Today is a beautiful, sunshiny day with temperatures in the mid-80s and low humidity. Honestly, I’d keep checking both the calendar and an atlas if there weren’t a heat wave bearing down on us next week. Soak it up while you can, folks!

Here are three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Early in the week, it is hot and bright. A young woman walks past the building with a parasol trimmed in lace.

2. The sudden and breathtaking (in the bad sense of the term) amount of work heaped on me in the last two weeks lifts somewhat with the announcement of my boss that she’s going to start working part time in her return from maternity leave and the postponement of an impending deadline, which she says she’ll take off my hands. Work is still busy, but treading water at least now seems possible.

3. Our dinner features both basil and tomatoes from our garden. They are, of course, delicious.

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

It’s been a discouraging week here in the Burrow, with work frustrations dogging both occupants and necessary housecleaning taking away from our normal evening enjoyments. On these sorts of weeks, it’s particularly important to find those little stand-out moments so that we don’t collapse under the weight of Alexander-type days.

Here are three beautiful moments from the past seven days:

1. Our fridge is overdue for a clean out. Not only do I not have dried-out herbs on my fridge bottom any more, but I also don’t have things blocking the light, so the fridge looks particularly bright and cheerful every time I open the door. (I’ve done it a lot since cleaning it out, to be honest…)

2. After a particularly crabby day at work, I decide to retrieve Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and read a few chapters at the local Starbucks, where they have a patio, before sunset. To be honest, after Harry and Hermione’s Christmas visit to Godric’s Hollow, I feel a lot better about how my day has gone.

3. Grey Kitten’s birthday arrives, and he instructs Rudi that we need to celebrate it cross-coastedly. Rudi returns from his dinner run with two delicious cupcakes from our local ice cream shop. His is vanilla mango and mine is chocolate raspberry.

How about you? What’s beautiful things have you noticed this week?

It’s been a busy week full of early (for me) arrivals at work, so I am especially looking forward to tomorrow afternoon’s appearance heralding the start of the three-day weekend. However, I shouldn’t wish my summer away, so first let’s look back at three beautiful things from the past week:

1. John, Julia, and I explore The Yards as a potential Friday evening hangout for the rest of the summer. With its wading pool (where we spend the night with our feet in the water), riverside location, and expansive green, I think we may have found an ideal spot to listen to some music.

2. A jogger passes me, iPod in hand. Her movements are a little jerky and when she gets caught at the light, it becomes apparent she’s dancing along to the music. She looks exactly as goofy as you feel when you’re the only one moving to music, but so joyful that I resolve to squelch the evil internal fairy who tells me to stop dancing on Metro platforms.

3. Sunday’s farmers’ market offers up the first raspberries, plums, and corn of the season. That night we feast on corn on the cob drenched in butter and salt, a perfect summery complement to the guacamole Rudi makes.

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

I’m really quite tired and want nothing more than to climb into bed with Rudi. So with no additional preamble, three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Rudi and I have tickets to see The Merchant of Venice at D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre tonight. (Yay, Groupon!) We decide to have dinner before the show, and a gift card my brother gave us for Christmas a number of years ago comes in handy in narrowing down our choices. We dine al fresco along Pennsylvania Avenue, listening to the carillon concert from the Old Post Office Tower, and enjoying drinks and a delicious three-course meal. And then we walk out without having to leave even a dime of our own money.

2. A swarm of nasty biting critters descends on me at the garden Sunday, chewing up my arms in a spectacular fashion. The next day, unable to find the only commercial remedy that seems to help (After Bite) and driven to madness by the itchiness and swelling, I resort to Mum’s remedy from my childhood — a baking soda paste. It’s crumbly and messy (I’m glad I thought to put down a towel before applying it generously to my arms and legs), but the relief is nearly instantaneous.

3. The final two episodes of this season of Bones leave me in a melancholy mood. After Rudi goes to bed, I rummage through the fridge and settle on the first blueberries of the season. I curl up on the couch and pop them in my mouth one after another, just like M&Ms, but healthy.

How about you? What was beautiful in your world this week?

The thing about vacations is that they tend to spawn the need for more time off. I’m glad that the weekend is only one more sleep away. But before I toddle off to bed, I thought I’d share three beautiful things from my past week with you:

1. Spring has been slow to arrive in Salt Lake this year, and to its surrounding mountains even more so. We drive up into them for the afternoon and wonder at the wash of velvety yellow-green coats the aspens are wearing as far as the eye can see (at least until you hit the snow line).

2. A sudden afternoon thunderstorm is gone nearly as quickly as it arrives, but in its wake it leaves behind a triple rainbow arcing over the mountains to our east.

3. The pool next to our room opens early and stays open late. We spend an hour paddling around under the watch of a waxing moon.

Those are just three of the beautiful things from my world this last week. What’s been beautiful in yours?

Rudi and I are off again tomorrow, this time to Salt Lake. I feel rushed and cranky, but am sure that once the leaving (which I hate) is past, the traveling and being elsewhere (which I like) will be fine. We’re staying at a hotel this time, so I’ll try to post once or twice while we’re there.

In the meantime, though, here are three beautiful things from my week past:

1. Our 15th college reunion last weekend was nice. We saw some people we hadn’t seen in a while, wandered around campus seeing what had and hadn’t changed, and generally enjoyed a nice homecoming over a picture perfect weekend. Plus, we got to play frisbee on Harkness Green with a blue sky above and a view of the Long Island Sound just to our south. Lovely!

2. The Big Three pizza places in New Haven conspire against us on Monday, but we make a quick adaptation and request a pie to go from Abate’s, which is next-door to Pepe’s. We eat Italian ice while we wait for our pizza to cook and then each have a piping hot slice in the car before continuing our drive back to D.C. Abate’s might be second-tier in New Haven, but that’s still better than pretty much anything around here. (I still love Pete’s in Columbia Heights, but Rudi and I fear their quality has slipped a smidge with their expansion beyond the original location.) I’ve had pizza lunches twice this week, and there are still two slices in the fridge for tonight when we get back from the concert.

3. I am having a cranky day. There are leftovers from a meeting, which include chocolate cake. The scent of chocolate frosting wafts across my desk, causing my brain to brighten up instantly.

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