1. Finish a knitting project or two.
2. Send some mail.
3. Read a book or three.
4. Visit the garden.
5. Look for ducklings.
6. Go for a bike ride.
7. Take a yoga class.
8. Shop at the farmers market.
9. If my friends are in town, meet them at the playground.
10. Drink tea outside.
11. Do laundry.
12. Mop the bathroom floor.
13. Head up to Politics & Prose for trivia night.
14. Put away the Christmas dvds (which have been sitting on a cabinet since December).
15. Call a friend.

How about you? What’s on your agenda for the long weekend?

Copyright sprite writes. If you are not reading this at http://www.spritewrites.net or in an RSS feed reader, you are viewing stolen content.

long weekend plans

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?

Copyright sprite writes. If you are not reading this at http://www.spritewrites.net or in an RSS feed reader, you are viewing stolen content.

favorite things date night, finale, and three

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.

Copyright sprite writes. If you are not reading this at http://www.spritewrites.net or in an RSS feed reader, you are viewing stolen content.

out the door

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?

Copyright sprite writes. If you are not reading this at http://www.spritewrites.net or in an RSS feed reader, you are viewing stolen content.

babies, embassies, and surprise

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?

Copyright sprite writes. If you are not reading this at http://www.spritewrites.net or in an RSS feed reader, you are viewing stolen content.

buttered fields, gent, and the pitch

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?

Copyright sprite writes. If you are not reading this at http://www.spritewrites.net or in an RSS feed reader, you are viewing stolen content.

just in time, two pints, and connecticut

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?

Copyright sprite writes. If you are not reading this at http://www.spritewrites.net or in an RSS feed reader, you are viewing stolen content.

brings us together, glitter, and twirling

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.

Copyright sprite writes. If you are not reading this at http://www.spritewrites.net or in an RSS feed reader, you are viewing stolen content.

random ten

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.

Among the Democrats, we have Paul Zukerberg, whose main issue is that the legalization of marijuana will help to erase (or at least ease) many of the city’s ills. He’s the least likely to win.

Anita Bonds has spent years in the breastpocket of those who were running the city. She’s accepted a lot of corporate donations and does not seem to have a lot of press out there about about actual policy intentions. And her leadership of the District’s Democratic State Committee suggests incompetence at best and corruption at worst, with donations at odds with bylaws and an ongoing refusal to hold mandated elections. Sadly, she was the frontrunner in the one poll that was held prior to this election, currently is holding the seat in question in a temporary capacity, and has the most name recognition of the six candidates still in the race.

Matt Frumin, whose big issue is education, comes from the well-heeled ward of the city and has big donations from a lot of influencers. However, those people are also his neighbors, and I’m disinclined to shout down someone for taking donations from other District residents, regardless of how they earn their money. I’m less excited about his out-of-state donations, but he’s got a past in Michigan, and his progressive stances should count for more than where his funders live. He’s also a stretch, but not an impossible one and would probably do a perfectly fine job if elected.

Elissa Silverman is the progressive’s progressive candidate. She’s a former newspaper columnist and current policy wonk specializing in budget issues. She’s promised transparency if elected, but allegations have recently arisen that she asked Frumin to withdraw in order to avoid siphoning votes away from her. It’s understandable to do that, and it’s a common practice, but it’s irksome in a candidate who should be bigger than that, and it makes one wonder what else she’s willing to do.

Pat Mara is a Republican, which in any other place in the U.S., would probably have some standing. Here, it’s something he has to overcome. And, frankly, he’s a liberal Republican, who supports voting rights and marriage equality and mass transit and other left-leaning issues. However, he also supports lowering taxes for rich people (who already enjoy a low tax rate) and follows party lines on fiscal issues.

Perry Redd is the Green Party candidate, which in most other places would make him a joke, but here merely consigns him to an also-ran status. Like Bonds, he’s an African American in a city where, for the time being, that still matters (although it’s rapidly a disappearing advantage). However, like Silverman, he’s smart and knows his policy, particularly on issues relating to class and to ex-felon rights. Also like Silverman, Redd refused to accept corporate contributions to fund his campaign.

With mere hours until the polls open and less than a day until they we know the end results, I’m still torn between several relatively progressive candidates, none of whom is a perfect match to me and all I want out of an elected official. I am not wed to my party, and I believe that you should vote your conscience. However, if no candidate perfectly meshes with your beliefs, do you leverage your vote to try to prevent a certain candidate from winning? Do you vote for a candidate you know won’t ever win in order to encourage a future run and additional attention? Do you reward good behavior on issues that matter most to you even if a candidate is significantly at odds with you on issues that personally matter less (but that still do matter)?

When you’re voting, how do you pick your candidates when choosing among several who will probably reflect your opinions half the time and not shame you tremendously the other half?

What criteria are most important to you when you enter the voting booth?

Copyright sprite writes. If you are not reading this at http://www.spritewrites.net or in an RSS feed reader, you are viewing stolen content.

elections — again

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?

Copyright sprite writes. If you are not reading this at http://www.spritewrites.net or in an RSS feed reader, you are viewing stolen content.

fine, pastels, and trivial excursion