reads the stage directions so you can imagine the action. The play, You Should Run for Congress, by John Krizel, was a sweet story about a former Hillary Clinton field organizer in Wisconsin who, once back in D.C., convinces one of her best friends that he should move out to Fairfax, Virginia, where he teaches high school social studies, and run for the House of Representatives from that district.

It was a very D.C. play, where many of us spend a lot of time poking fun at the nearby ‘burbs and where many of us know people who’ve helped work, if not run, political campaigns around the country. I did not agree with the final takeaway of the play, which is that you need to have grown up in a place in order to know it well enough to represent it, but I definitely agree that you shouldn’t move someplace specifically to run for office. (In D.C., that should be interpreted as you shouldn’t drop out the Democratic Party in order to run for Council as an “Independent.”) But, the play was funny, had a lot of good lines (which I might have Tweeted out if I hadn’t been knitting while watching) and solid actors, and had the solid endorsement of being a very fast way to pass two hours on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

During the week, a coworker and I were discussing hot chocolate and she asked if I’d tried a shop near our office, which had opened back in the fall. I had not, so after the play ended and I’d checked out my books, I headed downtown and bought myself a cup.

That’s the milk chocolate version, which is accented with cardamom, I think, and homemade whipped cream. It was really good, some of the best I’ve had in D.C. I’m not sure they’ll beat out Baked & Wired, simply because of the difference in the cost/size value, but if you’re going simply on taste, Café Chocolat may, in fact, have the edge. Plus, you can buy other chocolates while you’re there.

Today, on the other hand, was filled with sloth. It was raining when my alarm went off, so I simply rolled over and went back to sleep. I did eventually get up, around noon, and head out to the farmers market. I bought a few things and then returned home through the chilly drizzle, put on lounge clothes and curled up under a blanket on the sofa where I’ve done things as varied as listen to an audiobook, play games on my phone, call my folks, take a nap, and eat supper. I did wash laundry and dishes are still on my to-do list, so I have taken care of a few of the things I should have.

I hope you had a nice weekend, regardless of whether it was more like Saturday or Sunday.