Three beautiful things from the past week:

1. Our family has birthdays in spurts. July has already held my dad’s sister’s and father’s birthdays; his middle brother’s birthday is toward the end of the month. Because my grandfather and my Aunt Carrie are no longer with us, my dad sends out memories to the rest of the family via email. These missives always set me off a little bit, but generally the tears are good ones for memories of big family gatherings when I was a kid. My Aunt Dort just sent an email sharing some of her memories of Grampa, too, which is particularly nice because I didn’t know him as well as I’d have liked.

2. Dad’s email last weekend about my Aunt Carrie made me think back to some of my memories of her. The year I got out of college I wanted to make cookies for my dad, but my grandmother had died too early for her to teach me how to make Gramma Cookies, so Aunt Carrie provided me with the secret recipe. Aunt Carrie is also the one who could always be counted on to send me a Valentine’s Day birthday card, even well into my college years, sometimes with a little extra something tucked in to help me celebrate. And the last few years, when she was sick, she was always excited to talk with me about yoga. She particularly liked the tree pose, saying she could just feel roots growing from her foot into the earth when she did it. She was like that with the family — offering us great stability and serving as a grounding force over the years.

3. My dad and Dort both wrote about my grandfather’s love of television and maybe that’s one of the most consistent memories I have of him. We’d go over to visit once a week and while Mum and Dad and Gramma sat in the kitchen and talked, Josh and I would go into the living room and watch tv with Grampa, who let us watch all sorts of things on cable that probably no one else would have let us watch back in the day. We saw some baseball, but we loved music videos and Grampa would let us put on VH1 and just let the music play. We also watched tv shows that would have been off-limits at home, like Hawaii Five-Oh or movies. I particularly remember watching the entirety of Starman in their Ansonia living room.

It’s the Thursday before a long weekend here in the U.S., so shortly things will be even more beautiful than normal with three whole days stretching luxuriously before me. Before we can look forward to that, however, I need to share three beautiful things from the past week:

1. Now that we have a date for the fall wedding we’ll be attending (thanks for sharing it so quickly, Karen!), we’re narrowing in on dates for a vacation. It looks like we’ll be heading to France between Election Day and Thanksgiving (probably Nov. 5-15). I love research, so this part of vacation planning is almost as fun as the vacation itself for me. Anyone have any suggestions of things to do/places to go while in France?

2. The reassuring feeling of wet sand between my toes at the seaside.

3. I’m loving the sock I’m working on right now. The yarn is self-striping, which is always interesting, and the pattern consists of only two rows, one of which is all-knit. It’s very meditative to knit and quite addictive because I get to the end of a round and want to knit just one more round before I stop. I think I’ll be done with the toe tonight.

Today’s Thursday, which means it’s actually time for three beautiful things from the past week:

1. Two teenage girls stand on the Metro, splitting ear buds between them. Their bodies sway both to the motion of the train and to the beat of their shared music.

2. I never liked peas as a girl, except when they were fresh from the garden and consumed raw. They’ve grown on me as an adult, but they are still best when plucked from a vine in the garden. I pick several pods to take home, but cannot help but sample one on the spot. I run my nail along the seam, revealing four fully formed, pale green orbs. I pop them into my mouth and savor the sweet solidness that is a raw pea, grown myself.

3. Rudi and I head to the garden at sunset on Thursday night. The first fireflies of the season flit across the playing field, blinking their existence.

No, no. It’s not Thursday. But I thought I’d share three beautiful things from this week’s farmers’ market:

1. Sunday’s dinner comes almost entirely from the market: baguette topped with fresh mozzarella, basil, and tomato and accented with olive oil Sam and Alexis brought us back from their honeymoon in Greece.

2. Nectarines have been afternoon snacks at the office this week. I slurp and clutch napkins in futile attempts to keep the juice from running down my arm.

3. I arrive at the market later than I’d planned. As I’m walking past a stand, I realize they have a half-pint of raspberries. In a blink I’ve handed over money; a full circuit around the market later and I realize that I’d managed to procure the last one of the week. To celebrate, I eat them all for breakfast.

If it’s Thursday, it’s time to share three beautiful things from the past week:

1. Yesterday, The Killers’ “Somebody Told Me” came up on my iPod just as I was getting to work and I had to resist dancing down H Street with it cranked up all the way. (Please note: I only resisted the dancing part. When I’m totally deaf by the age of 50 it will be moments like these and from back in high school when I’d blast Eponine’s lament or the penultimate song of the musical from Les Mis at full blast.) The song had four seconds left on the song when I paused it and so came up again this morning. So I played it again and skipped and danced a little on my walk to the Metro. I wonder what those Moroccan diplomats thought of me…

2. Yesterday evening, just after Rudi IM’ed me to say it was raining again, Suzanne called to me from down the hall: “There’s a rainbow!” In fact, it was a double rainbow glowing over the eastern part of the city. The bottom rainbow had some funky coloration issues going on with repeats of its purple and blue bands. I can’t believe I’ve seen double rainbows twice this spring!

3. Allison Krauss has a hauntingly beautiful voice and she and Robert Plant clearly enjoy performing together. She sang “Down in the River” a cappella and it was enough to make one weep with joy.

Because of my long weekend, it really doesn’t feel like Thursday yet. But I’m not going to object when tomorrow afternoon is Friday.

Three beautiful things from the last week:

1. We unexpectedly accompanied Sarah and Megan to the ballgame last week. Because it was a Friday, fireworks lit up the sky over right field at the conclusion of the game — and because we stayed, we got to hang out with Michael and Julia for a while as we waited for public transportation. (Rudi has an amazing shot of the fireworks here.)

2. Dad makes my virgin strawberry daiquiri first and then adds rum to fix everyone else’s. It is sweet and pink and creamy and perfect on a hot afternoon.

3. My folks and Gramma assure me that Crannie was even smaller when they brought her home six weeks ago. I’m sure it’s true, but she’s still plenty small and adorable and full of puppy exuberance.

(Crannie was fixed last week and was a little too excited for her stitches to come out, so she was stuck with the lampshade on her head for the weekend. I don’t want anyone thinking I took pictures of her when she was drunk.)