Three beautiful things from the last week:

1. When Karen and Michael came to town last week, we were looking for cool, veggie-friendly food for dinner. When we got to Lebanese Taverna, I was dismayed to discover they’d gotten rid of their page full of vegetarian food. Or at least I was until I realized there was another page of the menu tucked under a flap I’d missed. Dinner was great.

2. I took the first six episodes of The Dukes of Hazzard out of the video store the other day. Rudi and I watched the first two episodes last night. It definitely wasn’t a deep show, but boy was it enjoyable!

3. The extended Burrow family has had a few more trips to the hospital in the last week than usual. But the good news is that we don’t believe any permanent damage has been sustained by anyone, and some unhealthy behaviors may change as a result.

I have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon, so I’m posting this before I head out.

Three beautiful things from earlier in the week:

1. When we were at the vineyard on Saturday, Rudi and I were relaxing on some chairs in the shade while we waited for his tasting to begin. A shiny black and yellow striped flying critter found me irresistable and started hovering over my leg, pausing now and then to “lick” me. It was such an odd sensation, being tickled by a bug!

2. It’s always so much fun to go to see a showing of a movie you’ve seen a number of times and to hear how the audience reacts to the scenes. It was obvious at the AFI showing of After the Thin Man, that some people were newbies to the series because they had that great reaction that only comes when you first experience a particular scene or line.

3. As I’ve mentioned many times before, Karen and I have known each other since high school. We don’t talk every week, but usually manage to phone once or twice a month (and then for hours and hours). When we were in high school, we talked on the phone almost every night, as teenagers often do. But somehow we’ve never run out of things to talk about, even after all these years.

On Thursdays, we note three beautiful things from the last week:

1. On my walk to the Metro in the morning there is a bush with tiny, pink, lilac-like flowers that is in bloom. This week, the flowers started to drop and have filled the crevices in the sidewalk, leaving the walk outlined in a rosy hue.

2. On Sunday, we went out to Wolf Trap for a concert by Elvis Costello and Emmylou Harris. We had lawn seats along with seven of our friends and we made a picnic of it. I couldn’t help but contrast it with the Sting show we saw at the Meadows in Connecticut a few years back. We also went with friends to that one, but the Meadows doesn’t encourage you to bring your own food and they outright ban alcohol from being brought in. Sting was okay, but pretty much seemed to be going through the motions. There was no interaction with the audience, no changing up the songs, no emotion — plus it was an exact duplicate of the show we’d seen the fall before. We were unimpressed. Sunday’s concert, on the other hand, started with a picnic (complete with wine, hard cider, and a thermos of iced tea). When the show began, I wasn’t sure how much I was going to enjoy it because Elvis just launched into the first couple of songs. But then he started giving the stories behind some of the songs and telling anecdotes, and he and Emmylou and the band really seemed to want to be exactly where they were, doing precisely what they were doing. It was an entirely different atmosphere from two concerts that had very similar ingredients to them, and I came home pleased.

3. For Sunday’s picnic, I decided to make hummus. Back in June I won a copy of Diana Abu-Jaber’s The Language of Baklava from Amy at Bay Area Bites. Since then, I’ve been reading it in bits and bats on the Metro and during lunch hours at work. And it inspired me to try my hand at some Middle Eastern cooking. So early Sunday afternoon, that’s just what I did. Of course, drama follows me whenever I enter the kitchen. We all remember the trifle woes of last month. My mother can tell you about the time she came home one afternoon when I was in high school and found me sitting in the living room and talking on the phone as a burning smell wafted in from the oven in the next room over. And Rudi and Jason can tell you about the time that I burned the rice I was making as part of supper for the three of us. So, it was no surprise when the hummus did not start out quite so easily as it should have: Although I looked at our mini food processor and thought, will there be enough room in that, my head’s answer was “sure!” Let me tell you, my head clearly knows nothing about cooking. Because there wasn’t. The first chickpeas went into the mixture and all the liquid started pouring out the sides and underneath and everywhich way. Rudi helped me mop up the mess, but the only things to do were 1) laugh heartily for the next 10 minutes, 2) ladle out about half the mixture and do it in batches, and 3) keep plowing through. Luckily, although my head knows nothing about cooking, my stomach does know about eating and I made a mean batch of hummus for my first go.

It’s Thursday, so it must be time for Three Beautiful Things from the last week:

1. While at Falcon Ridge, we camped with Mike and Shelley and their kids, Daschel and Irisa. Dasch and Reesie are full of energy, but at night they eventually settle down and get very cuddly. I haven’t been around little kids a whole lot since last fall’s visit to Jason and Essia and their daughters Nina and Lylia, so it was good to replenish my snuggling quota. Because child-snuggling is just different from Rudi-snuggling or cat-snugggling.

2. Yesterday evening as I was walking to the Metro, the first frog-sized drops started to fall from the sky. By the time the train stopped at my station, the rain was coming down steadily. Usually people scamper when it’s raining, not wanting to get their work clothes all wet. But it’s been so hot and nasty that last night, everyone walked leisurely along, enjoying the stroll as we all got progressively damper. Utter bliss.

3. This morning the sun shone down into our window well and reminded me summertime can actually be nice. Because I couldn’t see past the window well flora from my seat, it seemed almost as if the sunbeams emanated from the young saplings themselves, creating a remarkable glowing emerald green landscape for me to look at and making it seem like a glorious day to be alive.

Three beautiful things of the week:

1. Cold iced tea on a hot day. It’s been gross down here for the last week or two and iced tea has been the saving grace.

2. The atmosphere at Olsson’s last Friday night was one of quiet excitement. We arrived about 11 and were amongst the first ones there. The booksellers had put out cookies, soda, and Bertie Botts’ Every Flavor Beans (mine were okay, but Rudi ended up with a grass one). We worked on some trivia puzzles and then drifted into lines as the clocked ticked toward midnight. By 11:45, there was a good crowd, and you could feel the excitement growing. Finally, with a countdown from 10 that ended in a cheer, they started giving out the books. It was great.

3. We’re currently on vacation. We saw Spamalot on Broadway last night and are heading a little further upstate to Hillsdale today for the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. We’re going to camp with friends and their kids. We will barbecue. We will find some new music and maybe a wedding present for my cousin. We will see my folks and Gramma Sunday and Monday. We will hopefully come back relaxed and rested. Because that’s the whole reason behind a vacation.

This week’s three beautiful things:

1. Last night, I got up from the computer to brush my teeth and discovered all three cats clustered at the bathroom door. Feeling that such collaboration a little suspicious, I moved the door and discovered what I think might have been a young cricket/grasshopper/weird bug hiding desperately under the safety the 1 1/2 inch door provided. When I got back inside from escorting the bug back to a more hospitable environment, I congratulated the trio on their protective and hunting instincts.

2. I bought the first peaches of the season at last weekend’s market and have been eating them throughout the week. They were a little hard when I bought them, but Eli and Misty’s stand just smelled divine, so I knew they would ripen into something delicious. And the juice that’s been dripping off my chin each evening is the evidence I was right.

3. Yesterday, my friends came through in spades — an IM conversation with Shelley, emails from Danny and Wendy, a train ride home from a meeting with Susan and John, a phone message (relayed through Rudi) from Jason, and a nice long phone chat with Karen. As they say down here, I am blessed.