Rest assured, like the post office, three beautiful things happens regardless of snow, sleet, or sickness (although I did venture back to work today). Three things from the past week:

1. What could be more appropriate for a sick day than a watching of The Princess Bride? (Plus, did you know that Cary Elwes and Mandy Patinkin did their own fencing?)

2. While the internet can be fun, I sometimes forget that it really can be a tool for change and for good. Last month, food bloggers around the world generously donated prizes for a raffle toward raising funds for the U.N. World Food Programme. People across the globe chipped in funds ($10 would net you an entry toward one of a hundred or so prizes) and last week the announcement was made that we had raised $91,188 to feed hungry children in Lesotho. What a terrific thing to be part of! (I was the lucky winner of a care package from London!) Interested in other sorts of online charity? Christy is trying to get knitters to build a house in New Orleans — without having to lift a hammer.

3. Rudi gave me new flannel sheets (with adorable penguins on them!) for Christmas this year. Because the flannel hasn’t yet been washed, it is SOOOOOO soft, which is particularly nice seeing as how I’ve spent an awful lot of time in bed this week.

Time is relative. This week, my first full week in the office in nearly a month, is moving at a molasses pace, yet here it is, already Thursday. How does that happen?

Regardless, I offer you several beautiful things from the last week:

1. Posey and I snuggle together on the couch, me under a wool blanket, her nestled in my lap on top of it. We sit in the darkened living room aglow for one last night with the lights of our Christmas tree. It has been a good season.

2. The last line of The Bucket List causes the theater to erupt in laughter and applause, leaving the audience feeling good about the movie.

3. I have started Twelfth Night and am quite enjoying it so far. I’ve meant to read/watch this Shakespeare comedy for several years running now and have finally dug it out thanks to a read-along on Ravelry. I’ve read most of Shakespeare’s tragedies, but am woefully behind on the comedies. It feels good to be working my way through the list.

I promise that I’ll get back in the swing of blogging again soon. I’m just having a hard time getting back into real life. But in the meantime, let’s look at three beautiful things from the past week:

1. New Jersey has some of the best Christmas lights on the East Coast. Seriously, those people who live within sight of the GSP and who decorate whole streets rock. It makes the drive so exciting and cheery.

2. I like to bake on New Year’s morning, but usually I just make scones. This year, I thought I’d try one of the recipes I’d bookmarked from the various food-blogs I read. So I read through some of the options and settled on Baking Bites’ Pumpkin Dutch Baby recipe — with soy milk substituted for the regular milk. I’d absolutely make it again. And if you didn’t soak it with maple syrup like I did, it might even be a somewhat healthy breakfast treat.

3. Rudi and I have made ourselves a New Year’s Eve tradition since moving to D.C. of heading to the movies for the day. Usually we go by ourselves (because everyone else has lusher plans than we aspire to), but this year Sweetpea let herself be talked into joining us for the trio of movies and our friend Susan and her coworker came downtown for our middle film. After Juno let out, we had some time to kill until the final movie of the night (and year), so we headed to a local pizza joint (much fancier than the pizza joints I grew up with) and the five of us toasted the end of the old year. It was a really nice way to finish out 2007, particularly since Susan and Sweetpea are two of our favorite D.C. folks.

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you all had lovely, restful holidays. Rudi and I came north for Christmas. I’m hanging with the family and sleeping a lot. (Apparently two hours of sleep a night before Christmas leaves you with a deficit to make up for.) Rudi headed even further north to ski for a few days.

We head back south this weekend so we can celebrate New Year’s Eve with our annual movie-theater-athon. Any recommendations for things currently out in the theaters you think we’d enjoy? (I don’t like bloody, scary, or warlike, which lets out an awful lot. Juno is on the current list, as is The Golden Compass. Maybe Charlie Wilson’s War or National Treasure or P.S. I Love You.)

