I’m neck-deep in a work deadline that’s keeping me late at the office nearly every night and starting to infringe on my sleeping hours, as well. Until that passes (and perhaps a little while after, as I’m starting to resign myself to how much will still be left to do even after the project goes public), I’m afraid we’re looking at continuing the recent trend of posts of music videos and lists and the occasional photo essay that are heavy on pictures and light on text.

To that end, here are three beautiful things from my week past:

1. We pulled into my parents’ driveway at 4 a.m. on Saturday morning. The sky was ink black and, to my amazement, filled with millions of stars. (I had noticed my old college friend, Orion, earlier in the night, but this was something of another scale altogether…) Rudi and I stood outside the car in the chilly fall night just staring up. I breathed to him, “I’d forgotten about stars.” It was nice to be re-introduced.

2. Even when I was good at volleyball, I was terrible at serving. Last night, for the first time in years and years and years, I got both of my serves over the net and in my opponent’s court.

3. I arrived home last night to discover that my keys were not in my purse. And they were not in my bag. I looked (and shook the bags to verify) … three times … each time convinced I’d somehow missed their reassuring jingliness. I knew I’d taken them out of my pocket when I changed for volleyball and put them on my desk with my metro card, but the card was there and the keys were not. In a Shrödinger’s Cat kind of key nightmare, I refused to let Rudi take me to work to see if they were still somehow in my office because the possibility I’d lost them elsewhere was too much to contemplate actively. The panic I experienced this morning when the keys were not on my desk where I last remembered placing them was, however, quickly replaced with joy when I discovered them on the windowsill where I must have left them when I rearranged my bag right before leaving.

How about you? What’s been beautiful or breathtaking or gratitude-inspiring in your world this week?