While the last few days have challenged my definition of dry, the weekend was as spectacularly beautiful as they come.

Here are three beautiful things from my week past:

1. It’s been months since Karen and I managed to get one another on the phone. Finally, she suggests meeting for lunch via our cells. Although she’s talking from the grounds of a monastery and I from a downtown park, it’s almost (if you tilt your head and squint) as if we were both at a picnic table together watching ants steal bites of her muffin and squirrels climb the trees. Honestly, it’s the best use of a midday hour I’ve had in a long time.

2. Rudi and I head over to Virginia for a Tour de France viewing party. As chair of the local cycling club (which is hosting the shindig), Rudi knows everyone in the room and is eagerly sought after by them all for a word or two. I enjoy watching him chat, because unlike me, he really enjoys it. I have a few brief conversations with some very polite cyclists, but am completely content to knit on my sock and split my attention between the Tour stage on the big screen and the Mets game on the smaller ones.

3. My cell rings early in the afternoon on Saturday. It’s Rudi, who is out in the Virginia countryside on a typical weekend bike ride. Immediately a frost forms around my heart. Why is he calling when he should still be on the bike? Is it someone else using his phone to reach me? It turns out he has had an accident, but is mostly okay. While one bike wheel is out of commission, Rudi’s corporeal injuries are of the scrape and bruise variety, painful in the moment but easily healed from. I breathe a deep sigh of relief.

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

Today is a beautiful, sunshiny day with temperatures in the mid-80s and low humidity. Honestly, I’d keep checking both the calendar and an atlas if there weren’t a heat wave bearing down on us next week. Soak it up while you can, folks!

Here are three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Early in the week, it is hot and bright. A young woman walks past the building with a parasol trimmed in lace.

2. The sudden and breathtaking (in the bad sense of the term) amount of work heaped on me in the last two weeks lifts somewhat with the announcement of my boss that she’s going to start working part time in her return from maternity leave and the postponement of an impending deadline, which she says she’ll take off my hands. Work is still busy, but treading water at least now seems possible.

3. Our dinner features both basil and tomatoes from our garden. They are, of course, delicious.

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

It’s been a discouraging week here in the Burrow, with work frustrations dogging both occupants and necessary housecleaning taking away from our normal evening enjoyments. On these sorts of weeks, it’s particularly important to find those little stand-out moments so that we don’t collapse under the weight of Alexander-type days.

Here are three beautiful moments from the past seven days:

1. Our fridge is overdue for a clean out. Not only do I not have dried-out herbs on my fridge bottom any more, but I also don’t have things blocking the light, so the fridge looks particularly bright and cheerful every time I open the door. (I’ve done it a lot since cleaning it out, to be honest…)

2. After a particularly crabby day at work, I decide to retrieve Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and read a few chapters at the local Starbucks, where they have a patio, before sunset. To be honest, after Harry and Hermione’s Christmas visit to Godric’s Hollow, I feel a lot better about how my day has gone.

3. Grey Kitten’s birthday arrives, and he instructs Rudi that we need to celebrate it cross-coastedly. Rudi returns from his dinner run with two delicious cupcakes from our local ice cream shop. His is vanilla mango and mine is chocolate raspberry.

How about you? What’s beautiful things have you noticed this week?

It’s been a busy week full of early (for me) arrivals at work, so I am especially looking forward to tomorrow afternoon’s appearance heralding the start of the three-day weekend. However, I shouldn’t wish my summer away, so first let’s look back at three beautiful things from the past week:

1. John, Julia, and I explore The Yards as a potential Friday evening hangout for the rest of the summer. With its wading pool (where we spend the night with our feet in the water), riverside location, and expansive green, I think we may have found an ideal spot to listen to some music.

2. A jogger passes me, iPod in hand. Her movements are a little jerky and when she gets caught at the light, it becomes apparent she’s dancing along to the music. She looks exactly as goofy as you feel when you’re the only one moving to music, but so joyful that I resolve to squelch the evil internal fairy who tells me to stop dancing on Metro platforms.

3. Sunday’s farmers’ market offers up the first raspberries, plums, and corn of the season. That night we feast on corn on the cob drenched in butter and salt, a perfect summery complement to the guacamole Rudi makes.

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

I’m really quite tired and want nothing more than to climb into bed with Rudi. So with no additional preamble, three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Rudi and I have tickets to see The Merchant of Venice at D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre tonight. (Yay, Groupon!) We decide to have dinner before the show, and a gift card my brother gave us for Christmas a number of years ago comes in handy in narrowing down our choices. We dine al fresco along Pennsylvania Avenue, listening to the carillon concert from the Old Post Office Tower, and enjoying drinks and a delicious three-course meal. And then we walk out without having to leave even a dime of our own money.

2. A swarm of nasty biting critters descends on me at the garden Sunday, chewing up my arms in a spectacular fashion. The next day, unable to find the only commercial remedy that seems to help (After Bite) and driven to madness by the itchiness and swelling, I resort to Mum’s remedy from my childhood — a baking soda paste. It’s crumbly and messy (I’m glad I thought to put down a towel before applying it generously to my arms and legs), but the relief is nearly instantaneous.

3. The final two episodes of this season of Bones leave me in a melancholy mood. After Rudi goes to bed, I rummage through the fridge and settle on the first blueberries of the season. I curl up on the couch and pop them in my mouth one after another, just like M&Ms, but healthy.

How about you? What was beautiful in your world this week?

The thing about vacations is that they tend to spawn the need for more time off. I’m glad that the weekend is only one more sleep away. But before I toddle off to bed, I thought I’d share three beautiful things from my past week with you:

1. Spring has been slow to arrive in Salt Lake this year, and to its surrounding mountains even more so. We drive up into them for the afternoon and wonder at the wash of velvety yellow-green coats the aspens are wearing as far as the eye can see (at least until you hit the snow line).

2. A sudden afternoon thunderstorm is gone nearly as quickly as it arrives, but in its wake it leaves behind a triple rainbow arcing over the mountains to our east.

3. The pool next to our room opens early and stays open late. We spend an hour paddling around under the watch of a waxing moon.

Those are just three of the beautiful things from my world this last week. What’s been beautiful in yours?