Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Susan invites me to come to the book sale she’s helping to run for her daughter’s elementary school and pitch in for a while. It’s nice to be useful — and to have some of my Christmas shopping benefit others.

2. Anna invites me to come see her office before our volleyball game. She works for a nonprofit that helps get books into teachers’ hands and she’s decorated a wall of with spreads from unbound picture book proofs. Our friend Neal joins us and he draws on her white board for her.

3. I walk toward the Georgetown Safeway to get cat litter, but en route, stop at a playground to swing for a while and then at Book Hill to watch the tail end of the sunset.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. One of my teammates brings me an ornament for our tree. “I picked it because its skirt reminded me of your Halloween costume.”

2. My brother and his partner were visiting my folks and so I got to talk to Josh, as well as my parents when I called on Wednesday.

3. I did a little Christmas shopping on the Hill this evening, and decided to talk home across town, since it was dry and warm. I passed the Eastern Market tree, the Congressional tree, and the White House tree (not as gaudy as many past years), as well as the ice skating at the sculpture garden.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Karen and I pushed our get-together back a day to let her cold pass. It ended up being a much nicer day to be outside, and she was feeling well enough to stroll the length of the riverwalk.

2. Rudi and I attended a virtual talk about doing a smarter job search, and the speaker had several suggestions each of us found helpful. I took down her contact information, in case it makes sense for either of us to reach out in the new year.

3. My friend Anna and her partner Greg came over for supper and a board game night. They introduced us to a new game and brought a second one as a gift, which was both unexpected and quite kind.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Watching World Cup soccer on big screens at an outdoor party in the middle of Dupont Circle.

2. Seeing holiday lights as we drove north.

3. Our new car takes regular gas, not premium, like the last one.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. We needed at least one other female teammate to show up this week for us to participate in playoffs, and we got two!

2. Monday, we went for a drive out to the countryside to a cafe that used to come to the farmers market. I’ve dreamed of their smoothie bowls in the last two years since they stopped coming, and reality did not disappoint.

3. We aren’t out of the woods yet when it comes to the election, but it certainly wasn’t the slaughter that many predicted.

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

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?