Just to make sure you’re awake, Craig Ferguson just informed me that Christmas is only 45 days away. We now return you to your regularly scheduled three beautiful things:

1. Julia and I meet up as it’s getting toward the newly early eventide. We walk along the Mall, sipping tea, and watching a glorious sunset.

2. Four states opposed hate from the voting booth.

3. The central branch of the Arlington County Public Library is open Sunday evenings until 9 p.m. I have never been to a non-college library that kept such hours before, and it fills an unrealized need in my life.

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

I’m a little confused about the days of this week, but it seems that today was Thursday, which means it’s time to look back on three beautiful things from it:

1. Because we personally suffered no ill effects and my most immediately important people also got off easily, two days off from work due to a hurricane seem pretty damn awesome. (Clearly the damage caused by the storm elsewhere was not remotely beautiful. But you get my point, right?)

2. Since the storm departed, the temperatures have dropped to seasonably cool. Wool blankets and socks and hats started seeming reasonable over the weekend (particularly since we keep the window open until pretty late in the season), and today I got to wear a cool-weather dress I bought over the summer.

3. We went to see Frankenweenie tonight. I had a small skein of yarn that needed unknotting, which was perfect for when the movie got to be too much for me (as Tim Burton movies are wont to do).

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

It’s been a nice week filled with beautiful things. Here are just three of them:

1. We returned home from Louisiana to find D.C. firmly in the throes of fall. Last night, the leaves dropped like rain from the tree outside the Burrow.

2. We hit a New Orleans club on Friday night for a rousing concert by the Dana Abbott Band. I was so smitten, I bought a cd off her when she walked around passing the hat.

3. My former intern Jason got married on Saturday. His bride, Jennifer, seems lovely, and Jason’s eyes lit up whenever he looked at her.

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

Oh, Thursday, you come around so quickly…

Here are three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Sharing a pint of New Orleans Ice Cream Company’s White Chocolate Bread Pudding ice cream — in New Orleans.

2. Buying a toaster oven that turns out to be a third off.

3. New Orleans is in full party prep mode for Halloween with cobwebs dripping off balconies and animatronic witches triggered by flash bulbs.

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

It’s already Thursday, which is just crazy. How did that happen?

Nonetheless, it has, and that means it’s time to look back at three beautiful things from the past week:

1. My dad turned 70 (although his spirit is far younger), and my brother and I and our partners were able to make it home to celebrate with him. To mark the occasion, my mom baked her apple crumble pie. No one makes apple pies that taste as good as my mom’s and my grandmother’s.

2. Rudi and I headed to the Uptown last night to catch the penultimate showing there of Trouble with the Curve. It was not high art, but it was a comfortable film that was well acted and that holds its own with most baseball movies. Plus, Amy Adams played a tough chick who could floor you with her baseball knowledge. A definite plus in my book.

3. Jason Werth hit a solo home run in the bottom of the ninth in tonight’s NLDS game 4, sending the Nationals to a tie breaker tomorrow night and eliciting cheers from the restaurant/bar where we were dining.

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

I am starting to feel that squishing three vacations into a single month’s time may have been ambitious planning on our part. However, it’s just the interstitials that are difficult, not being someplace else with people we enjoy.

So, before my head explodes with logistics and planning, let’s look back on three beautiful things from the past week:

1. Rudi and I had tickets to Monday’s Nationals game, where, despite losing to the Phillies, they clinched the division title. The ballpark erupted midway through the eighth inning, when the Pittsburgh-Atlanta score was finalized and then again when Michael Morse was announced in the lead-off spot as being from the “NL East Division Champion Wahsington Nationals.” (And again when his batting song, “Take On Me” started up. And then when we finished the chorus in inarticulate laughter and offkey notes. And when the game was over and when the dive klaxon and the fireworks went off. And when they showed the scene in the locker room, where the team was outfitted in swim goggles, snorkels, and scuba masks for the traditional spraying of champagne. And when Gio Gonzalez ecstatically came tearing out of the dug out. And when Morse took his bottle of champagne out to left field to spray his particular group of fans. And … Well, let’s just say we cheered a lot.)

2. Raspberries in October from the farmers market.

3. Swimming under a nearly full harvest moon — and then drying off in front of an outdoor fireplace.

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