Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. It’s been a week of Conn friend surprises: Eri and ECN come to town unannounced and invite us to dinner. Erik calls to chat. Jason phones to say he’ll be out here later in the month and could we get together.

2. Monday is a particularly long, exhausting work day, and I don’t find out until after I rise Tuesday morning that India has canceled our 8 a.m. conference call. I decide to celebrate by going into the office a bit late on a gorgeously blue morning and biking down to catch the cherry blossoms before they disappear.

3. It’s raining when we get out of the theater and still when we get home. After Rudi parks the car, we snuggle back into our seats, hold hands, and listen to the rain fall.

What’s been beautiful in your life recently?

I admit it: I totally peer into other people’s windows. I mean, I’m no peeping tom, but if your curtains are open, I’m going to glance in as I amble past your house. You see lots of cool things that way, from window decorations to collections to fun room set-ups.

This window is located in a row house up the street from the Burrow:

That’s the Artists Inn Residence, whose website I suggest visiting. It’s the sort of place I’d love to stay if I were rich and needed to stay mere blocks away from where I lived.

If you were the sort of person who hurries past, never glancing inside, you would totally miss the gift the owners have given their guests (and passersby):

That’s from Homer’s Odyssey and is an invitation from Telemachus (Odysseus and Penelope’s son) to Athena, the goddess of wisdom:

“… But come now, stay with me, eager though you are for your journey,
so that you may first bathe and take your ease and, well rested
and happy in your heart, then go back to your ship with a present,
something prized, altogether fine, which will be your keepsake
from me, what loving guests and hosts bestow on each other.”

How about you? Anyone else an unabashed window peeker?

(This is moments after the scene I wrote about here.)

Let Evening Come
   ~Jane Kenyon

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

I have been tired from playing with kids before.

I have been tired from spending all day out in the sun before.

I can’t think of the last time I had to spend all day out in the sun entertaining kids. It lends a whole new meaning to the word “exhausted.”

More tomorrow…

The upcoming week looks busy. Good thing I slept in yesterday morning…

Monday is the White House Easter Egg Roll and, once again, my coworkers and I will be there to ruin all the fun of a day off for the kids by running educational activities for them. Actually, what we have planned isn’t too bad, so hopefully at least one or two kids will enjoy what we have cooked up for them. Rudi and I hope to follow this up with some gardening, a trip to the library, and a pizza before settling in for Monday night tv.

Tuesday is the NCAA Women’s Basketball National Championship and we have discovered that our internet provider has teamed up with ESPN to stream the game live. Go, UConn!

Wednesday, I hope to get to knitting group. I haven’t been in weeks and would like to get back to regular attendance.

Thursday, Rudi and I are heading up to the Avalon for a movie screening (of a film from the 1940s). Should be tons of fun!

I feel like we have plans on Friday, but I might totally be making that up…

Saturday and Sunday — who knows! Next weekend is so far away! There might be some bed shopping. Possibly be some gardening. Likely some reading. Oh, and a Sarah birthday extravaganza…

Much of my evening fun is predicated on getting out of work on time this coming week. Think good thoughts for positive news from our vendor and a smooth conference call Tuesday morning. They’ve gone quiet on us for several days, which makes us a little nervous…

I don’t get great cell phone reception in my office. I can sometimes get text messages and occasionally a phone call will even sneak through, but generally the service bars just disappear. So, it was fortuitous that yesterday I opted to take a late afternoon lunch break. It was the first day I’ve had time for one since we returned from Utah and I desperately wanted a few minutes outside in the warm air.

Getting outdoors allowed my phone to reconnect with the world and to alert me to a surprise message from my college roommate. She and another college friend had made a last minute trip to town and were wondering if we were here, too, and, if so, did we want to meet up for dinner?

But of course!

The day progressed in such a way that I was able to escape for the day at a mostly reasonable 6:30, and Eri and Eric, who’d rented bikes, pedaled up from the Mall to meet me outside my building. (It’s sad to say, but I was so tired that I originally told them my office was at a totally different intersection. Yikes!) Rudi, who’d had Good Friday off, biked down to join us, and the four of us set off for dinner.

We had a leisurely ride to Dupont Circle, where we landed at Luna Grill’s outdoor patio and a nice long time to catch up. We traded news of family members and of friends and snippets of work-related tales. We talked politics and cycling and D.C. and New York. Later, a bit chilled and ready for dessert, we pedaled over to ACKC, a local chocolate shop, for macarons and cocoa. Minutes and hours passed until we found we’d shut the joint down. Reluctant to end a perfectly lovely evening, we even stood on the sidewalk, bikes in hand, in front of the darkened shop until nearly midnight when we all agreed that really if we ever planned to get up today we’d have to go home. So we parted ways, but with a promise to meet up again soon.

It was a very good night, the best I’ve had in ages.