Today is Thursday and you all know what that means. Three beautiful things from the past week:

1. I stopped by the garden on Thursday to see if anything needed to be picked. The peppers are abundant, but the tomatillo has been stripped of most of its promising blossoms. The culprit? I suspect the many-legged green fellow I found on one of the branches. He looked guilty when I asked him about it and grabbed onto the branch even tighter.

2. I rode my bike along the C&O Canal Towpath Sunday afternoon. On the way back, I stopped just below the dam in a peaceful spot on the Potomac called Little Falls. Birds tend to congregate there to hunt fish and to get a drink, and a rock outcropping allows you to sit and look out over the river. The sun was low in the sky when I finally decided to head back out onto the trail to make my way home.

3. Rudi and I were holding hands last night as we left the ballpark when we came to a point where a pay phone blocked our path. Rudi went to one side and I to the other, and we reached up high, high, high over the phone so we didn’t have to let go.

This is not beautiful per se but I’d still appreciate if you’d help me with it. My friend Suzanne has returned home to Maine for the time being because her mom is having some serious health issues. Please visit her blog and let her know that she and her family are in our thoughts or prayers. Group thought is an amazing thing and some mighty powerful vibes are needed.

Once again I’m a little slow in posting my monthly shot for 007: Snap a Dozen Days. This is my August contribution:

“The Silver Tree,” or just “The Tree,” is known to lesser mortals by its original name, “Cluster of Four Cubes.” George Rickey created this kinetic sculpture so that each cube would move and twirl slowly with even the slightest breeze.

On three August Fridays, I got to head down to the National Gallery of Art to partake of their Jazz in the Garden series in the sculpture garden. There are probably a thousand people who show up each week, so it’s a good idea to have a pre-established meeting point if you’re joining friends. Ours is The Tree.

As I’ve mentioned before, the music is really just an excuse for a picnic at the end of the workweek. We bring cheese and crackers and fruit and hummus and pita and drinks and contraband wine, which the powers that be forbid you from bringing so they can sell it to you instead. (Really, I do understand. I mean, they’re giving us the concert for free. We ought to pay in something… And if they asked us for a donation, we’d probably be happy to give. This way it’s just the principle of overcharging us for something many of us have at home already.)

This shot was taken toward the end of the night of August 31, the final Jazz in the Garden for the season. We’d had a huge crowd show up — probably 20 of us in our group — and the only person from our group you can see is Julia, in the right foreground of the shot, whom I probably blinded taking this shot. All those other people? Don’t know them. But I appreciate their taste in picnic venue.

Earlier shots in the 007 series: July, June, May, April, March, February, and January.

T’is Talk Like a Pirate Day and th’ blog be needin’ some posts o’ gold:

I be off now to create the maps for the kiddies to be huntin’ fo’ the treasure.

Jenn expressed interest in hearing about the literary portion of my weekend, so I shall oblige her whilst uploading Flickr shots to illustrate future posts.

I have three bookish things of interest to share:

1. I stopped by the Olsson’s 35th anniversary sale on Sunday. I bought a number of things, many of them gifts for upcoming birthdays or Christmas. Yep, that’s right; I started my holiday shopping. Olsson’s is a small local chain and probably the bookstore I spend the most time in year-round (particularly at their two D.C. stores in Penn Quarter and Dupont Circle). They have a free membership program that rewards you for spending money, which I, of course, enjoy doing. A terrific place to hear authors read from their work, they sell books, movies, and music and now rent DVDs, as well (although I’ve yet to take advantage of that portion of their business). Thirty-five years is nothing to sniff at in any small business, but particularly in a high-rent area like D.C. and its environs. Four locations have closed since we moved down here in 2003 and one has opened. I hope that they have reached some stability with their current store locations and that these spots continue to serve them well. I look forward to spending many more hours and dollars with them in the future.

2. The Yarn Harlot is coming to Arlington on Thursday and Rudi’s agreed to go with me out to Bailey’s Crossroads. He might listen to part of her talk; he might not. But his love for me includes making sure that the highways in Virginia take me where I want to go. I swear that they shift like the stairwells in Hogwarts and that even if you start out on the right road that halfway there, you’re headed someplace else entirely different!

3. Through a forum post on Ravelry*, I have discovered DailyLit. This lovely service has collected more than 500 works of unabridged literature in the public domain and broken them down into 5-minute bits. Choose amongst their titles, which range from poetry to foreign language works to philosophy, and opt to receive a daily selection from the book via your email or RSS reader. It’s a great answer to people who claim they don’t have time to read and is eminently customizable. It’s particularly nice for me because there are so many classic novels and writers I mean to read but don’t ever pursue at the library. I’ve chosen Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Towers as my first selection. No, I’d never heard of it either. But I have heard of Trollope and thought it might be better to start with him than with Proust, who was the other author in serious contention last night.

* I’ve tried not to overmention Ravelry here because many knitters are still on the waiting list. The innovators of the community networking site recently increased the number of people they’re adding every day, so I’ve decided it’s okay to talk about now. I’m “sprite” on the site and anyone who reads the blog should feel free to add me as a friend.

I promise to get a real post up tonight. I’ve been too busy accumulating blog fodder to write. In the meantime, I offer you teasers:

Sports!

Nature!

Yarn!

Books!

Beer!

Australian cinema!

Three beautiful things from the last week:

1. Our building served make your own sundaes today. We took our lunch break to coincide with them and ate outside. Brownies, whipped cream, two flavors of ice cream, and various other toppings filled my waffle cone bowl.

2. I took a bit too relaxed an exit of my parents’ home on Monday afternoon and we realized en route to the airport that we were not going to make it in time for me to catch my flight. I called the airline to reschedule my flight and we went to Marshalls instead. I came away with a cute new pair of shoes, a fetching tweed newspaper boy hat, and two darling baby doll cardigans. (If I’d planned to go, none of it would have been there. I’m sure of it. Best shopping trip I’ve had in ages…)

3. En route to work Tuesday morning, I pass three people wearing black and white vertically striped shirts. Was it a mass escape from prison? A fashion coincidence? A conference? Either way, I kept expecting someone to blow a whistle and call me for traveling.

A bonus beautiful thing: It would be impossible for me to pick just three beautiful things from my long weekend in Connecticut, so I’m selecting the weekend as a whole. It was three days filled with relaxation, sleeping late, watching videos and movies, buying yarn, and visiting with Gramma, Mum and Dad, and Karen. I ate pizza, peach pie, berry muffins, barbecued chicken, and a phenomenal turkey sandwich and drank a strawberry daiquiri and a raspberry-lime rickey. I came back to D.C. feeling rested and relaxed and ready to fire on all cylinders.