No, it’s not Thursday. But I’m just not feeling up to a post that requires paragraphs. Instead you get three beautiful things from my trip to Annapolis today where I went seeking a large body of water:

1. The Chesapeake Bay is one of the winter homes to tundra swans. At the waterfront playground where I eventually ended up, a bevy (yes, that’s really the right word) of them were swimming nearby, mingling with mallards and gulls. Their trumpeting was impressive, but not as much as the crackling sound their wings made as they took off from the water.

2. It was clear today for the first time in ages, giving me a perfect view of the sun, a glowing neon red orb in the ice blue sky, setting over the horizon.

3. My car is now 17 years old and is feeling its age a bit, but its original, factory-installed stereo still works well enough that when I turned the volume up to sing along at the top of my lungs with John Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane” I could drown myself out. The radio didn’t conk out the entire trip, letting me get through both of my favorite sing-along playlists and partway through the cd Dad made me last year.

What was beautiful in your weekend?

Three beautiful things from my week past:

1. Sunday morning’s performers at the farmers’ market were two young women. One sang a cappella the ballad of Lord Bateman/Beichan while the other operated a device I don’t know the name of (although my friend Michael is guessing it could be an old-fashioned diorama). It was a wooden box with an illustrated parchment scroll inside caught between two rollers. Each roller had a handle that stuck through the box and the girl turned them to create a panorama visual accompaniment to the story. Both the artwork and the girl’s (Elizabeth’s) voice each would have been stunning on their own, but in concert they created an extraordinary vacuum of art that sucked their audience right out of their everyday world. (ETA: The women’s names are Anna & Elizabeth, they call their device a “crankie,” and apparently they had a show that night that I totally missed, which is a serious shame.)

2. D.C. was hit with a snowstorm yesterday that arrived fast and furious, dumping snow so fast that plows couldn’t keep up with it. Although my office let us go early, I ended up staying late to catch up on some things, emerging at the height of the storm. Walking to the Metro, anytime I passed under lights, the snow pouring down looked like lasers flickering in an ’80s movie.

3. Those of you who know me will be horrified to know that when Rudi isn’t around, I eat even worse than he does when he’s here to cook. Although I am getting some nutrition from the lentil stew he made for me before he left for Colorado, I have also indulged in Eskimo cookies, a Fluffernutter panini, and sweet potato chips. Luckily, he’ll only be gone for a week and then I’ll be back to eating regular meals.

What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

Three beautiful things from the past week:

1. Sleet and freezing rain moved through the area Monday night, leaving us to awaken in a fairy land Tuesday morning. Every tree and leaf and railing was encased in a shining, shimmering glaze of ice, offering up a dazzling piece of ephemeral, seasonal artwork.

2. When John invited a bunch of us over to dinner Sunday night, Rudi and I decided to bring dessert. Lost for something fast and elegant (John subscribes to more gourmet cooking that wouldn’t pair well with many of my standard quickies) from my standard repertoire and thwarted by an inability to use fruit, Rudi and I sought inspiration in a birthday cake Mum made me a few years back and settled on a flourless chocolate cake. It ended up being just what we were hoping for and (I thought) a nice ending to a fancy meal.

3. Monday was a holiday and I celebrated by lounging around the house all day with books and knitting. After a while I was ready for some other type of diversion and ended up coming across the Emma Thompson/Kate Winslet version of Sense and Sensibility secreted amidst Rudi’s collection of James Bond movies. I had forgotten just how good it was (although I do think Gemma Jones’ portrayal of Mrs. Dashwood is more restrained than Jane Austen wrote the character).

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

It’s been a chilly week here in D.C., where a near complete lack of snow made us an anomaly on the East Coast. (We did get a measly inch, so it wasn’t a total loss.)

Before we head into a long weekend, though, let’s look back at three beautiful things from the past week:

1. Karen (my best friend) and Michael’s baby girl was born during Wednesday morning’s snowstorm (as totally predicted by Karen on Tuesday). Mother and daughter, a delightful looking baby from the tiny picture Michael was so kind as to send to my phone, are doing fine and should be home by the weekend.

2. Although the snow didn’t end up staying, while it was coming down it looked very pretty. I left work at the height of the evening’s storm and so was able to appreciate the mini snowballs that caught on all the branches and in all the bushes and the coating of white along all the railings.

3. Sarah, Rudi, and I met up tonight for a last-minute dinner excursion to H Street N.E.’s Dangerously Delicious Pies where we ate … pie. We each stuffed ourselves with a savory slice for dinner and a sweet slice for dessert and sodas in glass bottles (we only consumed the drinks and not the containers) and then, when the total for the evening came to less than the gift certificate I had, Rudi and I added a slice of blueberry pie to bring home (for tomorrow’s breakfast, perhaps?) to bring our non-tip grand total to $3.

What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

Today was the twelfth day of Christmas. Did you celebrate with drums, swans, and milk? No, me neither. But I will mark the occasion by noting three beautiful, holiday-related things from the week past:

1. Our Christmas tree had shed nearly all its needles and was starting in on the ornaments when we took it down on Monday night. I stayed up late to box up and inventory the ornaments and noticed that a soldier was missing his rapier. The next morning I asked Rudi to keep an eye out for it and a few minutes after leaving for work he was back with a tiny, pink, plastic sword, having sifted through the heap of dead needles out in the tree box. I know the soldier will be grateful that he was not removed from duty permanently.

2. Rudi and I have spent much of the last week catching up on our Christmas movie watching, which was a bit sparse before the holidays. We’ve seen It’s a Wonderful Life and Christmas in Connecticut and The Shop around the Corner (which neither of us had seen before) and Cosmic Christmas (a CBC production I hadn’t seen for 30 years), all of which fill my heart with joy. But I wanted Rudi to get to see something he wanted, too, so I suggested he put on A Christmas Story, which I only had seen once and which I hadn’t liked at all. I’m happy to report that, as with last year’s viewing of Nightmare before Christmas, my opinion has been revised and I now can appreciate the sentiment of the story.

3. We begin the year as we mean to go on — at midnight, we were out on a movie date that we followed by a walk home as fireworks went off (yes, literally!). And then our first dinner of 2011 was with friends: Susan and Phillip invited John, Kathie, Rudi, and me to join the two of them and their new baby Holden for a delicious supper.

How about you? What has been beautiful in your world during these last seven days of Christmas?

Rudi and I are back home after a lovely, but all-too-short, six-day stay in Connecticut. We ate all manner of delicious things. We caught up on sleep. We gave and received an array of glittery gifts. And we laughed with family we see all too little of. I’d say it was a good Christmas.

Here are three moments of beauty snapped in the final week of the year:

1. Snow starts falling around 9:30 on Boxing Day morning and doesn’t stop until the following afternoon, leaving roughly eight inches of fluff on the ground for the fierce wind to blow about for another day. It makes the northern Connecticut farmland nearby look especially Christmassy.

2. A rafter of more than sixty turkeys stop by after the storm subsided to take advantage of the berries on my mother’s bushes and my father’s full bird feeders. While most of the birds leave via the back property line, five of them are startled into ungainly flight, eventually landing in the trees.

3. This time of year is good for catching up with old friends. Cards roll in with photos of friends’ and relatives’ children and notes from those we haven’t heard from in a while. In reply to a text message requesting an address update, a former student announces he’s engaged and says he’ll call soon with an update. And although the weather prevents Karen and me from getting together while I’m up north, we do get the chance to chat on the phone three days in a row, which is absolutely lovely and something we don’t do enough of anymore.

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