My trip has screwed up my internal clock, but it really is Thursday today. Without further ado, we present Three Beautiful Things from the last week:

1. While walking back to the hotel Monday morning, I passed a local coffeehouse where I decided to get a cup of tea. They seemed like they had a promising lunch menu, so I returned on Tuesday for my midday meal and had the most amazing sandwich. It was cheddar, gouda, tomato, and lettuce on blueberry cornbread. Divine.

2. I like hats, probably because I look good in them (a trait I inherited from my mother). While in England, I bought a bright green courderoy newsboy cap that I’ve worn on several occasions since I returned. And people really seem to like it. And me in it.

3. My confidence is beginning to wane in my ability to finish my knitting project by Monday afternoon. But my friends seem to believe I will pull it off, perhaps because I have pulled off a number of large projects as deadlines loomed. I appreciate their faith in me, because it’s really all I’m working off of at this point.

I have landed safely once again in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, the area of town near the college campuses of Pitt and Carnegie Mellon.

Today’s focus group went extraordinarily well and we’re very pleased to have connected with this Healthy Start Pittsburgh, as both the participants and the providers in the program seem to be excellent people — very willing to share their opinions and offer constructive feedback.

I’m a little nervous about the focus group tomorrow. I will be running it by myself and have had an email that indicates that this group might not be as excited about our project as today’s group. But I will practice the listening skills learned in hotline training (“What I hear you saying is …”) and be open to comments — and hopefully everything will be fine. (But I wouldn’t object if anyone wanted to cross their fingers for me, anyway.)

On a non-work note, Pittsburgh is an interesting city and I’m beginning to understand some of the neighborhoods a bit better on my second trip to the area. I managed to find the grocery store this morning, as well as an independent coffee house (where I hope to grab some lunch tomorrow, since they have outdoor seating), a cozy-looking used bookstore (around from the a coffee house), and a pub where I had dinner (the waitress was vegetarian and helpfully pointed me to a portobello and cheese sandwich that was monstrous!). Tomorrow I plan to hit a museum in the morning before returning to the hotel in the afternoon to prep for the focus group. I figure I need to do some exploration of this city if I’m going to be here at least once more before this project ends.

No post yesterday. I was running around like a madwoman all day trying to get uncooperative pages to magically turn into pamphlets to take with me to focus groups in Pittsburgh this coming week.

Today marks the first day civil unions are legal in Connecticut. Congratulations to all those who are becoming legally united after prolonged periods of waiting. I wish you the best (and when I say best, I mean that I hope eventually that stupid politicians get off their butts and realize that their relationships are no more or less valid than yours and that your relationship, therefore, deserves equal protection under the law, not just different protection, which is what they have offered you now, as you well know).

Today is also our friend Mike’s birthday. I do not have Mike’s email address, or I would say this to him in an e-card. But as I don’t, his wife Shelley (who sometimes reads this blog) will just have to pass along our best wishes for a jam-filled, headache-free birthday weekend.

My plans for today center around relaxing. I have failed the first step — sleeping in. I don’t guarantee that I won’t return to bed, but that’s not really the same thing.

• I will shop — both at the Crafty Bastards arts and crafts fair up the road, where I hope to buy some Christmas presents, and at a grocery store, where I hope in exchange for some money they will give me something to outfit my larder. It’s been looking a bit Mother Hubbardish since we returned from England.
• I will walk. DC’s cultural office is offering a number of cool-sounding historical tours today that sound like they could be fun and informative. If I weren’t sick and in the middle of a frantic crafts project and between two plane flights, I might be adventurous and explore a neighborhood not my own, but as it stands, I think I’ll pick one of the offerings that stays nearby (Georgetown, Embassy Row, Eleanor Roosevelt’s DC life…).
• I will knit. I will knit a lot. This cold/flu/whatever has severely hampered my progress at a critical time. I still harbor delusions of finishing in time for next week’s deadline (thoughts enabled by knitting and non-knitting friends who have seen me beat innumerable deadlines in the past in just the nick of time), but I am rapidly running out of days (and people seem not to understand that I should knit instead of work this week).
• I will watch baseball. It is the final weekend of the regular season, and, while my team is out of contention (although they did admirably well and will end the season with a better-than-.500 record for the first time in a couple of years), Rudi’s team is not. The Sox and the Yankees face off to determine the supremacy of the AL East and whether they can continue to thumb their noses at each other in the post-season. If the Sox lose, I won’t take it personally. I grew up in Connecticut and have no disagreements with the Yankees, except when they play the Mets.

