Three beautiful things before the end of Thursday:

1. Sarah and I have been hunting for cider doughnuts in the greater D.C. but have been unable to find any to satisfy our seasonal craving. While up in Connecticut, a google search revealed doughnuts for sale at a farm two towns over from my folks’. The whole family piled into the car and a drive through the countryside brought us to a family farm within 20 minutes. We ate the bag of doughnut holes on the ride home and consumed a bag of full-sized cider doughnuts the following day, but I saved a bag to bring back to D.C. so that when Sarah recovers from her bout of piggy flu and ear infection, she, Rudi, and I can have a little party.

2. The best part of being sick when I was a kid was that I could watch tv all day. Recent television programming has done away with daytime syndicated reruns, instead relying on talk shows and news programming and stuff that generally no one wants to watch, even when they’re healthy. One of the only good things about the digital tv transition is the addition of RTV, which shows old programs. Tuesday, a stomach bug kept me home from work, giving me the chance to take advantage of this benefit for the first time. I watched Kate and Allie, Bachelor Father, Adam 12, Dragnet, and Marcus Welby, M.D. in between naps. It totally redeemed the sick day.

3. I was upstairs in the bathroom when I heard my mother scream. Flinging open the door, I was relieved to hear nervous laughter coming from downstairs.

“Maybe you’d better stay up there.”

“Spider?”

“Nope.”

“Mouse?”

“Nope.”

“Snake?”

“Yep.”

“In the house?”

“Uh huh.”

I trooped downstairs. A baby garter snake had accidentally let itself into the front hallway and was trying to figure out how to escape. It had wedged itself into a narrow fissure below the front door’s threshold and periodically would wave its little head and flickery tongue out in a desperate bid for freedom.

I grabbed a magazine card and got down to try to ease the snake into coming out where I could rescue it.

“I’m surprised you don’t have your camera out,” I remarked to my mother.

She disappeared, but returned in time to hand me a section of newspaper to scoop up the snake when it slithered out from under the door and tried to escape behind it, much to the delight of my parents’ two cats.

Mum opened the screen door, but once I was outside, she asked me to pause so she could snap a shot of her interloper.

“Wait! Just one more shot!” she called out, as the snake, impatient with the snapping shutter, dropped from the newspaper to the ground and slithered away.

(Admit it, bloggers… Doesn’t it sound familiar?)

What’s been beautiful in your world recently?