Sorry for the late posting, but it’s been a day of traveling for me, and then the internet in my hotel room in San Francisco didn’t work without some external intervention. In the meantime, three beautiful things from the last week:

1. The branches on the small trees lining my street were solidly encased in ice by the time I walked home from the metro Tuesday evening.

2. Rebs sent me photos of her brand-new niece, who arrived on Jason’s and my birthday. The baby is gorgeous with dark hair and beautiful red lips. Newborns aren’t usually very pretty, but Sophie definitely is.

3. I got bored on the plane flight and opened my window blind (despite the fact that the flight attendants pointed out this is very inconsiderate behavior) so I could actually take advantage of my window seat on the cross-country flight. We must have been somewhere over the Four Corners area because suddenly I saw red rocks and a deep canyon (but not the Grand one).

(About this time I also noticed the plane’s wing flapping as if it were a diving board under Greg Louganis, but that was less beautiful and more scary to think about. But I suppose that someone who took physics would tell me that the wing flexing was actually a good thing because its flexing prevents it from snapping off. Intellectually I understood that. Emotionally? Not so much.)

P.S.: Thank you for all the birthday well-wishes. I appreciated them all.

Three beautiful things from the past week:

1. A neighbor has two Marmaduke-sized dogs that must be part dalmation because they have the same coloration as holsteins.

2. My new jeans came with a small, bluish, porous pebble in the pocket.

3. The silvery sheen of wet pavement on a sunny morning after a snowy night.

I started this post yesterday because I had a hard time believing it wasn’t Thursday already. But now that it actually is Thursday (which I persist in believing is Friday), I offer you three of the beautiful things I encountered last week:

1. I bought some bread at the farmers’ market over the weekend but forgot to put it in a plastic bag, so some of the crusts have gotten particularly tough. I tossed them onto the window well ledge yesterday, and today Posey and Jeremiah get to watch live bird theater from the living room window.

2. There have been problems on my Metro line the last couple days so I’ve walked to work instead of riding the rails. It’s been chilly, but nothing horrible, and by the time I get to work I feel energized and invigorated and ready to face some of the problems that come with the workday. Now if I could just convince my body to get up earlier so I can do it more often…

3. Mum made me a beautiful woolen cape when I was in college. It’s bright pink and cheerful and makes me feel like a gothic heroine whenever I wear it, regardless of my other apparel. On the way home from work on Monday night, a stranger on the Metro complimented me on it, and I got to say, “My mother made it for me.”

It’s already Thursday, but I want it to be Friday. (Working five days a week is hard after a month of working fewer!)

But if it were Friday, it would mean that we’d missed chatting about beautiful things, and that would be disappointing. I really enjoy telling you about the lovely things I encounter and I enjoy hearing about those in your lives.

So, without further ado, three beautiful things from the past week:

1. It flurried during the middle of the day today and the closest windows to my sixth-floor office overlook a courtyard. Because of the strange wind currents created by the location, the snow looked like it was flying up instead of down.

2. The double-take John did when I walked into the meeting on Saturday. I’m noted for my outspoken dislike of meetings, so I was clearly not expected.

3. My dentist is located near Eastern Market, where there’s a bakery. (No, the irony of this is not lost on me.) To celebrate a clean bill of dental health, I bought myself an almond croissant. (It was as big as my head!) I had half at teatime yesterday and half at teatime today. I only recently had my first almond croissant, so I never knew they were filled with gooey almond goodness. I just thought there was almond extract (which, did you know, is generally made from apricot pits) in the batter and almonds on top. How wrong I was…

How did it get to be Thursday already? Three beautiful things from the last week:

1. Even though I was running ridiculously, laughably late yesterday, I decided to walk to work anyway — which takes me twice as long as hopping on the Metro. It was the first day in a week the sun had deigned to come out from behind the clouds, and I just knew clear blue skies couldn’t last. I got to work rosy-cheeked and filled with energy. Since today is slate gray, I definitely made the right decision.

2. Snow drops, which generally serve as a harbinger of the end of winter, have been sighted down the street from the Burrow. I can’t endorse the heat spell we’ve experienced of late, but I find it hard not to love flowers, no matter when they turn up.

3. I’ve been reading a great book lately, the sort that demands you simultaneously slow down to savor the words and speed up to find out what’s going to happen next. The sort of book that was written with readers in mind. The sort of book that lifts you out of your life and delivers you to where the story is taking place. Why aren’t there more books like that?

Three beautiful things from the last week:

1. I bought a book to give as a Christmas present (I can’t share the title as the recipient and I haven’t exchanged gifts yet) without reading it, based solely on the reviews I’d read online from other bloggers. I reserved a copy from the library and picked it up last night and am relieved to report that the first two chapters point to this being a successful pick. I’m glad, or the guilt might have done me in!

2. Usually, at night, only Della and Jeremiah come in to sleep with us. Posey, our long-haired cat, tends not to join us in bed, preferring instead to sleep out in the living room. Last night, though, as we were hunkering down to sleep, she tentatively poked her way through the beaded curtain into the bedroom, clambered around the perimeter of the room, and finally nuzzled her way under the covers between me and Rudi. It’s highly unusual to get the whole family in bed with us at once, so this was an especially nice, cozy way to spend a chilly night.

3. I am notoriously bad about returning things. But in the last week, I’ve returned a bunch of things that I bought during the Christmas season and needed to take back to the stores for one reason or another (wrong size, wrong price, duplicate copies). It’s nice to have that all taken care of. Now if I could just get the rest of the Christmas presents wrapped and shipped out to their recipients….