I think that sounds like a busy day, so I’m not going to do anything else (or, at least, plan to do anything else). Posting may be a bit haphazard this week, as I’ll have to do it at Kinko’s in Pittsburgh…

1. Watch the Changing of the Guard — I got the dates wrong on this (okay, the guide books from 2001 got the dates wrong . . . and I believed them).

2. Visit Devon and Cornwall — I’ve heard the Fairy Country of England is beautiful, but we just absolutely ran out of time and the coastline was the part of the trip that got condensed. (We also missed the Long Man and Avebury, so there’s lots to do still on the list for next time.)

3. Drive — Last time we went to Britain, I took over the driving on our first day of exploring the mountains of Wales late at night when I was tired. And it was such a miserable experience, I didn’t drive again that trip. And by the time I felt comfortable enough this time, we’d hit London and weren’t really driving anymore. So I missed out. Next time I’ll just have to take the bull by the horns on the first day when I’m too tired to be nervous.

4. Buy tea spoons — I know, I know. I don’t really need them. But they’re so cute and fit much better on a saucer than your normal spoon. Something to come by next time.

5. Eat Welsh rarebit — One of my favorite British dishes, I somehow missed out on it this time. I ate a great many other lovely things (including Branston pickle, which isn’t, in an American sense, a pickle at all), but consumed a cheese and tomato toastie and fish and chips while I was in Wales instead of the one dish I was after . . .

Because I’ve now missed two three beautiful things Thursdays, I thought I’d give you them all at once plus a bonus:

1. A caring caretaker: John, our Georgetown senior catsitter, took lovely care of the cats while we were gone, leaving them fully fed and watered, watering the basil, fixing the computer, and sweeping up around the (cleaned) catboxes. Who could ask for more?

2. Conversation: Wednesday night, after arriving in north London for a two-day stay, we went to dinner at a recommended Indian/Bangladeshi restaurant. The gentleman who took our order came over after the other customers had gone home and we talked about wide-ranging topics for the next two hours. This is the sort of experience we all hope to get when we travel, but so rarely do.

3. Hospitality: Janice and James of Bay Tree House in London run a lovely B&B at a very affordable rate a mere 30 minutes from Covent Garden. They were warm, welcoming, and offered us the run of their home (even going so far as to buy Tube tickets for us the first morning). I cannot recommend them highly enough.

4. Family: We got the chance to meet some relatives for the first time while on our trip. Di and Ginny are my mother’s twin cousins. Di, Mychele, and Kevin came to the wedding and helped make it a fun evening for us. And Ginny, Sam, and Élissa welcomed us into their home, acted as tour guides around my grandmother’s hometown and the nearby area, and were as lovely as if we’d always known (and liked) each other.

5. Hanging with the Queen: Okay, not quite. But our visit did coincide with the two months a year she opens Buckingham Palace to the public, so we took advantage of the opportunity and went to visit. The palace is impressive (as was the Queen Mum’s White Wardrobe from her first official visit to Paris weeks after her mother’s death), but I especially liked the gardens. They seemed more relaxed than the rest of the estate (you can only control nature so much, as our recent Gulf Coast disasters point out) and very scenic, with benches along the periphery for optimal viewing.

6. Dipping my toes: While the weather was generally lovely for touring (upper 60s and lower 70s), it was not usually the sort of temperature that inspired bare feet or legs. But the afternoon we arrived in the southern coastal resort town of Bournemouth, the sun came out from behind the clouds and warmed the air. We took elevator-like contraptions down to the seaside and sat on the sand soaking in the rays. And we waded through the surf looking for fun shells and flat stones to skip. I love the ocean and always feel so at home with myself when I’m near it. So it provided probably the most relaxed afternoon of our whole trip.

7. A knock-out dress: I was still a little worried about the low-cut dress I bought for this fall’s fancy-dress events, but received a number of compliments on it and on how grown-up I looked. It’s amazing what a killer dress does for one’s self-confidence (particularly when combined with the miracle of double-sided body tape!)!

Yes, we’re home again.

Why am I still up? My body thinks it’s 4:30 in the morning. I think I should pamper it and take it to bed.

But check back tomorrow for an update on the trip. London brought us music, tourist sights, a great B&B, and Yorkshire accents — and I’d love to share.