Here’s what I’m hoping this weekend includes:

• Take part in the Bout of Books Twitter chat tomorrow morning.
• Watch some of the Dragon Boat Regatta.
• Go to a neighborhood festival.
• Swim at the pool.
• Protest the Kavanaugh nomination.
• Make sauce or soup from the tomatoes I bought this week and a dessert from the plums from last week.
• Do laundry.
• Send some mail.
• Spend lots of time outside.
• Drink daiquiris.

What are you hoping to get up to this weekend?

Apologies to those who don’t find the above image beautiful.

Three (other) beautiful things from my past week:

1. Corey was screaming at us as we opened the outside door after being away overnight at the beach.

2. My summer volleyball team has been hit or miss in their attendance and this week was definitely a miss. But several players from the game before ours stayed to help us out so that my teammate and I could get some playing in.

3. The weather the past two days has been absolutely beautiful. We’ve turned off the a/c and opened the window for the first time in a month.

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

I ripped the toe out one more time on the first sock of my Posies, still had the same problem with a loose stitch and decided it was time to move on. I’ll tack down that stitch with some extra thread, but essentially the first sock is complete. On to sock #2!

While I took Spinning Silver with me to Delaware, I read Dear Rachel Maddow instead, being utterly captivated by the first few pages. Depending on the forecast, either that or The Summer Before the War goes into my work bag. We’ve had several dousing rains recently, and I don’t want a library work to get sodden.

I finished I’ll See You in the Cosmos on audiobook over the weekend and am looking forward to starting Tess of the Road, a fantasy novel featuring dragons. (Rachel Hartman is the author of Seraphina, which I loved.) The novel was a recommendation from my friend Amani and so I’m eager to read it so I can discuss it with her via email or text.

Check out As Kat Knits for more reading/crafting combo posts.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic is Top Ten Books to Pull You Out of a Reading Slump. Mine is a mix of books, authors, series, and genres:

1. The Harry Potter series, particularly the first three (old friends)
2. Jasper Fforde (funny)
3. James Thurber (short and funny)
4. Little Women (old friends)
5. Paddington series (sometimes a reading slump is illness-related, and these are my go-to sick-day reads)
6. Pride and Prejudice (old friends)
7. Anne of Green Gables (old friends)
8. A Year in Provence (funny)
9. comic collections (sometimes you just need pictures with your words; plus they’re short)
10. cozies (they read fast and they rarely require a lot out of you)

How about you? What do you turn to when your current reads just aren’t cutting it for whatever reason?

While I have a traditional weekday work schedule, Rudi’s current job has him working Tuesday-Saturday, which means we don’t get much of a chance to hang out. So we decided late in the week to see if I could get today off in order for us to head to the beach.

Friday night we went to one of the nearby parks for their final Friday night outside movie — Black Panther.

Saturday was filled with my normal weekend activities — pool, garden, laundry, cleaning. After a trip out to catch the last of the sun, we came home to have tacos for supper and watch a film on Netflix. I offered Rudi the choice of two literary adaptations — The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. He picked the latter and we agreed that it was absolutely adorable.

Sunday morning, Rudi went for a bike ride and I went to the farmers market. Then we headed to Delaware to catch Mamma Mia 2 at the old single screen movie house near our favorite beach town, stopping for ice cream at a farm stand along the way. We concluded the evening at a brew house in Rehoboth, where we ate fish tacos, drank beer (mine was of the root variety), and played a game of giant Connect Four.

This morning, we headed to the beach, expecting the low clouds to burn off by noon as the forecast had promised. Apparently Mother Nature doesn’t pay attention to the weather forecast, because the clouds hung around until nearly 5, even occasionally dripping slightly on us. The water was rough and with most of us who were without boogie boards opting to splash, rather than swim. We saw two swimmers need to be rescued from the rip tides by lifeguards, after being unable to explain that you need to swim parallel to the shore, rather than trying to swim toward it in that situation. (I imagine even if you knew that information, your panicking brain could chase it from your memory as you realize you aren’t making progress, but are getting more and more tired trying.)

The sun emerged briefly just before 5, but was chased back behind clouds for another hour or so, by which time I’d given up on being chilly and damp and had changed out of my bathing suit. We ate the drippiest ice cream cones ever and did a little shopping and then headed home, tired but happy.

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda Shofner and Kelly Rubidoux Apple. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01 a.m. Monday, August 20, and runs through Sunday, August 26, in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 23 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books team.

My goals for the week are to:

• Take part in at least two challenges and at least one of the Twitter chats.
• Visit at least one other Bout of Books participant’s blog a day.
• Read a little each day.
• Post some reviews.

Day 1 Challenge: Introduce Yourself #insixwords

How about: Reading all day. Reading all night.

Rudi suggests I go with “Books make me do weird things.”