Three beautiful things from my past Thursday (which, let’s be honest, was the most beautiful day many of us have had in a while):

1. National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman knocked it out of the park with her recitation of “The Hill We Climb.” There was not a single syllable that she uttered without thought, from the honorifics to the word play, and I anticipate a long career for the 22-year-old.

2. I have yet to talk to a single woman who came away from yesterday dry-eyed, with the installation of Kamala Harris as the first female vice president of the United States.

3. The Mall being closed to everyone had the single benefit of it allowing the most remarkable fireworks show in D.C.’s recent history.

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

As you can see, I’ve made some good progress on the leg of my Holiday Hangover socks, which I’m adoring. I anticipate being at the heel this weekend, but sometimes that’s where I get stuck with stripey socks. I’ll have to start thinking about whether to do a solid heel tomorrow.

I’m about halfway through Bringing Down the Duke, in part because I’ve started listening to Abby Jiminez’s The Happy Ever After Playlist. Although I admit I am getting a little tired of romances where the protagonists are described as being extraordinarily good looking. Where are the romances of people of average facades? Nondescript but supplemented with quirky fashion taste? Mousy hair but kissable lips? Honestly, is this the sort of romance everyone wants to read about? Is it a “if gorgeous people have trouble dating then it’s no surprise that I do, too” kind of thing?

I guess that means it’s probably time to move on to a different genre for a while… I know there’s a detective with “maximum tolerable chins” awaiting me.

Head over to As Kat Knits to see what knitting and reading projects others are carrying into the new administration.

I won’t waste space on the name of a man who was so small he couldn’t take the time to do this for a nation, but I thank the Bidens and the Harris-Emhoff family for giving the American people this. We’ve needed it.

I’ll be taking an extended lunch break tomorrow to watch the first woman being sworn in as vice-president and to watch adults take back control of the room.

My city remains on high alert. An entire town’s worth of military, 20,000+ troops, has been brought in to keep the peace and protect downtown. Helicopters have buzzed overhead constantly for days, with mobile command units parked a half mile up in the sky. Traffic is excluded from a record swath of the city, up to within a few blocks of my neighborhood.

Yet, as happens every year at this time, anti-choice protesters have come to complain that they should get to decide what women do with their bodies. Tonight they went up to the pizza place right-wing whackadoodles decided a few years back was home to a pedophilia ring. My neighbors met them with glasses of champagne and RuPaul and Lady GaGa played at such volume and dance moves so fly that the protesters were drowned out — and so discouraged that they had to leave:

It would only have been more D.C. if it had been Go-Go music.

May you find peace and encouragement as we move forward.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic at That Artsy Reader Girl is one near to my heart: books published last year that I was excited about, but didn’t get to for one reason or another. There are dozens of those, but here are ten of the key ones:

1. Murder on Cold Street by Sherry Thomas
2. Constant Rabbit by Jasper Fforde
3. Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell
4. Recipe for Persuasion by Sonali Dev
5. Jo & Laurie by Margaret Stohl & Melissa de la Cruz
6. Aurora Burning by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristof
7. Check, Please! Book 2 by Ngozi Ukazu
8. Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo
9. A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
10. A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow by Laura Taylor Namey

The particularly disappointing part about this list is just how many authors on it are ones I love.

How about you? Were there 2020 releases you put on your must-read list that you still have yet to tackle?

The sun is setting at 5:15 this week, which means there’s ambient light until nearly six. I haven’t done a great job recently at getting outside the apartment during daylight hours, so I’m appreciative that the sun is now working in my favor.

I’m wondering about the feasibility of packing up my work laptop when I’ve got 3 hours between video meetings (which, to be fair, is only like 3 times a week) and taking it up to the park to work at a picnic table on my cell phone hotspot. I did it some in the few weeks between being sent home and the mask mandate, but after that it was just too much work. It always feels like it would be too disruptive to my day to make the switch, but I wonder if being out in the sunshine would make me more productive.

I suppose it can’t hurt to try.

I am loving the new stripey socks I am knitting. They are the pleasantly addictive kind with four rows of each color, which means they’re a lot like potato chips or cookies. You swear you’ll just knit/eat this one more and then you’ll stop. And suddenly you’re staring at an empty row of Oreos or a half-gone bag of chips or several inches of project. Except that, of course, knitting is way better for you than eating that much delicious junk food.

I am also enjoying the audio version of a book my dad recommended over the summer, The Happy Ever After Playlist by Abby Jiminez. Apparently it’s the second book in a connected series, the first of which apparently includes a lot of tears, so I’m glad I’ve started with this one.