Hey there! It’s Thursday night and the rain has finally arrived, after meteorologists having promised some for three days now. That means it’s a perfect time to look back at three beautiful things from my past week:

1. I suggested to Rudi that I might like to go up to Politics & Prose tonight because Eliot Schrefer, whose Endangered was one of my favorite books last year, was doing a reading. [More on the event over the weekend.] He offered to accompany me, so we followed up the bookstore visit with pizza at the Tenleytown outlet of Pete’s and ice cream cones from Max’s.

2. I have not been a huge fan of The Office, because I didn’t particularly enjoy the breakdown of the 4th wall (and, yes, I understand the show’s premise). But Rudi does and we have watched quite a bit of the show’s final season, allowing me enough fondness for it to want it to end well for all the characters. Last week’s feel-good finale wrapped things up in just the way I would have hoped.

3. The first strawberry crop of the season are three small, delicious, red berries.

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

I haven’t been so good about posting non-Thursday entries for a while now. Some of it’s been event-related stress, much of which is now past or, at least, de-escalated. Some of it’s been tiredness and malaise and depression. But generally it’s been all-encompassing, not just here on the blog.

This week, though, maybe things are a little lighter. I read a couple of books. I called a friend. I started thinking about where I want my life to go next from here and how I might find myself there. And I’ve knit a bit. So I thought I might also write a little something here.

I don’t have any answers yet. And maybe there are no answers. Maybe there’s just putting one foot in front of the other and moving in one direction or another. Maybe any direction is just as good as the rest, as long as you’re moving. Treading water may be fine if you’re stuck in the middle of the ocean, but just staying afloat is no way to live a life if at the end of it you’re not going to be filled with regrets. And if making no moves is going to lead to that, then it’s the same as actively choosing disappointment.

I reject that choice.

So instead I choose motion. I opt to creep — slowly if need be — away from stasis. I will crawl, walk, hop, scramble my way from would-haves and should-haves. And if I encounter a dead end, which I will most certainly do at some point, I will inch, skip, run, twirl in some other direction.

I am done waiting. Life, I’m on the move.

I am bone tired, but I still have a heap of dishes to wash, so this will be a quick list of three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Rudi and I head out on our bikes along the C&O Canal towpath, hoping to see ducklings. We see some, as well as three families of goslings in various states of growth.

2. Saturday was E.U. Day, so many of the union’s members held open houses at their embassies to celebrate. We stopped by Austria for drinks, by Slovakia for food and folk dancing, and by Hungary to see a dog.

3. Rudi obligingly had a round birthday today, so I decided to mark it by throwing him a surprise party. Friends from all aspects of our D.C. lives came together in uncommunicativeness so that when he walked into the room, he really was surprised.

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

Posting slacks off when life gets a little crazy. It should calm down some next week, so hopefully I’ll sit down at the home keyboard a bit more often. However, it’s Thursday, and we try never to miss a Thursday (even if on the rare occasion it must be marked on a Friday instead). Here, to celebrate this week’s, are three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Howard County was filled with fields like this:

2. A dapper, bearded older man rounds the corner. He’s dressed in a three-piece pin-stripe suit, with a tall bowler hat on his head and a walking stick topped with a silver lion in his hand.

3. A half-dozen men in their 20s are outside the fence playing a spirited game of cricket, with a deflated orange traffic cone as one of the wickets. I don’t understand the game, but they declare me an honorary player when I track down and retrieve for them the ball they inadvertently hit into the garden. (If I hadn’t been pressed for time, I would have stayed to watch for a longer while.)

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. There’s a single cupcake left at the software training.

2. The first strawberries of the season at today’s farmers market.

3. A nice weekend visiting my family includes pool, vegetarian dinners, and lunch and milkshakes with Karen.

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

Today marks 8 years (less a day) of writing weekly three beautiful things posts. With a few others sprinkled in from time to time, this marks the 445th time I’ve recorded things I’ve found beautiful here. I’ve had other features on the blog — sharing music, knitting, cat photos, and book reviews — but none of them have elicited the same dedication as this one. I’d like to think it’s because it’s such a nice way to share word-fashioned snapshots of my life — and that it makes me more mindful of positive things around me.

Thanks, as always, to Clare, who inspired the original post and whose daily meditations continue to be enjoyed so many years later.

