With the world burning down around us, it seems especially important to find the pockets of good in our days. Here are three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Rudi’s mom and her house seem to have weathered the 5.7 magnitude earthquake that hit Salt Lake City earlier this week and its aftershocks relatively unscathed.

2. While more and more places are closed here in D.C., we are not yet on lockdown the way they are now in California. At midday I walked around the block and stopped at the bank to stock up on quarters for the washing machine. And we’ve been ending each evening up at the park, where we sit until we hear “Taps” wafting through the neighborhood from the Naval Observatory. Lots of other neighbors are doing the same thing, but while the dogs refuse to keep their distance, the people are relatively good about engaging in the social distancing that’s been prescribed to us all. (Rudi and I are hanging out in the gated section of the park, where the dogs aren’t supposed to be, just to be super diligent.)

3. The Vernal Equinox occurred just before midnight our time this evening, which means, despite everything, spring has arrived.

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

I haven’t knit on my sock in a couple of days, but I take it up to the park with me each evening, along with my book, which I have been working on. I’d thought I’d leave A Murderous Relation until later, because it looks distinctly possible that what was once a two-week slog could go on for months. But this week has been more painful than I expected, and time with Veronica and Stoker is comforting, which seems like an odd things to say about a book set in London with main characters pursuing Jack the Ripper.

I should resume listening to The Bride Test by Helen Hoang, but it hasn’t quite captured my interest the way I’d hoped it would. I have downloaded Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman for Rudi and me to listen to together. And I also just added the next Inspector Gamache novel, Cruelest Month, to aptly take me into April.

Unraveling along with As Kat Knits.

Today was a holiday here in our neck of the woods. No, not St. Patrick’s Day, although it was that, too.

Today marked the 15th anniversary of this blog’s existence.

That’s right. I’ve been coming here off and on (and, over the past few years, on a daily basis) for a decade and a half, since March 17, 2005, when Rudi gave it to me as a belated birthday gift. This will mark the 3,640th post on the site.

I’ve shared good news and bad, laughter and tears. There have been new family members and deaths. Jobs were lost and found. I’ve shared tourist sites and local finds here in D.C. and on my travels, as well as my thoughts on politics local, national, and international. There have been many books read (and occasionally shared in a timely fashion), fewer knitting projects completed, and plenty of music videos embedded. We’ve done several years of the Virtual Advent Tour, shared more memes than we should count, and, earlier this month, exceeded 800 three beautiful things posts. That’s more than 2,400 beautiful things since I started keeping track.

To my surprise, many of you have been hanging out here nearly as long as I have. Kathy B’s comment this evening marked the 5,460th note you all have left here. When I decided that I was going to start writing here again on a daily basis, I told myself that it didn’t matter if no one commented; I was just going to write for myself. But no one writes in a public place just for themselves, and I’m really pleased that you’ve been willing to keep returning to my little piece of the internet. Thank you. I appreciate your time and interest and comments and general thoughtfulness.

Next year, my blog will be eligible to drive. I don’t think we should let it. But maybe it will be time to let it redecorate some. We’ll see…

(No, my computer isn’t fixed yet, but washing the dishes gave my old tablet enough time to charge.)

My top ten titles on my spring tbr list:

1. Recipe for Persuasion by Sonali Dev
2. Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo
3. Shuri: A Black Panther Novel by Nic Stone
4. Aurora Burning by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
5. Check, Please!, Book 2: Sticks and Scones by Ngozi Ukazu
6. The List of Things That Will Not Change by Rebecca Stead
7. The Happy Ever After Playlist by Abby Jimenez
8. Mulan by Grace Lin
9. Orphan Eleven by Gennifer Choldenko
10. By the Book by Amanda Sellet

How about you? What books are you looking forward to this spring?

I have charmingly managed to brick my personal laptop while trying to install an update, so this will be a quick post thumb typed on my phone. I’ve decided this doesn’t merit waking Rudi in tears to see if he can fix it for me. Perspective… I’ve got it.

But I do want to say you should come back later on in the day. Seasonal tbr posts are among my favorite Top Ten Tuesday topics, and I will take a work break to share one after Rudi hopefully fixes my computer.

D.C.’s public library gave us the advantage of a couple days’ notice that they were going to close for the rest of the month, which meant that I had the opportunity to add a few things — mostly cookbooks and dvds — to the burgeoning collection of materials I already had checked out.

DVDs:

• The Big Year (I’m not a huge fan of Steve Martin, Jack Black, or the Wilson brothers singly, let alone in combination, but I’m hopeful.)
• Rush Hour (I never saw the original movie, but I enjoyed the tv remake that came out a couple years back, which friends assure me was sometimes based line for line on its source material.)
• Spy (I like Melissa McCarthy and am hopeful this will fall on the silly side of funny, rather than stupid.)
• Spider-Man, into the Spider-Verse (I have seen it. And loved it. And wanted to see it again.)
• Charlie’s Angels (We missed it when it was in the theaters last fall, probably due to my volleyball schedule. I know it got terrible reviews. Probably I would have watched it anyway.)
• Veronica Mars: Season 1 (This is the new tv show. No, we didn’t watch the original tv show and the series is old enough that our library system has all the seasons broken up into multiple dvds, so you can’t really request them and instead have to wander around the various branches searching out the discs you need. We understand the overall concept, if not all the nuance.)
• Frankie Drake Mysteries. The complete second season
• The Goldfinch (Honestly, even the preview for this movie made me anxious, but I still wanted to watch it. I just might not have picked it up right now if it hadn’t already been on hold for me.)
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Season 5

Nonfiction

• Sheet Pan Suppers Meatless by Raquel Pelzel
• Great British Bake Off — Bake It Better. No. 8: Pastry & Patisserie by Joanna Farrow
• Red Truck Bakery Cookbook by Brian Noyes (All three of these were picked up yesterday, when the urge to start stress baking on a daily basis started rearing its head.)
• The Library Book by Susan Orlean (Yes, I’ve had this out for like six months. Apparently it’ll be mine for at least one more.)
• Dreyer’s English by Benjamin Dreyer (This has also been checked out to me for a while, but I haven’t started it. Guess I have time now…)
• The First Dinosaur: How Science Solved the Greatest Mystery on Earth by Ian Lendler (Ian was my childhood neighbor and is the first person who introduced me to Tolkein.)

Adult Fiction

• A Murderous Relation by Deanna Raybourn
• The Travelers by Regina Porter
• The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman
• Red Letter Days by Sarah Jane Stratford

YA Fiction

• Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell (I need to find and reread Carry On, and now, apparently, I have time to figure out where my copy is.)
• I’m Not Dying with You Tonight by Kimberly Jones (Seems about right for our current situation, although it’s actually about race relations.)
• Don’t Date Rosa Santos by Nina Moreno
• Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson
• The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee
• The Beast Player by Nahoko Uehashi

Middle-Grade Fiction

• Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia
• The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise by Dan Gemeinhart
• Song for a Whale by Lynne Kelly
• Homerooms & Hall Passes by Tom O’Donnell
• Crush by Svetlana Chmakova
• Roll with It by Jamie Sumner
• Stargazing by Jen Wang
• Each Tiny Spark by Pablo Cartaya
• Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga

Do you have materials out from the library to help you through your hours at home?