This weekend included:

Hot drinks.

A Halloween festival at my local park.

Pumpkin buying at the farmers market.

Cheering on lots of runners at the marathon early this morning.

A nap.

Several baseball games that didn’t quite work out.

How was your weekend?

Ride #2: Saturday, Oct. 26, afternoon
Kung Fu Tea (1529 Wisconsin Ave., N.W., 2nd Floor)

Today’s coffeeneuring ride was not quite what I had planned, but it let me try something new, so worked out fine.

This week’s adventure started out with a bus ride to Cleveland Park, because I started a little later than I planned. I ran a few errands, including a trip to the library, a couple of fruitless shopping stops, and a stop in at an Italian deli/pizza shop for pizza dough and a slice for a late lunch.

Then I hopped on a bikeshare and pedaled uphill to get across to Wisconsin Avenue, which I took down to Georgetown. It was a pleasant afternoon for a bike ride — less humid than I’d expected — and I passed people out raking and many Halloween decorations in the upper-middle-class neighborhood I rode through.

Because the nearest dock to where I wanted to go was at Safeway, I stopped to buy cat food and litter. Apparently my unofficial theme for this year’s coffeeneuring is carrying heavy bags of groceries with me. For the record, this is a terrible theme.

Groceries in hand, I walked the block to the French bakery I wanted to stop at because I heard they had a seasonal pumpkin croissant I wanted to try. Unfortunately, they were sold out of said item, and I decided to carry on down the hill on foot.

Next I stopped at a new Italian pastry shop that opened up where a gelato shop used to be (the French bakery used to be a fro-yo shop), but they only had coffee-flavored drinks, which would have been appropriate to the task, but disgusting, so I pressed on another half block to a drink shop I’d been curious about for some time: Kung Fu Tea.

Focusing on bubble tea, Kung Fu Tea is on the second floor over a Korean restaurant. The girl at the counter was very helpful when I explained that I had never had milk tea and asked for her recommendation for a hot variety. She pointed me to the Kung Fu Milk, and I opted to skip the tapioca bubbles this time.

It seems obvious that the restaurant, one in an international chain of bubble tea shops, is aimed at Georgetown students. There was a dearth of furniture and only three food items on the menu, suggesting its clientele tends to be transient and in search of beverages, rather than sustenance. Decor was minimal with only a couple of cases honoring Bruce Lee, a couple of stylized pendant lights, and some cheerful corporate graphics on the wall.

But the tea was warm and sweet, and I enjoyed it as the light faded away. I walked the last couple blocks to the nearest bikeshare dock (Wisconsin and O) and headed home for the night.

Should you ride your own bike there, know the sidewalks are narrow and there is not a lot of room to lock your bike to road signs. You will have better luck locking on one of the cross streets and walking over.

Total mileage: 3.15 miles

Today was a jam-packed day that included a half-day in the office, several hours working an expo floor, and a couple hours at an author event/literary bar party. And then I came home to watch the Nats game, or, rather, to completely zonk out during it because my poor introvert brain had used up all of its energy chatting with thousands of strangers. I was definitely awake during the 7th-inning stretch, because we stood up and sang (what, you don’t?), but I do not remember anything after that. I assumed Rudi would have woken me up if we’d won, but I still had to check the score to be sure. I’ve just been dead to the world for the past several hours.

I’m going to write this blog post, wash the supper dishes, and go back to sleep, but this time in bed, rather than curled up under a blanket on the couch.

Here’s what I’m hoping the rest of the weekend includes, after I recharge a little more:

• Watch the Nationals win the World Series. There are two more games in D.C., which are the exact number we need to wrap this thing up. Obviously that cannot be a coincidence. If it looks like we will clinch on Sunday, Rudi and I will probably head down to the Yards to watch on the jumbotrons they’ve set up in the park. (If it doesn’t, our tv does not require our getting rained on, and we’ll save that experience for another evening.)
• Cheer on a coworker who is running her first marathon.
• Do a coffeeneuring bike ride. I don’t know where yet.
• Procure Baby Shark donuts.
• Switch out my cold-weather clothing.
• Finish my shawl. I mean, come on already.
• Send some mail.
• Find Halloween lights (and candy to give out). Also give some thought to a costume.
• Possibly go apple picking. I need to reconnect with Sarah. If not, pick up a pumpkin at the farmers market on Sunday.
• Do laundry so I have clean sports bras. New volleyball league (with mostly friends from my outdoor team) starts Monday!
• Read, because it’s the fall Dewey’s Readathon and there are at least three books I’m reading that I could finish.

What’s on your to-do list for this final weekend of October? (Also, how is it nearly November? Wasn’t it just 90 degrees?)

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. I certainly didn’t expect (but am delighted nonetheless) to report that the Nationals have taken a 2-0 lead in the World Series. They return home tomorrow for Game 3 (and left fielder Juan Soto’s 21st birthday).

2. Leftover centerpieces from a summit my work hosted means I have a purple orchid sitting in a bowl on my desk.

3. My trip to the farmers market over the weekend netted a branch of Brussels sprouts, several quince, and a candy roaster squash nearly the length of my arm.

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

No knitting. No knitting pictures. I’m definitely feeling stuck, which probably means I need to just pick up one of my projects and put a few stitches in it. And then do it again.

I’m glad to report that while I put aside The Library Book (I was suddenly able to renew it), I did pick up NPR’s Linda Holmes’ debut novel, Evvie Drake Starts Over, which friends had loved. They had said it was a quintessential summer novel, because it takes place in Maine and includes a lot of baseball, but that actually made it a perfect fall book for me, since that’s when I miss New England the most. I can’t imagine it will take me far into the weekend to finish it, particularly since there’s no baseball to watch tomorrow night.

I’m nearly done with Jenny Colgan’s The Bookshop on the Shore, which also seems to fit with my mood, since in my head I kind of assume Scotland is not unlike Maine. If you liked the first Bookshop book, I think you will enjoy revisiting the town in this companion novel (but not really a sequel).

Next up, I think, will be George Takei’s graphic memoir about growing up in an American concentration camp.

I did pick many of the remaining tomatoes over the weekend, but left a few on the vine. While the outskirts of the city were at risk for a frost warning this week, the heat sink of a city keeps our garden a little warmer for longer.

I, do, however, have lots of peppers still growing. They’re always a reliable late-season crop for me.

There are fish peppers:

I grow them because they’re the cool stripey green and white of their leaves as they’re growing and then they turn the red you see below when they’re ripe.

There are lots of banana peppers:

And a few mini yellow bells:

I also still have basil left to harvest and turn into pesto for the winter.

The seeds I planted for fall greens don’t seem to have taken. I may give it a shot again this weekend when I’m there to see if anything comes of a late planting. It’ll all depend on when snow comes…