Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Jason and I are taking refuge from the rain in a bus shelter as the sun begins to emerge from the clouds. “With the clearing, there should be — yep! There it is — a rainbow — above the bus, between the buildings!” The woman in the opposite corner says, “You weren’t talking to me, but you made my night. Thanks!”

2. Two of the guys who play pickup with us are moving away, so I bake oatmeal scotchies. Everyone marvels, and I reply that it’s a recipe my grandmother used to make that seems to have fallen out of rotation, based on people’s reactions. “Can you share the recipe?” one woman asks. “Sure. You can find it on the back of the butterscotch chips package!”

3. I do not play well Wednesday night and I say that to the teammates who go out for dinner and drinks after we lose the final. “We win together and we lose together,” they reply, and I believe them.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. One of the streaming services I have access to via a library account offers the new Dean Devlin show, The Librarians: The Next Chapter, that airs on a channel/service we don’t otherwise subscribe to.

2. The Nationals and the Reds serve up a football score (18 runs, 24 hits), and still somehow manage to leave us with breath held in the ninth inning as the Nationals give back two runs in the ninth before eking out the victory. But it’s a great night for a game, I have a credit that covers supper, two friends join us, and Azzi Fudd of my UConn Huskies is a surprise guest at the ballpark. (If she’d been less of a surprise, I would have hustled from coaching so as not to miss her throwing out the first pitch, but still…)

3. There is a brief respite between heat domes, and we glory in the air not feeling like soup for a few blessed days.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week (a day in the sun meant I fell asleep without writing this yesterday):

1. We spent Thursday at the beach. It was my first trip to the beach in over two years — long overdue and greatly appreciated.

2. We’ve been hit by heavy storms several times this week, but each time I was someplace where I could take shelter before the worst of it kicked in.

3. I sprained my wrist earlier in the month and it hurt enough that I needed to take a week off from playing. My friend Rebecca was able to tape it up in such a way that I could play last weekend and sent a link to a video so Rudi could tape it for me for my weekday game.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. At the last minute, I snuck up to spend a few days with my folks. I sprained my wrist (or, rather, another player sprained it for me) just before heading north, so between that and the heat, I was less helpful than I’d hoped to be, but we got the deck swept and the screen door on, and I brought fans up from the basement when their central a/c bit the dust. All in all, we had a nice, low-key visit, eating tasty meals and drinking strawberry daiquiris, chatting and listening to music and watching Barbie.

2. Violent thunderstorms were predicted for D.C. the afternoon I headed home, and even before we left Connecticut, they were announcing a barrage of canceled flights. But it was still dry when we landed, so I was able to get off in Foggy Bottom to hit the farmers market and the library on my walk home. Rudi came down to meet me and help with the bags, which I appreciated tremendously. The skies opened up not long after we made it home, and I was able to enjoy the very loud thunder from my sofa. (It didn’t hurt that it also postponed the volleyball game I was going to have to watch from the sideline.)

3. The showing of Clueless at our local park was canceled *again* tonight due to the forecast and the mud, so I switched up my evening itinerary and headed to Fort Reno to catch the second concert of the season. The last band of the night, Soroche, was particularly fun.

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

I’m still a little behind in reviewing books, but let’s be honest: none of us thought I was going to be this up-to-date, given I usually make it a month or so before giving up on posting reviews.

Anyway.

I finished five books in May:

Kills Well with Others by Deanna Raybourn

In this follow-up to Killers of a Certain Age, the quartet of retired women assassins return. In this story, there is a mole in the secret agency they worked for, which leads to a former colleague being murdered and a clue being left that points to one of their old assignments. Their contact, not knowing which current agents she can trust, turns to them, asking them to go undercover on a cruise and take out the person responsible, while she works the internal angles. Only it turns out that even after his death, there may still be ripple effects that continue to be in play, bringing danger once again to their loved ones.

Solid fun. Honestly, if this book series hasn’t been optioned to a studio yet, it’s a shame.

Paper. Library. (more…)

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share books we’d like to re-read.

Here are ten of mine:

1. Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde (It was so long between the first and second books that my memory of the story has grown hazy. It is sitting on my coffee table waiting for me to get moving.)
2. A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas (A charming memoir to reread every few Decembers)
3. Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (I keep thinking I’ll start it in January (or maybe it really begins in March?) and carry on with a year-long readalong.)
4. Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence (See above.)
5. Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next (One of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors.)
6. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (I haven’t re-read it in more than 20 years.)
7. As You Wish by Cary Elwes (I read it in print the first time and think it would be fun to listen to it at some point.)
8. The Delicacy and Strength of Lace by Leslie Marmon Silko and James Wright (I loved this slim volume of correspondence.)
9. The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune (I have the sequel sitting on my coffee table and should revisit this one. I hope I love rereading it as much as I did Under the Whispering Door last year.)
10. Sorcery & Cecelia by Patrica Wrede & Caroline Stevermer (I’d like to read the rest of this series, but, again, it’s been a long time since I started it.)

How about you? What books do you want to revisit?