Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. We’ve hit playoffs in both volleyball leagues, and with my team tonight, the list of available players shrank rapidly until I was down to four. The bad news is that that league sets the mandatory minimum at five players. So the other team would have been within their rights to call us on it and to force us to forfeit the game. But they didn’t. They said we could play with our four against their full team and they’d abide by the outcome, which was tremendously decent.

2. Our friends invite us to a Halloween party, our first in years. We don’t stay for long, but I’m so glad we went for a little while.

3. New Christmas music has started coming out. I’m mostly playing it after Rudi goes to bed so it doesn’t annoy him too much, but it feels good to be working on this year’s mix already, particularly since the last couple have come down to the wire.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Rudi and I went for a hike on Tuesday at Seneca Creek State Park in Maryland. It was a lovely 4’ish mile walk around a pond and the color, while muted, was pretty.

2. Two of my dearest college friends came down to visit from New York for the weekend. I hadn’t seen Eri since the fall before the pandemic, which is probably the longest that we’ve ever gone between visits, so I was particularly glad to finally connect with her. We had lots of good conversations, ate many tasty things, and just really got to enjoy each other’s company.

3. I didn’t mean to get all my Christmas holds in mid-October, but apparently no one else was thinking that far ahead.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Mondays, I coach in a kids’ afterschool volleyball program. Usually, I end up with the littlest kids, but this week, there were only two adults. The other woman doesn’t have much volleyball experience, so she asked if I’d take the preteens. I thought we ended up having a pretty good practice, and while I got a little attitude at the beginning, I thought I dissipated it pretty quickly.

2. I knit a bulky-weight hat this week, so I could wear it while playing tonight if it felt cold enough to need it. (It didn’t.) I didn’t check stitch gauge and it’s a little bigger than I’d like, so I’m going to reknit it on slightly smaller needles. But it felt so good to actually finish something enough that it could be worn.

3. I had a meeting this week with the president of the company that organized the scavenger hunt my friends and I did earlier this month. He was looking for feedback on how our experience with the game and I was happy to tell him how much we’d enjoyed it. But he also offered to make any connections he could with local nonprofits in his network as I’m continuing my job search, which was such a surprising kindness.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. My dad’s 80th birthday was Saturday, and our immediate family and his best friends went to Cape Cod to celebrate. My brother made all the arrangements and did a fantastic job with all of it.

2. My friend’s baby was clearly eager to help open his gifts from the volleyball team, because he arrived on Friday to much fanfare.

3. Two dear college friends texted to say they’re coming to visit next weekend.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week all involve my volleyball friends:

1. Sergio and his wife are having a baby this month, and a bunch of us went in on a group gift. We had agreed to a plan, which included my taking care of the ordering. I knew the money would follow, but yesterday and today it started to pour in and kept doing so. Today, I got to go and buy some extra books to zero us out. When we presented him with the gift and he read everyone’s messages, he nearly broke down and I got a touching email from him when he got home to open some of the gifts with his wife.

2. Chris proposed to his girlfriend last week and she said yes.

3. My friends Neal and Amy agreed to take part in a literary scavenger hunt with me last weekend. We solved riddles, clues, and puns and visited a number of literary-themed sites (including the main library, where I finally got to ride the slide!) It helps to be able to ignore the signs stating there’s an age limit when you have a tweet from the head librarian giving you the green light. It ended up being such a blast, and while Amy is moving away, I think Neal would do it again with me next year.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. House- and dog-sitting for a friend means I spend a lot of time curled up with a snuggly pup.

2. Tonight’s sunset was the kind where every moment you think it’s gotten as beautiful as it possibly can and then it amps it up again.

3. A couple strangers at pickup volleyball offered compliments on my play (one guy made particularly head-turning comparisons) and a friend whose own skills I respect echoed some of them.

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