Three beautiful things from the past week:

1. Time off — and in such a beautiful place — with Rudi. This will be a trip we remember for a long time.

2. Under any circumstance, a rainbow merits a mention. But particularly when it welcomes us to a foreign city.

3. Before we left home, the leaves were finally starting to fall. Crunching your way down the sidewalk made it seem autumn-like indeed.

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

It’s the Thursday before we go to Iceland. Whee!

Ahem…

Sorry about that.

I now return you to our regularly scheduled Thursday feature — three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Fall has arrived in D.C. and the trees are bedecked in lavish costumes of orange and yellow.

2. After my semi-annual dental check-up, I celebrate clean teeth with a raspberry cream milkshake and two macarons from Barracks Row restaurants, which I eat in a park under the setting sun.

3. Two of my coworkers and I — all of us survivors of the pre-launch mania — buy lunch, head to a local plaza, and eat outside on a gorgeous sunny afternoon. We chat and laugh and talk about things that have nothing to do with work. It feels so luxurious not to have to rush right back to the office.

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

I can now count the number of days until Iceland on my fingers. That’s good because although I’m not working the insane hours that I was before my project went live, we’ve had some hiccups that still prevent me from focusing on what’s important — my impending vacation.

However, the week has not been without its highlights, and here are but three of the beautiful ones amongst them:

1. My dad’s best friend comes up to help my folks clear the driveway of all the fallen trees blocking their egress. They might still be without power, heat, and running water, but at least now they can leave if they have/want to.

2. Rudi takes a day off to testify before city council. He’s done in time to join me downtown for a late lunch out in the sunshine.

3. Susan and Phillip invite me to accompany them to Holden’s first Halloween festival. He is a devil — and the most adorable one ever — with a huge, impish grin.

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

This week has been a long one and I am particularly glad to reach Thursday because it means the weekend — both work-free days of it — has nearly arrived. I am planning to sleep and clean and sleep and see friends and sleep and bake a pie and sleep and …

Anyway, before I do all that, I wanted to highlight three beautiful things from the week past:

1. My project went public this week. While its launch does not actually mean we’re done with the work, it does mean my coworkers and I can stop working such ridiculous hours. I celebrated Wednesday by leaving the office while the sun was still in the sky.

2. Sarah, Rudi, and I took Saturday as an apple quest day. We picked some granny smiths and a handful of enterprises (as well as beets, broccoli, and spinach), returned to our local cider doughnut purveyor, and found some delicious cider at a farm stand where they also had an apple launch. It was a lovely day out — with the surprise addition of seeing a hot air balloon aloft as we were driving down the highway. [N.B. to Mum: I told Sarah and Rudi about that time where we saw the balloon from the backyard, and you got us into the car and we chased the balloon down until it landed. That was really cool.]

3. John, Sarah, Rudi, and I headed to the movies after work tonight to kick off the Halloween season with a viewing of Ghostbusters (the entirety of which I don’t think I’ve seen since watching it at the drive-in at the Cape when I was a kid). I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.

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

I’m rapidly losing the ability to string words together in a coherent fashion, so let’s get right to three beautiful things from my past week:

1. On Sunday, Rudi, John, Nicole, and I headed out to a Maryland forest for the local renaissance faire. There were people’s costumes to admire and/or marvel at, there was comedy, there was jousting (although I missed all the battle parts and just saw people riding horses…), there was a slide amidst the trees, there were arrows to shoot (my enemies remain safe), and there was a garland to buy. The trees were golden, the skies were blue, and the company was lovely. A perfect day of rest.

2. Just as I reached home tonight, the scent of autumn wafted over me.

3. Ghosts peek out of a neighbor’s windows at me. They remind me of Casper’s friends, though, so it’s okay.

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

I’m neck-deep in a work deadline that’s keeping me late at the office nearly every night and starting to infringe on my sleeping hours, as well. Until that passes (and perhaps a little while after, as I’m starting to resign myself to how much will still be left to do even after the project goes public), I’m afraid we’re looking at continuing the recent trend of posts of music videos and lists and the occasional photo essay that are heavy on pictures and light on text.

To that end, here are three beautiful things from my week past:

1. We pulled into my parents’ driveway at 4 a.m. on Saturday morning. The sky was ink black and, to my amazement, filled with millions of stars. (I had noticed my old college friend, Orion, earlier in the night, but this was something of another scale altogether…) Rudi and I stood outside the car in the chilly fall night just staring up. I breathed to him, “I’d forgotten about stars.” It was nice to be re-introduced.

2. Even when I was good at volleyball, I was terrible at serving. Last night, for the first time in years and years and years, I got both of my serves over the net and in my opponent’s court.

3. I arrived home last night to discover that my keys were not in my purse. And they were not in my bag. I looked (and shook the bags to verify) … three times … each time convinced I’d somehow missed their reassuring jingliness. I knew I’d taken them out of my pocket when I changed for volleyball and put them on my desk with my metro card, but the card was there and the keys were not. In a Shrödinger’s Cat kind of key nightmare, I refused to let Rudi take me to work to see if they were still somehow in my office because the possibility I’d lost them elsewhere was too much to contemplate actively. The panic I experienced this morning when the keys were not on my desk where I last remembered placing them was, however, quickly replaced with joy when I discovered them on the windowsill where I must have left them when I rearranged my bag right before leaving.

How about you? What’s been beautiful or breathtaking or gratitude-inspiring in your world this week?