Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I hope you had wonderful celebrations with your loved ones. We spent a wonderful day watching the parade, cooking, eating, and touching base with friends and family, which I think pretty much embodies how the day is supposed to go.

I offer you here three beautiful things from my week:

1. Two women in purple pause during their workday to walk a pocket-sized puppy.

2. I notice the first Christmas lights on Hilliard where two small trees sparkled with silver lights. The next night, a full-sized tree adorns a front window near Whole Foods and a strand of multi-colored lights decorates a fourth-floor apartment window.

3. Tiny Japanese maple leaves turn scarlet outside the Colombian embassy. And Hilliard is blanketed with golden ginkgo leaves.

What’s been beautiful in your world recently? Or what were you particularly thankful for today?

Our drive to Connecticut, which normally averages 8 hours, took 12 instead. It was a surprising turn-of-event, but not as painful as you might think. I did, after all, have my favorite guy, good tunes (including two new cds Dad mailed down for the occasion), and knitting to help while away the time.

Here are three beautiful things from our drive:

1. We drove up Maryland Route 40 instead of taking 95, from just north of Baltimore to the Delaware Memorial Bridge. At one point, while sitting at a light, we realized that although it was raining over the car there was sun behind us. We probably would have missed the rainbow in front of us if we’d been on the highway.

2. Road food is an important aspect of any trip. We stopped for a 5 p.m. lunch at a hot dog stand in Wilmington, Delaware, where delicious meals for two ran me a whopping $11. And we just squeaked into our old favorite pizza joint as they were closing. We were too late for table service, but we split our piping hot takeout pie while sitting in the car outside. We dripped cheese and sauce and our fingers ran with grease. I don’t think there were two happier people in all of New England. I kept sighing with contentment the rest of the drive north. (Thank you, Modern employees, for making us a final pizza of the night. We are truly, truly grateful.)

3. A later start meant we got to see the first Christmas lights in New Jersey (my favorite state for holiday decorations). And by the time we were driving on the Merritt Parkway, the fog curled around the trees in the median, offering ghostly shadows as car headlights bounced past.

Have a happy Thanksgiving tomorrow everyone. I hope you’re spending it with people you love.

It’s a dark and dreary day here in D.C., full of November rain. But melancholy has no place here, as it’s Thursday. Time to turn our eyes to the beautiful moments from the last week.

Here are three from mine:

1. As Rudi and I pedal over to the D.C. Tweed Ride start location Sunday morning, we find ourselves amidst the pealing of church bells from across the city. It’s a heart-stirring experience.

2. I signed up last night to take part in the Help the Homeless Walkathon and friends have already boosted me my fundraising goal. There is absolutely nothing beautiful about those who don’t have steady work, a safe roof over their heads, or enough to eat. But in tight times, it is good that there are places who reach out to serve people who have so little. Martha’s Table does good work to help children, in particular, and I have excellent friends who believe their dollars can make a difference.

3. Apple crisp just out of the oven — with a helping of whipped cream.

What are some of the beautiful things from your world this week?

It’s 1:30 a.m. and I just finished work for the day. (A last minute emergency has our whole project working crazy hours today or tomorrow…) As such, please forgive my potentially terse comments. I swear it’s all beautiful. But so is my bed, where I desperately would like to go lay my head.

Three beautiful things from the past week:

1. Rudi whistling in the shower.

2. New cheery (salmon, bright blue with pink sparkly flowers, seafoam, and pink argyle) kneesocks to wear with my (blue polka dot) galoshes. Rainy days are just so cheery in my world, and everyone seems to agree, since they almost universally comment on one or t’other.

3. The book I just finished included girls getting ready for a prom-themed dance. I am transported back to high school — junior year when, after I was rejected (kindly) by the guy I asked, Karen went to the movies with me and senior year when Grey Kitten and I danced the night away. Such good memories of such good friends.

Three beautiful things before the end of Thursday:

1. Sarah and I have been hunting for cider doughnuts in the greater D.C. but have been unable to find any to satisfy our seasonal craving. While up in Connecticut, a google search revealed doughnuts for sale at a farm two towns over from my folks’. The whole family piled into the car and a drive through the countryside brought us to a family farm within 20 minutes. We ate the bag of doughnut holes on the ride home and consumed a bag of full-sized cider doughnuts the following day, but I saved a bag to bring back to D.C. so that when Sarah recovers from her bout of piggy flu and ear infection, she, Rudi, and I can have a little party.

2. The best part of being sick when I was a kid was that I could watch tv all day. Recent television programming has done away with daytime syndicated reruns, instead relying on talk shows and news programming and stuff that generally no one wants to watch, even when they’re healthy. One of the only good things about the digital tv transition is the addition of RTV, which shows old programs. Tuesday, a stomach bug kept me home from work, giving me the chance to take advantage of this benefit for the first time. I watched Kate and Allie, Bachelor Father, Adam 12, Dragnet, and Marcus Welby, M.D. in between naps. It totally redeemed the sick day.

3. I was upstairs in the bathroom when I heard my mother scream. Flinging open the door, I was relieved to hear nervous laughter coming from downstairs.

“Maybe you’d better stay up there.”

“Spider?”

“Nope.”

“Mouse?”

“Nope.”

“Snake?”

“Yep.”

“In the house?”

“Uh huh.”

I trooped downstairs. A baby garter snake had accidentally let itself into the front hallway and was trying to figure out how to escape. It had wedged itself into a narrow fissure below the front door’s threshold and periodically would wave its little head and flickery tongue out in a desperate bid for freedom.

I grabbed a magazine card and got down to try to ease the snake into coming out where I could rescue it.

“I’m surprised you don’t have your camera out,” I remarked to my mother.

She disappeared, but returned in time to hand me a section of newspaper to scoop up the snake when it slithered out from under the door and tried to escape behind it, much to the delight of my parents’ two cats.

Mum opened the screen door, but once I was outside, she asked me to pause so she could snap a shot of her interloper.

“Wait! Just one more shot!” she called out, as the snake, impatient with the snapping shutter, dropped from the newspaper to the ground and slithered away.

(Admit it, bloggers… Doesn’t it sound familiar?)

What’s been beautiful in your world recently?

It’s Thursday night in Connecticut and the living is easy. Plus, it’s time for three beautiful things:

1. My friend Laura was honored tonight as a finalist for Connecticut’s State Teacher of the Year award. The committee ultimately may have picked some kindergarten teacher to honor, but I know who’s number one in my book (and in those of all the students whose lives she’s touched in the past 13 years).

2. At the hearing on the bill for marriage equality in D.C., 81 of 96 people who provided testimony spoke out in favor of extending civil marriage to same sex couples. That’s more than four-fifths. When I first started attending hearings on making domestic partnerships legal in Connecticut the crowds (and the speakers) were probably equal in number. What a wonderful change in the last decade!

3. Mum turned 60 today and I was able to come home to help her celebrate. Mum, really you’re all three beautiful things this week and every week. I love you!

What beautiful things have been happening around your world?