First of all – happy Halloween, friends! I hope you have a fun evening ahead – whatever that looks like for you, whether it’s trick-or-treating with your anklebiters, answering the door and exclaiming over costumes (my favorite part of Halloween, and it’s the great tragedy of my life that nowhere I’ve lived in adulthood has been a big draw for trick-or-treaters…), takeout and a scary movie, you name it. I will be heading out trick-or-treating with Cleopatra and a cowboy this year.

It was another slow reading week – ’tis the season of my current state of life, I guess, although I keep holding out hope for more reading time. I had another busy workweek and found myself working past 8:00 p.m. on multiple nights this week (it happens – at least I like what I do these days!) and also hosted my friend Zan for an overnight visit on Wednesday. We stayed up way too late, drinking wine and chatting as hard as we could – we had months of life to catch up on – and absolutely zero regrets. And then the weekend was as busy as they always are; it was Marine Corps Marathon weekend and Nugget and I were each running – him in the kids’ mile on Saturday, and me in the Marine Corps 10K on Sunday. (Legs are sore today.)

All that’s to say: I am still plodding through Sylvia’s Lovers in hardcover and Lovely War on audio. I’m less than 100 pages from the end of Sylvia’s Lovers now, so I will definitely finish it this week – mark my words! Not tonight, because it’s Halloween and my tradition for the last few years has been to read Rainbow Rowell’s delightful graphic novel Pumpkinheads on Halloween night. But hopefully tomorrow evening, because on Wednesday I leave for a quick trip to Seattle and I am not bringing that doorstopper with me. I’d say I probably wouldn’t finish Lovely War (I still have over eight hours to go, even listening on 1.1 speed) but with two cross-country flights ahead of me this week I actually might. Watch this space!

The first post-pandemic running race – consider the band-aid ripped! I rode in the DC Bike Ride last year, so that was an in-person event, but I haven’t actually toed a running start line since pre-2020. It felt so good to be back, and Nugget got bit hard by the running bug on Saturday and is already begging me to find him another race. I don’t want him running 5Ks until he’s eight, but luckily there is a nearby Turkey Trot with a kids’ mile, so it’s now on my list to register us both.

What are you reading for Mischief Night?