Three beautiful things from my past week:
1. A group of people are playing petanque on the pathway at the park.
2. The post office delivers my box a day earlier than I expected, so my package was only a day late for Father’s Day, rather than two.
3. The sky has been awash with beautiful shades of rose, pink, and salmon at sunset lately.
How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?
Since moving to D.C., each summer has brought outdoor summer films. It used to be a handful of movies shown on the Mall and then, as inflatable screens and other tech became cheaper, you could spend five nights out of seven somewhere in the area watching a movie. I literally built it into my annual movie plans — “Oh, there’s no need to see that at the theater; everyone will be showing Jumanji: The Next Level this summer, and it will be fun to watch it under the stars.”
But despite setting summer movie schedules way back in February and early March, the only places I hear about still doing outdoor movies this summer are out in the ‘burbs, where they can run them as literal drive-in’s, but charge $40 a car. I’d be willing to throw something in the kitty, but not $20 a person.
So, now I’m thinking Rudi and I should do our own weekly summer movie festival this summer and watch some seasonal favorites (in addition to whatever new releases come our way).
Here are some of the movies I associate with summer:
Got any quintessential summer movies you recommend we add to my list?
“Sunrays and Saturdays” is an early Vertical Horizons song off their second album, Running on Ice (1995). While it’s technically about a couple breaking up, the song reverberates down through the ages (read: in the decades since college) for me because of good things the singer wishes for his ex because he “still feel[s] love for you.”
After all, who doesn’t wish all these things for the people that we love:
Sunrays and Saturdays
Perfect starry nights
Sweet dreams and moonbeams
And a love that’s warm and bright …
Friendship strong and true
Oceans of blue and a room with a view
To live the life you … choose.
I wish all those things — and more — for us all.
Today is the tenth anniversary of the bookish meme, Top Ten Tuesday, hosted first by The Broke and the Bookish and now by That Artsy Reader Girl.
To celebrate, Jana has invited us to consider two options, including a past TTT topic you wish you’d done, but didn’t get a chance to do.
I’ve chosen week #134 (more than seven years ago), which allows me to focus on my favorite in genre fiction, mysteries and fantasy:
Top Ten Series I Want to Start, but Haven’t Yet:
Do you recommend any of these series? (Or, conversely, do you recommend against any of them?)
How about you? Are there series you’ve always meant to read, but that you just haven’t gotten around to yet?
The weekend was too short, as always, but it included a number of good things, including strawberry daiquiris, singing along to music, and an afternoon nap while it was raining. We did a video chat with my family, spent time in the reading in the park and planting in the garden, and bought a flat of strawberries at the farmers market (as well as the season’s first raspberries and blueberries).
How was your weekend?
Two weeks ago, I had cucumber flowers:
A week ago, those flowers had developed fruit:
Four days later, the cucumber was several inches long (Yes, I should have thought to show it in comparison to something. Hindsight.):
Today, it’s longer than my hand:
Spoiler: Cucumber is possibly my least favorite vegetable. I will not be eating these when we harvest them, unless I decide I’m going to try making refrigerator pickles out of one of them. But Rudi loves cucumbers and is happy just to munch on one like a apple, which is why I planted it. And watching it grow has been sufficiently fascinating to make it a success for me.