Marvelous Monday, 2012, Week 14

I skipped Marvelous Monday last week to get straight to the trip recap. It's good to be back!

1) Yesterday my friend Sara came over and we ended up playing catch at my neighborhood park (to practice for her softball team) and then going for a walk and then sitting outside in the late afternoon sun. By the time I went inside, it kind of felt like I was being called in for dinner after playing outside all day - except, well, this time I had to make my own dinner. It was so much fun. (I should clarify that I have actually never played catch with Sara and this was the first time I had taken my baseball glove out in, like, two years.)

And then I looked up at the sky and said, "Ooh!" and Sara said, "You totally want to take a picture of those clouds, don't you?"  Ahh!  Friends.

2) One of my very favorite parts of maintaining a now-daily blog is the feedback I get from readers - especially book recommendations. In fact, you can comment whenever you'd like with a book recommendation, whether or not it relates even remotely to that day's post in any way! Awhile back, I wrote about reading Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America, which I loved and passed on to my mom and dad to read. Then my friend Kate said I should put Bryson's The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got That Way on my list. And over the weekend, I saw her, and she pulled the book out of her bag to lend it to me!  (I was really excited.) I also have another book that Nat lent to me in Arizona. And The Book Thief, Steph's recommendation!  As soon as I finish Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China, I'm going to attend to my new book recommendations.

3) I picked out fabric for my next sewing project. I will cross my fingers until it's done. Yeep!

4) I went grocery shopping today and realized that I've been going to one store over another for at least three consecutive weeks solely because this store has better grapefruit. Marvelous: I have my week's worth of grapefruit piled on my counter.

5) I dreamed up a contraption (well, a makeshift clothesline, but I just wanted to say that I dreamed up a contraption) that may allow me to hang up my yellow down comforter across my back patio next weekend. I really just adore that fresh-air-sun-dried-laundry smell from hanging up laundry when I was a kid, and this weekend I concluded that a lack of clothesline was a major downside to the yardless residence. This clothesline would be temporary and just for my comforter, I should clarify.  No socks flying around the patio.  I texted Josh to ask how weird on a scale of 1-10 it would be to do this, and he responded with "5," so I think I'm good to go. Marvelous!

What is marvelous today for you, Reader?  Also, what books would you recommend to me?