It’s getting late, so I want to quickly highlight three beautiful things from the past week and then head to bed. Here we go:

1. Friends invite me to join them for dinner. Holden, who’s 2 1/2, started singing the English translation of “Frere Jacques,” then moved on to “The Alphabet Song” and later “Twinkle, Twinkle.” For a while he was content to serenade us (Susan and Phillip tell me this is new), but then he commanded us to sing along. And we did. (For what it’s worth, I think we’d probably be a much happier society if we broke into song more often.)

2. This was the final week of spring volleyball. I hadn’t yet picked a summer league, but a teammate told me about one that plays at a local park (rather than across town or state lines), informed me of a Groupon expiring that night that would give me half off the cost, and suggested I see about being added to her team’s roster.

3. In addition to leaves of spinach, we also picked a head of bok choy and a quart of strawberries from the garden tonight.

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

Hey there! It’s Thursday night and the rain has finally arrived, after meteorologists having promised some for three days now. That means it’s a perfect time to look back at three beautiful things from my past week:

1. I suggested to Rudi that I might like to go up to Politics & Prose tonight because Eliot Schrefer, whose Endangered was one of my favorite books last year, was doing a reading. [More on the event over the weekend.] He offered to accompany me, so we followed up the bookstore visit with pizza at the Tenleytown outlet of Pete’s and ice cream cones from Max’s.

2. I have not been a huge fan of The Office, because I didn’t particularly enjoy the breakdown of the 4th wall (and, yes, I understand the show’s premise). But Rudi does and we have watched quite a bit of the show’s final season, allowing me enough fondness for it to want it to end well for all the characters. Last week’s feel-good finale wrapped things up in just the way I would have hoped.

3. The first strawberry crop of the season are three small, delicious, red berries.

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

I am bone tired, but I still have a heap of dishes to wash, so this will be a quick list of three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Rudi and I head out on our bikes along the C&O Canal towpath, hoping to see ducklings. We see some, as well as three families of goslings in various states of growth.

2. Saturday was E.U. Day, so many of the union’s members held open houses at their embassies to celebrate. We stopped by Austria for drinks, by Slovakia for food and folk dancing, and by Hungary to see a dog.

3. Rudi obligingly had a round birthday today, so I decided to mark it by throwing him a surprise party. Friends from all aspects of our D.C. lives came together in uncommunicativeness so that when he walked into the room, he really was surprised.

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

Posting slacks off when life gets a little crazy. It should calm down some next week, so hopefully I’ll sit down at the home keyboard a bit more often. However, it’s Thursday, and we try never to miss a Thursday (even if on the rare occasion it must be marked on a Friday instead). Here, to celebrate this week’s, are three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Howard County was filled with fields like this:

2. A dapper, bearded older man rounds the corner. He’s dressed in a three-piece pin-stripe suit, with a tall bowler hat on his head and a walking stick topped with a silver lion in his hand.

3. A half-dozen men in their 20s are outside the fence playing a spirited game of cricket, with a deflated orange traffic cone as one of the wickets. I don’t understand the game, but they declare me an honorary player when I track down and retrieve for them the ball they inadvertently hit into the garden. (If I hadn’t been pressed for time, I would have stayed to watch for a longer while.)

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. There’s a single cupcake left at the software training.

2. The first strawberries of the season at today’s farmers market.

3. A nice weekend visiting my family includes pool, vegetarian dinners, and lunch and milkshakes with Karen.

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

Today marks 8 years (less a day) of writing weekly three beautiful things posts. With a few others sprinkled in from time to time, this marks the 445th time I’ve recorded things I’ve found beautiful here. I’ve had other features on the blog — sharing music, knitting, cat photos, and book reviews — but none of them have elicited the same dedication as this one. I’d like to think it’s because it’s such a nice way to share word-fashioned snapshots of my life — and that it makes me more mindful of positive things around me.

Thanks, as always, to Clare, who inspired the original post and whose daily meditations continue to be enjoyed so many years later.

Here are three from the past week:

1. John and Nicole pull off a near-perfect wedding with touches that reflect the two of them as individuals and as a couple. There are Chinese containers containing noodly appetizers, lemonade, and local beer; vases of yellow flowers and tea lights bedeck the tables; vegan and meaty food share the menu; and the favors are heart-shaped tea strainers. Nicole’s younger sister became ordained so she could officiate the ceremony, and her words of and for the couple are filled with love and mirth. Nicole trips over her lines, and John can’t take his eyes off her. Toasts are offered. Dancing (and drinking) lasts until late into the night, when the wedding party (and a few of us random stragglers) parade out of the mansion and up the street trailing decorations, cake, and chuppah.

2. Five days later and I’m still finding sparkles on me, making them even more pervasive than beach sand. Glitter may have become part of my DNA. (That would be an awesome genetic modification, by the way.)

3. Giddy glee pours through me until it feels necessary to twirl like an ice skater or Wonder Woman to share some of it with the world. So I put my bag down, make sure no one is close enough for me to run into them, and, spreading my arms wide, gyre until I’m so dizzy I can’t see and laugh until I’m out of breath.

Now, how about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this week?