A baby polar bear.

I thought I’d get a jump start on tomorrow by posting my weekly Three Beautiful Things before I go to sleep. Set the tone, you know? Here are some wonderful snippets from my past week:

1. I find a hot pot of tea hiding under the cozy for me after Rudi leaves for work.

2. I adapt a recipe from a cookbook to make chocolate chip cupcakes with chocolate ganache cupcakes. Our friend John, who doesn’t particularly like sweets, eats two.

3. Rebs and Rick currently are in Guatemala City picking up Joey and should be home midday on Friday. I can’t even imagine their happiness.

For the nth year in a row, I decided to join the Self (Magazine) Challenge. This year, though, I haven’t shortchanged myself by compromising the nutrition part away on the first day. (However, I haven’t done any of the exercising yet, so it’s still an ongoing process.)

The Self Challenge happens every year in March, April, and May and encourages you, as my friend Elspeth put it, to get in shape for bathing suit season. Since graduating from college twelve years ago, I’ve put on quite a bit of weight and every year I say I’m going to do something about it.

My goal is to be more mindful about what I’m eating and the challenge suggests limiting yourself to one “treat” per day (in addition to other suggested diet modifications). My sweet tooth has always been my downfall and I’ve found that I’m eating far fewer calories without multiple treats each day (and with the added threat of having to write down what I’m eating in a food journal). Of course, I don’t have any healthy snacks in the house to supplement my healthier diet with, so I just find myself hungry and crabby all the time. I’ve definitely got to get to Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods this week…

I don’t expect to get back down to my pre-college weight. Or even my post-graduation weight. But I wouldn’t like the doctor to frown at me at my checkup this spring and inquire how I managed to gain so much weight during 2007. If I can at least start the process of healthier living before then, maybe it will be a habit by the time I see her.

Wish me luck.

Late February and early March are the blahest of the months for me, so posting tends to be erratic at this time of the year. But before anyone sends out the search engines for me, I offer you this belated My D.C. photo series:

I’m back from my long weekend-in-the-middle-of-the-week in Connecticut. It’s nice to be home and the cats (and Rudi) were happy to have me back. The cats, in particular, were quite clingy last night and this morning.

1. The cardigan I’ve been working on for the last year is too short. I’d realized it, but only after I’d already seamed much of it together. Gramma looks at it, listens to my claims that maybe blocking would fix it (and if not, some cutting and grafting), and tells me I’d save myself a lot of headaches if I just ripped out the shoulder seams, detached the arms, and knit the body a few inches higher before continuing on. She’s right, of course, and I’m glad she told me just to suck it up, since that’s what I obviously needed to hear.

2. Mum bakes me a dark chocolate truffle birthday cake. I eat two decadently large pieces.

3. Mum and Dad give me two pairs of pjs in Valentine’s Day colors and fun patterns. After arriving home last night and watching the eclipse (photos to come later), I throw on a pair and delight in being home.

I survived our conference and am now recuperating at my folks’. On the agenda? Knitting, hanging with the family (and a belated birthday celebration), a visit to the Basketball Hall of Fame, and a trip south to see my uncle. I bet I feel fully refreshed by the time I head home Wednesday.

Three Beautiful Things (the Boston version):

1. The view from our room on the twenty-sixth floor of the hotel is impressive. I can see the Charles River from my pillow and the Citgo sign at Fenway park if I walk to the window. Makes waking up almost bearable.

2. My birthday fell during our conference and for the first time ever I was unable to take the day off. But my friends made sure I felt loved with text messages and voicemail and phone calls and blog comments. My friend Suzanne had treats delivered to my room, and Sam and Alexis shared their Valentine’s Day dinner with us. I felt quite loved.

3. I had a dilly of a time getting the stitch count right for my new shawl. At last after four restarts, I end up with the right number and can move on past the third row.

This was supposed to be last week’s My D.C. post, but, well, I didn’t get to it. But since this week was the Potomac Primary, it was just as accurate this week as last for the area.

