I hope you’re having a great weekend so far and are enjoying just hanging around.

Have a great Fourth of July!

It’s a long weekend, and I’m thinking this is what I might do with it, at least partially:

• Spend lots of time outside. Eighties and sunny in D.C. in July is a gift.
• Work in the garden. Lots of rain=lots of weeds. Plus, it may be time to pull out the peas and most of the spring greens.
• Knit on my shawl.
• Visit the library. I’m thinking while I’m there, I should print out the pattern for my shawl so I can stop being tethered to a device while working on it.
• Drink strawberry daiquiris.
• Bake a cherry pie (Billy boy, Billy boy).
• Go down to the Lincoln Memorial to watch the fireworks. Last year, some blowhard was making a speech down there and we boycotted the event altogether.
• Swim. Monday looks ideal for spending the better part of it lounging in the water.
• Chat with friends. It’s our monthly video chat with the friends who’ve all moved away.
• Go to a birthday party. (Maybe. It’s for one of Rudi’s friends, and that means strangers and small talk. I might just send him without me — a true return to pre-pandemic socializing.)
• Watch sports. This is always a great weekend for that, with Tour de France bike riding, Wimbledon tennis, and baseball.
• Catch up on sleep.

What’s on your to-do list for the weekend?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. I can tell it has poured by the rivers of water running between the escalators at the foot of my metro stop’s exit, but the storm was nearly entirely contained to the amount of time it took to ride back across town.

2. The attendants working the beer stand by where Sarah and I are watching the baseball game (our seats were in the full sun) hand us each a free pretzel as they’re shutting down after the seventh inning stretch.

3. D.C. has long hosted a number of outdoor film series, but they’ve been a little slow coming back from the pandemic. The Building Museum has taken over hosting the one dedicated to movies containing martial arts movies, so we head over to watch Solo. That’s when we find out that the team that hosts it also invites a local dj collective rescoring the film with hip hop songs. It’s a fun interpretation, even if I need the songs to be as obvious as “The Theme from Shaft” playing when Lando Calrissian first appears on the screen.

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

My shawl is … still small. I’m through the first three set-up sections, but there are eight sections of mosaic ahead.

I just tonight wrapped up listening to Act Your Age, Eve Brown, the final book in Talia Hibbert’s Brown sisters romance novels.

I still have about 100 pages left in Arsenic and Adobo. The main character and her family have grown on me, but I am neither impressed by the murder mystery aspect of the book nor especially worried that the whodunit is going to surprise me.

I’m thinking when I’m done I’ll start A Lady’s Formula for Love, about a Victorian scientist and the Scottish body guard/police officer who must protect her against threats.

Head over to As Kat Knits to see what others are reading and crafting!

Work is in a period of flux right now, and I am giving seriously thought to what’s important to me career-wise. I’m thinking about what I’d like out of a job. About what I’d like for the people I’d manage. And what I’d like from those who manage me.

I’m not sure that the impending changes are going to check all those boxes. It’s possible that they will — that after the uncomfortableness of something new will eventually come satisfaction. And I know time is required for that to happen.

I am trying to use the yoga technique of breathing into the tightness.

But it just feels like I do a lot of deep sighing instead.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share the new releases we’re most looking forward to in the next six months:

1. Miss Moriarty, I Presume?, by Sherry Thomas (November)
2. Any Way the Wind Blows, by Rainbow Rowell (July)
3. Incense and Sensibility, by Sonali Dev (July)
4. Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World, by Benjamin Alire Sáenz (October)
5. Under the Whispering Door, by TJ Klune (September)
6. Fast Pitch, by Nic Stone
7. If the Shoe Fits, by Julie Murphy (August)
8. Enola Holmes and the Black Barouche, by Nancy Springer (August)
9. The Lincoln Highway, by Amir Towles (October)
10. Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village, by Maureen Johnson (September)

How about you? Are there any books coming out before the end of the year you’re particularly excited about?