Here are three beautiful things from my Christmas week:

1. Growing up, Josh and I always used to go down to my grandparents’ basement after holiday meals and watch the men play pool (as the company started to trickle in after their own holiday meals). Naturally, we rooted for Dad to win. When the grownups had tired of playing, Dad would play a game or two with us. As everyone got older, fewer people would come to Gramma’s Christmas night, and Josh and I were welcome to play with Dad, Uncle David and Grampa. In recent years, though, the pool table was covered over and used as storage. Then Grampa died and we started celebrating holidays at Mum and Dad’s when they bought this house. Last March, we emptied Gramma’s house and the pool table moved in pieces up here. In the last month, Dad got the pool table put together, refelted, and ready to go. Christmas after dinner, my cousins, Rudi, and I got to play down in the basement. And tonight Dad and I spent a couple of hours playing (badly). This was a tradition that deserved to be resurrected.

2. To say I was a little behind in Christmas knitting this year was an understatement. I planned to knit all day on Saturday while Rudi drove to Connecticut. (It was easier for him to drive than to learn to knit at the last minute…) Ultimately, we got a later start than we’d intended and I only had an hour or two of daylight before the sun set. Luckily, I’ve now knit long enough that I’m able to feel my way along on patterns that aren’t too complicated. I moved slower on Dad’s scarf than I’d hoped to, but got about 15 inches knit in the car. (And, no, before you ask, I didn’t finish any of the Christmas knitting this year. The scarf is nearing completion and Gramma’s hat is next on my list. Mum’s second sock will probably have to be mailed…)

3. I headed to Massachusetts on Sunday to see what Northampton could offer me for my money. It was a remarkably productive trip, allowing me to shop independently at an organic food store, a music shop, two different bookstores, a gift shop, a chocolatier, a kitchen goods store, and a dry good department store. I like knowing where my money goes and Northampton has been remarkably diligent about keeping its downtown filled with small businesses as opposed to selling out to big franchises and national chains.

What was beautiful in your life this week?

Ack! Thursday is practically gone already! The single-digit days leading up to Christmas are generally fraught, but there is still beauty tucked amidst the panic. Here are three from the past week:

1. Sweetpea, Rudi, and I meet up for dinner Tuesday night at a local diner that serves particularly good grilled cheese and tomato soup. At the bottom of my cherry coke sit two festive cherries just waiting to surprise me. (Luna also merits mention because they dangle Christmas ornaments from the dining room ceiling to really give the restaurant a festive spirit.)

2. In addition to Tuesday’s soiree, Rudi and I have had a lot of dinners out in the last week. Saturday night, a large group of us followed up a party with a midnight trip to a bar. Sunday, we partook of Sweetpea and Megan’s generosity and combined food, merrimaking, and holiday cartoons for a terrifically fun evening. And last night, Amani and I met up for dinner at Teaism so I could learn how her first week at the new job is going and so she could get instructions for caring for our cats next week.

3. Every Christmas Dad makes a mix cd or two. This week his latest compilation arrived in the mail and it really merits mention. One of my favorite tunes may be “Jingle Bell Rock” as performed by Bobby Rydell and Chubby Checker. It sounded good on the computer speakers, but it particularly stands out when listening on headphones where you can hear the exchange between the two singers. They’re clearly having fun singing it together and it’s just impossible to listen without smiling. The rest of the music runs the genre gamut — from ’80s bands Heart and Survivor to the casts of the musicals Little Shop of Horrors and Hairspray and from Rebs’ favorite Grey Eye Glances to Sam’s fave KT Tunstall — and I’ve already listened to it through a number of times. Great job, Dad!

Sorry for the tardiness; I dozed off there. But better late than never, right? Here are my three beautiful things from the last week:

1. I meet Rudi’s cycling friends for the first time en masse Sunday evening at a party. They all seem like really nice people who genuinely like Rudi. They share his crazy “let’s cheerily ride 100 miles in a day” mentality, which I fail to understand. But I’m glad that he has people who do.

2. A few weeks ago, one of the classic radio podcasts I subscribe to on iTunes posted Miracle of the Bells, a mostly-forgotten movie starring Fred McMurray, Valli, and Frank Sinatra in a non-singing role. The radio show, presented by Lux Radio Theater, is a personal classic, though, because every year Dad used to take the taped copy out of the library for us to listen to. I listen to it late at night as I knit curled up on the couch. (As a side note, I realize that this show may have defined Western Pennsylvania for me growing up and probably is responsible for my misgiving that Pittsburgh would be a dirty coal mining city.)

3. Anxiolytic: anxiety-relieving. It means the exact opposite of what I guessed it would and, as such, is so much more useful. It’s my favorite word of the week.