Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. It’s the last week of baseball’s regular season. In between rain storms, I got to catch two Nats games. They lost both to Kansas City, but it’s hard to argue with September baseball.

2. I bought some new plants to put in the garden for the fall season — greens and flowers and herbs and a couple things I’m going to try to overwinter for harvest next spring/summer. I didn’t do a good job getting to the garden as much as I should have this summer, but I have high hopes of reclaiming the end of the year.

3. I noticed toward mid-August that my knees and hips were starting to be a little achy, a sure sign, I’ve found, that my sneakers are no longer supportive enough to play volleyball in. (I have volleyball sneakers for indoors, but tend to play grass in trail running shoes.) After spending a few weeks trying on what was available (and grumbling about prices), I ended up out near National Harbor at the Asics outlet after dropping Rudi off at the airport on Friday. They were running a sale, which allowed me to pick up two pairs of sneakers that should keep me in good stead for the next couple years.

I just looked back at my summer tbr list and found I’ve finished none of the books I’d listed. Sigh.

Will that stop me from listing ten more books I hope to read this fall as part of That Artsy Reader Girl’s seasonal Top Ten Tuesday? No, no it will not:

1. Erin Sterling’s The Wedding Witch
2. A Fate Inked in Blood by Danielle Jensen
3. Holmes, Marple, and Poe by James Patterson and Brian Sitts
4. Richard Osman’s We Solve Murders
5. Best Hex Ever by Nadia El-Fassi
6. The Hedgewitch of Foxhall by Anna Bright
7. Hanif Abdurraqib’s There’s Always This Year
8. The Afterlife of Mal Caldera by Nadi Reed Perez
9. The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer
10. How to Be Eaten by Maria Adelmann

What’s on your TBR for this fall? Mysteries? Fantastical tales? Classic lit to be read as the evenings fall earlier?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. For Rudi’s birthday, I gave him concert tickets to see Ringo, who performed at a local theater this week. The woman behind us in line for drinks before the show exclaimed, “I am in the same room as a Beatle!” There were only about 3,000 of us there. So, honestly, how cool is that?

2. My favorite yuppie doughnut shop from Virginia has opened an outpost in D.C., and we stopped in for the first time. They weren’t crowded, so we decided to get supper there instead of pursuing our plan to eat elsewhere, and were pleasantly surprised. Both our entrees (my grilled cheese and Rudi’s mushroom grain bowl) were tasty and well-cooked, and our drinks (Rudi got an old-fashioned that they set on fire at the table to give it a smoky flavor, and I had an herbal homemade ginger ale) were outstanding. Plus, we got our first cider doughnuts of the season to eat while we walked over to the Wharf.

3. The team has moved indoors for the rest of the year. I’ll keep playing outside on the weekends, but my friend Sergio and I were talking about how consistent it felt to play a game inside after months of rain and wind and sun in your eyes and biting flies and 100 degree temperatures and humidity and odd tufts of grass to accommodate.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Rudi came home from his trip to Utah and Wyoming.

2. Julia and I haven’t gotten together just the two of us in ages, but Sunday afternoon, we carved out some time for lunch and an arts walk.

3. Wednesday, we headed to the ballpark, where the Nationals took the lead early and kept it through the end of the game.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Karen and I are at the farthest point of our stroll when the raindrops start. They feel amazing, finally giving a solid form to the humidity. As does the light drizzle that follows. By the time we are halfway back, it’s a solid downpour, soaking our clothes, soddening our shoes and socks, and puddling in the pathway. But we are together, and that makes it more delightful than not.

2. Rudi and I scoot over to Arlington to pick up my summer reading prize on the last day and then opt to go out for drinks at a local coffee and wine bar with a patio. He reads to me and I to him, and I knit a bit, and the weather is perfect for sitting together.

3. In our Scrabble match, Dad comes back on day two of the game (we went on pause for dinner and came back the next day) to trounce me, scoring back-to-back triple word scores, including one using the “z.” Best loss I’ve had in a while.

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