I’m on vacation, so let’s celebrate three more beautiful things today:

1. On the drive north last night, the full moon rose orange and magnificent. It looked like an orange hyphen floating in mid-air when it peeked out between two clouds.

2. Last week, I got tired of wanting dessert late at night and having nothing sweet in the house. So I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies Sunday night, but only baked the first dozen. I put the bowl in the fridge and every night, baked up a few more cookies. One night’s work translated to a week’s worth of dessert — always fresh and hot out of the oven.

3. Monday brought masses of people out to protest oppressive immigration reforms that have been proposed by some members of Congress and the White House. It was tremendous to see people who frequently try to blend into the background step into the foreground and demand to be seen and heard. They marched past my building after the rallies draped in American flags and chanting, “Si se puede!” And I believe we can.

Three beautiful things from the last week:

1. I worked two weekends during the winter, which gave me a few days to play with. I’m taking two today and tomorrow and heading north for the holidays. It’s nice that it’s 10 a.m., I haven’t taken a shower yet or even eaten breakfast. (I will have to kick it up a notch momentarily, but it’s been a great morning!)

2. On Sunday, we went out to brunch to celebrate our friend Sarah’s birthday. (Hi Sarah!). After our Mexican food, it was decided that we should head down to the Mall and recline in the sun in the Sculpture Garden. We plunked ourselves down beneath a kinetic sculpture and basked in a gorgeous spring afternoon. It was just as if someone had plucked a moment out of my college days.

3. Monday after work I headed over to our friends’ house to pick up our season baseball tickets. Pat and Heidi are the parents of Jack, who is 1 1/2, and the upcoming recipients of the unfinished mouse booties. Jack is adorable and generally has the sweet disposition of a child who has been brought up by grounded parents and who has been socialized early and often. But because he’s now mobile, he doesn’t get taken out to the pubs or restaurants anymore, so I rarely get to see him. Heidi promised I could have lots of cuddling and play time with him and his siblings this summer. Since I live far away from the other children in my life, it was nice to get this offer and nice to spend some toddler time with Jack the other night.

Beautiful things happen every day, but I save them up and share three of them with you on Thursdays. Here are the ones from the last week:

1. Rudi gets up before me in the mornings and I don’t arise until he’s walking out the door for work. This morning, Posey joined Jeremiah and me in bed. Jer was in his normal morning spot in the crook of my knees and Posey came and leaned against my arms and chest.

2. Our office hosted an art exhibition opening yesterday and the new girl working on that project ordered chocolate-covered strawberries as one of the hors d’oeuvres.

3. Clare, the originator of Three Beautiful Things, is back home in Tunbridge Wells after a 9 1/2 week jaunt across Africa. I’ve enjoyed her infrequent postings from the road, but am even happier to have her back posting on a daily basis. When you visit her site, check out the sidebar, where she links to beautiful things from Africa, which she saved to share with us. (I’m working my way through February now.)

Three beautiful things from the last week:

1. I eat lunch outdoors whenever I can, but I worked from home today, so my scenery and lunch options were different. I opted for my closest outdoor eatery, Teaism, where I feasted on a mango lassi and a sandwich of portobello mushrooms, pecans, and goat cheese. Sparrows cheeped at me as I read Linda Ellerbee’s latest travel and food memoir and swayed to the tunes on the iPod from my sunny wooden bench.

2. I did something truly dumb Sunday night when we got home. After parking the car where we wouldn’t have to move it for a few days, I decided to clean up some of the junk in the back seat. This took about ten minutes and then I locked the car up and headed home. Didn’t look back. Didn’t see I’d left the dome light on. No one saw. Until two nights later when Rudi passed it en route to the grocery store. Oops. Since we had to move the car by this morning at 7 a.m., I dropped our friend Phillip, who owns a car, an email yesterday morning, asking if he’d mind giving me a jump (using the jumper cables my parents gave me as a Christmas gift one year). No problem, he said, and he arrived yesterday afternoon, with good grace, a sense of humor, and a running engine. Rudi, I, and our re-running car are grateful.

3. As I walked home from Teaism this afternoon, the smell of hyacinths washed over me. I love the smell of hyacinths. Their heady scent always makes me happy. And I am now that spring truly has arrived.

Three beautiful things from the last week:

1. We left D.C. a bit late on Thursday and as such decided to spend the night at Gramma’s instead of Mum and Dad’s. Gramma had called me up earlier in the day to say that the room with the double bed (which had had a mold outbreak earlier this winter) seemed to smell okay, but in case we didn’t agree with her, she was going to make up the single bed as well. When we arrived, there was a note on the spare bed saying that if we decided to sleep there to take the quilt and the pillows from the other room. She went to all that trouble (as well as making a batch of blueberry muffins for breakfast) just on the off-chance that we’d stop.

2. The new iPod is fun, fun, fun! I’ve downloaded a bunch of new music (okay, much of it was Rudi’s) and podcasts and Rudi ripped two episodes of The Muppet Show. While I was taking the T in from Cambridge this morning, I watched the first half of an episode featuring Rita Moreno.

3. Last night, Alexis asked me if I wanted to do dinner. And then my comic strip/convention pals stopped by to see if I wanted to catch a bite too. Alexis passed on her hope for sushi so we could accompany a whole group of strangers (as well as my pals) out for drinks and then dinner. And “Gene” and Bill wheedled until Alexis and I agreed to stay. And at the end of the night, these people who didn’t really know us paid for our dinner! So thanks to Alexis for her flexibility and to Bill and “Gene” for knowing generous souls and encouraging us to tag along.

Each Thursday brings three new beautiful things from my life:

1. A few years back, I asked Gramma to write out some of her recipes for me as a Christmas present. She obliged, and I find that now that I don’t see her several times a week, I turn to it for inspiration on a regular basis. On Sunday, we went to dinner at Phillip’s house and I was asked to bring dessert. So I thumbed through Gramma’s cookbook once again, looking for a recipe that didn’t call for fruit (Susan doesn’t like fruit), and decided on cream puffs. Now, whenever Gramma made them, I was under the impression that she’d performed culinary magic. But the truth is that they’re very easy to make. She laughed when I called to tell her of my success and said they’re actually the easiest dessert to make. If you don’t believe me, check out the Washington Post‘s cream puff article, which, incidentally, appeared in yesterday’s paper. (Visit BugMeNot if you need a login.)

2. Rudi and I went out for a walk around sunset on Monday and as we surfaced from The Burrow, we noticed a bat flying around the neighborhood. He pursued his dinner for a while and then settled back near the neighbor’s fire escape. I don’t know if he was actually hanging from the fire escape or if there was a hole in the house where he was hanging, but he just disappeared. It was very cool in a Dracula kind of way…

3. When we lived in Middletown, our house was right across the street from the local pizza joint. We were regulars, calling up every Friday night (or any time we couldn’t resist the smell) to order dinner. And on nights when we were making pasta, it was simpler (and at $1.50 almost cheaper) to order garlic bread from them than it was to go to the store in pursuit of bread to make our own. (Plus, who can argue with garlic bread made by actual Italians?) Just after we moved away, the restaurant closed briefly and switched ownership. Apparently they couldn’t survive without us. (Or maybe they just chose not to…) But on Saturday, when I’d made some hummus and didn’t feel like making my own pitas, it was a nostalgic feeling to walk the two blocks over to Zorba’s and order some of their homemade pitta bread. $1.19 bought me three hot pitas. Yum!