Nine years ago this week, inspired by Clare’s blog, I started recording beautiful things in my life. Mostly it’s been a weekly — on Thursdays (because of the alliteration) — occurrence, but there have been some additional posts in there as life has mandated. As my most regular feature, this marks my 496th post on the topic.

Three beautiful things from the past week:

1. A new pair of contacts after wearing the previous pair too long, dozing off in them too many times, and, finally, getting sunscreen on them.

2. My new volleyball team does not have the on-court skill of my previous one, but the camaraderie is strong, and four of us enjoyed a post-game drink this week.

3. Tuesday evening, as sunset neared, the day’s final rain poured down like a snow shower. Off to the east, a double-rainbow blossomed.

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

This weekend was just too short, and tomorrow starts way too soon.

Easter weekend included:

• The soft open of the latest location of a local taqueria, owned by a cycley friend of Rudi’s
• Sleeping in
• Lunch outside
• Painting my nails in jellybean colors
• A potluck pre-Easter dinner with friends
• Hours of knitting, but not enough (many one step forward, two steps back moments
• A trip to the farmers market (which netted us peach blossoms, ramps, the first (greenhouse) tomato of the year
• Hours of digging — and some planting — in the garden
• Postponing Easter egg dyeing until tomorrow
• Eating Easter candy

How was your weekend?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Rolling up my jeans on a warm afternoon.

2. A bouquet of violets plucked from my garden and put into a green vase atop the fridge.

3. Making it to the metro just as the rain hits.

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

This weekend was filled with:

• Bringing my bike home from the office after three months.
• Sleeping in.
• Introducing Rudi to Blind Dog Café and their homemade sodas.

• Weather warm enough for flip flops and rolled up jeans.
• Exploring District Flea and discovering a new, local, microbrewed root beer.
• Buying seeds, soil, and plants from Frager’s.
• Getting up early to sit in traffic to see the cherry blossoms.

• Stopping for hot beverages and a cherry blossom cupcake at Baked and Wired.
• Hitting the farmers market and finding the first nettles of the season.
• Napping.
• The first major gardening session of the year — kale, sorrel, and mache survived, although it looks like the rosemary did not. Also, the first violets of the year came home.

• Knitting on stripey socks and a long languishing spring sweater while waiting for the next round of Sock Madness to begin.

• Not doing my taxes or housework.

Three beautiful things from the past week:

1. Long denied the sea air, on my one free evening in Boston I take the T to the ocean in Revere. I walk along the beach, watching the beam from an offshore lighthouse cut through the fog, and marveling at the size of the clam shells washed up from recent Nor’easters. I had done some research to find a fish/sandwich shop for dinner, but it turned out to be a takeout-only joint. Disregarding the 40-degree temperatures and the storm rolling in, I take my dinner outside and have a tasty, if quick, fish feast in a beach-side pavilion before heading back to the city and my warm hotel bed.

2. After six years and many requests, Nationals Park finally added a veggie hot dog to the stadium’s menu.

3. My friend BW has a monthlong internship in D.C. this summer and texted me to inquire about an apartment she was considering. Turns out it’s less than a mile from the Burrow, which is the closest we’ll have lived together since we graduated from college 18 years ago. I’m beyond excited.

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

Three beautiful things from the past week:

1. Sam and Alexis invite me out to a vegetarian restaurant, where I have fiddleheads, and to an ice cream parlor, where my dessert is a nut-filled, rosewater-flavored scoop. Karen takes the train up to Boston and we end up at an overpriced Italian spot for supper and, later, a Chinese bakery for cups of tea. Regardless of what I’m eating, it is best done with people I’ve known and loved for so long. It cannot be said enough how much I miss them and how wonderful it is to have them sitting an arm-length away.

2. Opening Day eventually holds a loss for the Mets, but because their opponents were the Nationals, I was able to pull in a staticky radio broadcast for the game at my desk.

3. I head to Boston’s North End in pursuit of a lunch place Sam recommends. Instead, I end up in Modern Pastry Shop, whose overwhelming smell of sugar and almond paste reminds me of Libby’s in New Haven. I buy a cannoli, which they fill on the spot with ricotta and top with powdered sugar. It is the best Italian pastry I have ever had, whether enjoyed outside with sugar blowing all over me or at one of the shop’s handful of tables with my oldest friend.

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