Here are three from the past week:

1. John and Nicole pull off a near-perfect wedding with touches that reflect the two of them as individuals and as a couple. There are Chinese containers containing noodly appetizers, lemonade, and local beer; vases of yellow flowers and tea lights bedeck the tables; vegan and meaty food share the menu; and the favors are heart-shaped tea strainers. Nicole’s younger sister became ordained so she could officiate the ceremony, and her words of and for the couple are filled with love and mirth. Nicole trips over her lines, and John can’t take his eyes off her. Toasts are offered. Dancing (and drinking) lasts until late into the night, when the wedding party (and a few of us random stragglers) parade out of the mansion and up the street trailing decorations, cake, and chuppah.

2. Five days later and I’m still finding sparkles on me, making them even more pervasive than beach sand. Glitter may have become part of my DNA. (That would be an awesome genetic modification, by the way.)

3. Giddy glee pours through me until it feels necessary to twirl like an ice skater or Wonder Woman to share some of it with the world. So I put my bag down, make sure no one is close enough for me to run into them, and, spreading my arms wide, gyre until I’m so dizzy I can’t see and laugh until I’m out of breath.

Now, how about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

It’s been a while since we’ve had a random ten on Wednesday post. You know the rules: Hit shuffle on your portable music device, computer music library, or cd changer, and list the first ten songs that come up. No editing to get a better or more representative list.

This is from my work computer:

1. “Don’t Stop” — Patrick & Eugene
2. “I Heard Someone Crying” — cast from the Broadway show The Secret Garden
3. “Turkledove” — Peter, Bethany, & Rufus
4. “The Boxer” — Simon & Garfunkel
5. “Without One” — Chuck E. Costa
6. “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing (in Perfect Harmony)” — The New Seekers
7. “Shule Aru” — Peter, Bethany, & Rufus
8. “It’s the End of the World (And I Feel Fine)” — REM
9. “Come to My Garden/Lift Me Up” — cast from the Broadway show The Secret Garden
10. “Marilyn Monroe” — Dala

(Apparently my computer was in the mood for kids’ folk songs and show tunes.)

Feel free to share your track list in the comments.

Tomorrow we have an election in D.C.

First, and foremost, let me urge anyone in D.C. who’s registered to vote here to do so. Even if you don’t care who wins the council seat, there is a referendum question on the ballot that is an important one to address. It concerns the District’s ability to decide how to use the money, such as tax revenue, that it raises.

Currently, we are at Congress’ whims for all our budgetary concerns. Regardless of how you might feel about the Founding Fathers’ opinions about D.C. governance and our representation (or lack thereof) in Congress, it seems only fair that we should have some autonomy in setting our own budget priorities. You know how everyone’s talking about how sequestration will affect various government bodies? D.C.’s one of them. When the government threatens to shut down all non-essential federal agencies? That includes D.C.’s libraries, because Congress gets final sign-off on our entire budget. An argument could be made that it is fair that the national government should oversee the District’s use of federal funds. However, it is harder to see how it’s fair that they dictate how we spend the percentage of our budget (roughly 70%, by the way) that comes into our coffers via our own sources of funding, such as local taxes. Voting yes tomorrow on the referendum will indicate that residents of D.C. would like and expect to receive that same privilege that other local governments take for granted.

Harder for me to offer insight into is the at-large council race seat that’s being contested. This is the seat that opened up when Phil Mendelson won election to council chair, which in turn was vacated by Kwame Brown in a corruption scandal. So at its heart, this election should be about ethics. And, at least on the surface, it is. All the current contenders bandy the term about. If we eliminate the candidate who’s already dropped out (but who still remains on the ballot and, thus, will take at least a certain percentage of the vote), we’re still left with six candidates, four of whom are running in the District’s de facto single party. (more…)

This seems like a really good time to look back at three beautiful things from the past week:

1. The soil in the part of the garden that Rudi’s been working on looks like he ran it through a sieve. No fibrous roots or lumps, like I’ve left in my part of the garden.

2. Tulips on my way to work in candy colors.

3. I take a solo spin up to our local indie bookstore for their monthly trivia night and join the team of two strangers from Northern Virginia. We come in fifth (or so), and although I am mildly ashamed that I couldn’t name Herman Melville as the author of Moby Dick (I blanked!), I did correctly identify the cover of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the author of The Fight Club, Prince’s “When Doves Cry,” the reason for the nickname “The Bean Belt,” and the commonality between a parliament, an exultation, and a murder.

How about you? What beautiful things caught your attention this week?

What a sad day today has become with the violence in Boston. I wanted to say something, but I think maybe John Denver summarizes best what I hope for for all of us:

I wish you poems and prayers and promises tonight and forever on.

Namaste. The light within me salutes the light within you.