Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The final night of the Fort Reno summer concert series was just as gorgeous as the first. I’m not sure if it was that or the fame of the final performer, Ted Leo, that pulled in such a large crowd.

2. Because it had rained Friday evening, my friend Neal and I were on the hunt for restaurants with covered outdoor seating and a selection of vegetarian options. I stumbled across a mention of an Afghan restaurant near him, so we headed over for supper. Everything about the place — from the servers to the food — was lovely, and we dawdled at the table past closing time.

3. I got a chance to have a chat with one of my former coworkers, and it was good to hear how he was doing, even if some of his news wasn’t as positive as he would have hoped. He mentioned chatting again in the future, which was the best part of all.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately? Spread the beauty in the comments!

Eighteen months ago, I started a list of 50 things I wanted to try or do by the time I turned 50, three years off at that time.

I haven’t looked at the list in more than a year, when I’d gotten it up to 30 items which ranged from the monumental — clear our Rudi’s mom’s house — to the more mundane — grow something new in the garden each year. So tonight I opened up the document, checked off the things I could say I’d done definitively, noted ones that were in progress, added another dozen items to the list, and identified 12 I’d work on in the next six months.

I won’t share all of them here, but here’s half the list:

• Have a job where I don’t hate Mondays
• Write two of my favorite teachers from growing up
• Hang our art
• Read a novel by a Russian
• Win a volleyball league championship
• Get caught up on or rip out all my partially started knitting projects

Do you make plans or resolutions for your birthdays, particularly round ones?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share ten books with titles we find hilarious.

Hilarious is an awfully tall order. Let’s say the titles of these ten books I’ve read made me chuckle:

1. My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
2. Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison
3. The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists by Gideon Defoe
4. The Quiche of Death by M.C. Beaton
5. Evans Above by Rhys Bowen
6. Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living by Bailey White
7. The Big Over-Easy by Jasper Fforde
8. The Frog Who Croaked by Jarrett J. Krosoczka
9. I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You by Ally Carter
10. Come Hell or Highball by Maia Chance

How about you? Are there book titles that have left you in stitches?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. A lovely night with Rudi at the ballpark ended with a Mets win and the thunderstorm not moving in until after we’d biked back home.

2. Love and Gelato got off to a bit of a rocky start for me with some significant details changed from the book early on, but in the end they didn’t affect much of the story.

3. A former coworker and I have plans to catch up tomorrow. I’m very much looking forward to talking with him.

How about you?

My shawl remains closer to start than to finish. In fact, I haven’t touched it other than to move it from place to place in a week, which probably means it’s time to put it aside and look at finishing some other pieces.

Also closer to start than finish is Linda Holmes’ Flying Solo, but only because I’ve only had it a few days. I’m enjoying it quite a bit so far, and appreciated that it’s the same town where part of her earlier novel is set.

Head over to As Kat Knits to see what others are reading and crafting.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share books that are set someplace we’d like to go. Here are my list of ten:

1. Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Mexico)
2. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (PEI, Canada)
3. Love and Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch (Tuscany, Italy)
4. The Hamish Macbeth series by M.C. Beaton (Scotland)
5. Love, Rosie by Cecelia Ahern (Ireland)
6. Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren (Sweden)
7. Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley (Australia)
8. Saint Young Men by Hikaru Nakamura (Japan)
9. Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan (Singapore)
10. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (Channel Islands)

How about you? Are there books you’d recommend set in places you’d like to visit someday?