Thursday evening was a bit grumbly for me, which meant I missed noting a couple of things that would otherwise have made the list. So in the interest of not forgetting to share them and of getting to sleep sometime tonight, I offer you three more beautiful things from my week:

1. “There’s a new missive. Do you want to hear it?” Rudi always says yes because letters from my friend Elspeth, currently stationed in Kyrgyzstan for the summer, reliably are filled with laughter, knowledge, and a knack for storytelling that makes you feel like you, too, are stuck on a slow-moving bus that may or may not be heading where you want to go with a grandmotherly woman and her chicken. Although this summer’s letters have been, thus far, poultry-free, they combine an old-fashioned read-aloud feeling with Elspeth’s modern and quirky personality to offer some of the most compelling travel literature I’ve read.

2. As I headed out to pick up a late lunch one afternoon this week, I came upon the Curbside Cupcake truck, where there was not yet a block-long line. I waited behind a few people and, when I got to the front, was greeted by Sam like an old friend. “When was the last time I saw you? Are you wearing your galoshes today?” he asks, peeking out of Pinky’s window. I left with a big smile and a vanilla cupcake with raspberry frosting that was absolutely delicious.

3. Our baby blue jay learned to fly! When we left for work on Monday, we knew lift-off was imminent. He could reliably make it up from the bottom of the window well to the bars (to protect our windows from being broken by thieves) over the a/c unit, but he’d been stymied by the bars in his efforts to get further, repeatedly falling behind the bars rather than flying away from them. By the time Rudi got home from work on Monday, the baby was up at street level, doing short flight bursts around the railing outside the house. Rudi says the parents were harassing other pedestrians who stopped to gawk, but let him pass unaccosted. And on Tuesday morning as I sat on the couch finishing my breakfast, our blue jay landed on the top of the window well, cocked his head, chirped, and, after I waved to him, flew away.