I thought I’d highlight something I’d never given any thought to before I moved down here: election return watch parties. Sure, I’d heard of campaigns having parties to await poll returns, but I didn’t associate it with something mere mortals do.

But here in D.C., politics is sport and is followed by regular folks in the same way they follow the Redskins and the Nationals (and with more interest than the local NHL franchise). So when days like this Tuesday and last (the Potomac Primary and Super Tuesday) roll around, people trickle into bars as the polls close to follow “the big game.”

D.C. is the only place I’ve been where CNN is just as likely to be on the bar tv as ESPN. Sweetpea, John, Susan, Rudi, and I headed to Sweetpea’s favorite local Cap Hill dive, Trusty’s to watch results trickle in. Half the tvs were tuned to CNN; the other half were divided between basketball and hockey games.

Rudi, Sweetpea, and Susan all own iPhones, so they quickly hopped online to pull down results as they were updated. We hung out for more than three hours, drinking beer from Mason Jars, snacking, reminiscing (we all met during Howard Dean’s failed presidential bid last time around), and forecasting how the campaigns would progress. Sarah and I knit. And all around the city, people were doing exactly the same thing.

Three beautiful things from earlier this birthday week:

1. I awake at 7 a.m. on Sunday to use the bathroom. The sky glows pink in an otherworldly kind of way.

2. Because the sidewalks are slick between my polling place and the Burrow, I am shuffling along slowly enough to notice the tiny icicles that have formed on awnings, signs, and fences.

3. Rebs calls at one a.m. to say that she and Rick have booked their flight to Guatemala City in two weeks to go pick up their son and bring him home for the first time. When I heard the phone ring, I just *knew* it was her calling with good news.

What’s beautiful in your world these days?

I apologize for the blog being so quiet, but I’ve been busy. I’ve been working late a lot recently, trying to get things done so I could head north for our annual meeting without cause for concern. I’m not sure I’ve succeeded, but most everything seems to be under control and I think everything I failed to finish can be worked on from Boston.

I’ve also been frantically trying to finish my cardigan. Yes, the sweater that was supposed to be done for my trip to Denver, then for Thanksgiving, then for Christmas, and finally for the end of January is not yet complete. I have a few more inches of never-ending seaming to finish on the left sleeve, button and neck bands to add, buttons to attach, and a few loose ends to weave in from the seaming process. Ultimately, I’ll also need to block the heck out of the darn thing because I failed to comprehend how the sweater was constructed and the body is far shorter than I’d like. (Like four inches too short. Yes, really.) Any suggestions on how to accomplish that are greatly appreciated.

I’m not packed. In fact, many of the clothes I’m planning to take with me are currently on the drying rack. Perhaps I ought not to have waited for the rainiest day of the year thus far to dry things on a deadline. The good thing is that I have picked out the books and knitting projects I’m taking with me.

On the knitting front we have:

1. The Every Day Cardigan — nearly done and hardly any knitting left to do on it
2. Mum’s Christmas Monkeys — I’m so ashamed! I meant to have these done by today, but I’ve stalled with half a sock to go. (Sorry Mum!) These must come off the needles before I leave Connecticut next week.
3. Lucy’s Shawl — my first real lace project (hats and socks notwithstanding) and made of luscious New England alpaca. Perfect for knitting in Boston and Somers.

Think that’s enough for a weeklong trip?

For reading material, accompanying me will be Walden (the next classic on Karen’s and my list), the first volume of The Chronicles of Chrestomanci (per Jenn’s long-ago recommendation), and The Uncommon Reader (which I hope will make me laugh and forget about the indignity of having to work on one’s birthday).

I’ve queued up some posts to carry us through until I get back to my folks’ house where I will be able to write more freely.

(Oh, and if anyone is looking for me on Thursday, call my cellphone, as I’ll be working, but reachable. I think.)

This comic made me laugh aloud yesterday when reading the funnies. Ah the joys of being an English major!

I offer it today to you who may not read Frazz on a regular basis.