Oh, Thursday, you come around so quickly…

Here are three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Sharing a pint of New Orleans Ice Cream Company’s White Chocolate Bread Pudding ice cream — in New Orleans.

2. Buying a toaster oven that turns out to be a third off.

3. New Orleans is in full party prep mode for Halloween with cobwebs dripping off balconies and animatronic witches triggered by flash bulbs.

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

It’s already Thursday, which is just crazy. How did that happen?

Nonetheless, it has, and that means it’s time to look back at three beautiful things from the past week:

1. My dad turned 70 (although his spirit is far younger), and my brother and I and our partners were able to make it home to celebrate with him. To mark the occasion, my mom baked her apple crumble pie. No one makes apple pies that taste as good as my mom’s and my grandmother’s.

2. Rudi and I headed to the Uptown last night to catch the penultimate showing there of Trouble with the Curve. It was not high art, but it was a comfortable film that was well acted and that holds its own with most baseball movies. Plus, Amy Adams played a tough chick who could floor you with her baseball knowledge. A definite plus in my book.

3. Jason Werth hit a solo home run in the bottom of the ninth in tonight’s NLDS game 4, sending the Nationals to a tie breaker tomorrow night and eliciting cheers from the restaurant/bar where we were dining.

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

I am starting to feel that squishing three vacations into a single month’s time may have been ambitious planning on our part. However, it’s just the interstitials that are difficult, not being someplace else with people we enjoy.

So, before my head explodes with logistics and planning, let’s look back on three beautiful things from the past week:

1. Rudi and I had tickets to Monday’s Nationals game, where, despite losing to the Phillies, they clinched the division title. The ballpark erupted midway through the eighth inning, when the Pittsburgh-Atlanta score was finalized and then again when Michael Morse was announced in the lead-off spot as being from the “NL East Division Champion Wahsington Nationals.” (And again when his batting song, “Take On Me” started up. And then when we finished the chorus in inarticulate laughter and offkey notes. And when the game was over and when the dive klaxon and the fireworks went off. And when they showed the scene in the locker room, where the team was outfitted in swim goggles, snorkels, and scuba masks for the traditional spraying of champagne. And when Gio Gonzalez ecstatically came tearing out of the dug out. And when Morse took his bottle of champagne out to left field to spray his particular group of fans. And … Well, let’s just say we cheered a lot.)

2. Raspberries in October from the farmers market.

3. Swimming under a nearly full harvest moon — and then drying off in front of an outdoor fireplace.

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

The blog was being grumpy last night and wasn’t letting me post, so our usual Thursday post is appearing today instead.

It has been an action-packed week, which has left me with little time or energy for posting. I’m hoping to get caught back up again when we return home on Sunday. But in the meantime, here are a few highlights (written before I head out for a swim), in the form of three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The leaves in the Wasatch Mountains outside of Salt Lake City have started changing, which offered us beautiful scenery for a drive yesterday. At one point, we were standing in a golden aspen grove and it began to rain, the falling water causing the leaves to whisper together. I was pretty sure if I just looked at the right spot, I’d see fairies joining hands to dance.

2. Sandra Cisneros, author of the lovely The House on Mango Street, read her new story/adult picturebook, Marie, to us at the National Book Festival. It was about a lost cat and a lost mother. I cried, but at the same time, I kind of wished that she would come read me bedtime stories.

3. This trip has been filled with a lot of outdoor time, with leisurely breakfasts outdoors and snacks in the sunshine. I feel like I’m stocking up on Vitamin D for the gloomier days to come.

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

Clearly the Cybils news is the most lovely thing that’s happened to me this week, but it’s not the only one. Here are three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The Nats advance to the postseason, and Sarah and I are there to witness it after the game we were supposed to go to on Tuesday got rained out. (We’re all still hoping to clinch the NL East, but we’ll take this in the meantime.)

2. Rudi is out of town for the weekend, so my friends take me in hand: John and Nicole walk me up and down the H Street Festival and then delay heading to a party so we can have a nice cuppa in a secret garden. The next day, Sarah and I head out apple picking and finish up a gorgeous fall day with milkshakes.

3. My hair is about ten inches shorter than it was this morning. I didn’t tell anyone I was doing it this time, so seeing their surprise is a lot of fun. I went to a new salon and really liked the guy who did my hair. Plus, I think I look pretty cute.

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

I took today off (only my fourth day off this summer) and spent it out in the gorgeous late summer sunshine. I did have to run some errands, but I also stopped and ate lunch on a sunshiny porch at a local watering hole and watered the garden during full-on daylight, which allowed me to see this fine fellow hanging out on one of our pepper plants:

(Taken, by the way, with the camera on my new smart phone…)

Here are three other beautiful things from my past week:

1. We had a big storm over the weekend, which resulted in the weakening of a large tree limb in front of our house. It fell Sunday morning, shearing two street signs off their pole and sending them crashing to the ground. Luckily, a second street sign caught part of the branch, which saved the hood of my car from being crumpled beneath it.

2. John, Nicole, Rudi, and I head into a record shop/vintage clothing store during Adams Morgan Day. They pick up music, and I come away with a neon blue petticoat/tutu thing.

3. Susan and Phillip are very kind and invite us over Saturday evening to meet their beautiful, week-old daughter, Caroline. The rain forces us inside for most of the time, but we head upstairs to the building’s roof to allow their toddler to run off some post-dinner, pre-bed energy. Holden and I investigate the downspout and play chase, while Rudi and the proud parents take in a rainbow and what may be one of the most gorgeous sunsets I’ve seen in a long while.

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