As you know, Thursday means it’s time for Three Beautiful Things from the past week:

1. Birds make funny noises as they splash in the ever-present puddle near the community garden. They sound like a hand-cranked egg beater.

2. Lilacs, poppies, peonies, and roses bloomed this week. These are not some of Mother Nature’s shyer children.

3. Twenty years ago, I was just finishing up seventh grade. I was at that particular age when a movie can become part of the intrinsic fabric of your life, and for me, that movie was Dirty Dancing. Last night they brought the movie back to the big screen (I saw it on video with my parents the first time around) and added a new documentary that interviewed some of the people (not the stars) responsible for creating the movie and highlighted the stage show production. Sweetpea, her roommate, a couple other people, and I headed over to the wilds of Virginia to sink back into teenaged nostalgia for a night. Yes, the movie is a bit cheesy, but that’s fine. (And, Sweetpea, Patrick Swayze was 35 and Jennifer Grey was 27 when the film came out.) Going to see it in a theater filled with women in their 30s and late 20s really did make for a fun experience. It was a fantastic night. Not quite the time of my life, but you understand…

Stay tuned for another post later today featuring a whole box of beautiful things from Emily. I wrote the post last night but hit a wall before I could put the links in to the photos. I’ll remedy that after work!