If it’s Thursday, it’s time to think back on three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Last Saturday night, I ran my phone battery down until it turned off and then I plugged it in. Little did I realize that would be the last thing the phone would do, forcing me into a phone upgrade by initiating a boot loop sequence it could not escape. After several days of hemming and hawing without a cell, I splurged and purchased a current model, the Samsung Galaxy S7. Since I get a good number of years out of my phones, I figure it was worth it to spend the money on a phone that’s worth more than the trade-in value of my car. I haven’t had it long enough to form any strong opinions, but none of them have been negative yet, and it’s fun to have a new toy to set up and play with.

2. Last Saturday was Independent Bookstore Day and I treated it as the holiday that it is. D.C. is now home to five indie shops that sell new books and I made a point of it to visit all of them, including East City Bookshop on Capitol Hill, which opened on Saturday. I came home with several new books including a couple collections of poetry, a French- and English-language collection of fables, and a collection of essays about bad-ass women through history edited by a D.C. librarian.

3. It’s been a week of mostly rain and clouds, so it was especially nice when the sun peeked out on occasion — and even lovelier when I was outdoors when it happened.

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

Three beautiful things from the past week:

1. A fresh pair of contact lenses.

2. The first flip-flop days of the year — and painted toenails to emphasize them.

3. A rainy day means lots of strawberries still left late at the market and, therefore, a sale on flats. I take home a dozen gorgeous and tasty pints for $2 apiece.

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

Three beautiful things from this past week:

1. Swayed by a sign pointing the way to the local beach, Rudi and I made a surprise ten-minute stop at Savin Rock in West Haven, where we admired the full moonrise over the ocean and I dipped my toes in the chilly water. (I’ll post a picture tomorrow. I don’t want to get out of bed to get my phone.)

2. A letter arrives from a college friend from the Philippines and a postcard from Rhode Island.

3. My Bikeshare fob (a plastic sandwich with a computer chip dot as its meager filling) came apart six months ago and I’ve been using a hair elastic to keep it held together since then. (I should note here that Bikeshare would totally replace it for free if I told them about it. Which I will. At some point.) Last Sunday, as I heading into work, I realized the elastic had gotten yanked off the fob and the chip, which is smaller than my pinkie nail, was gone. A couple days later, Rudi looked down just outside the apartment door and saw my chip lying on the ground, unsquashed. It’s back in the fob and working once more.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The stunned look on my coworkers’ faces when I volunteered to come in early to work tomorrow to help prep for an event.

2. At a local bar, I order a drink off the dessert menu: a pineapple soda float.

3. While normally I am a huge fan of April baseball, even I admit that I was not looking forward to last Saturday’s game, which was forecast to be damp, cold, and windy. When they postpone the game until May, I am not sad.

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

I dozed off last night without posting, so here is a belated list of three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The strawberry plot in my garden is filled with violets. I pick a bunch to enjoy at home.

2. I screw up the time of an event and miss it. So instead I sit in the sun at a cafe with some chai and a piece of blueberry chocolate pie and read.

3. Rudi’s been under the weather this week and was particularly unhappy yesterday evening as I was leaving work. My go-to sick food comes out of a packet, but his is homemade chicken soup like his mom makes, which clearly I’m never going to prepare. So I stop at the Greek place near our house to pick up their homemade chicken soup for supper without telling him that was my plan.

And a bonus for being late:

4. One of the things I hate about ski season is that unused skis sit behind the door to our apartment and keep it from fully opening, which makes getting my bike in and out difficult. (This is less a problem in the dead cold of winter and more so when it starts to warm up a bit.) I arrive home from work one evening to find that the skis have been put away and the door opens wide once more.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Rudi and I clear the garden of debris, turn the dirt, add some fresh soil, and plant peas and some random plants we pick up the local garden collective. Next, I need to plant my kitchen-weary potatoes and go through my seeds and decide what to plant where and when.

2. After 15 miles of cycling and a long day at work, I only mean to collapse on the bed for a few minutes. Instead, it’s a 2-hour nap.

3. Last weekend was gorgeous, and circumstances conspire to bring me up to the local park in the late afternoon. I eat lunch and read and peruse the Little Free Library selections and watch ecstatic pups and children romp in warm sunlight.

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