Happy, Fixed, and Success!

Clearly, from the preamble below, I started writing this post yesterday. I planned to finish writing it at lunch, but by then “not feeling fabulously well” was downgraded to “feeling completely like shit” and I went home from work and slept for the better part of 17 hours. It seems to have helped, and I’m now off to re-start my work week.

It’s a bright, sunny Monday here in DC, and though I’m not feeling fabulously well, I am going to take my cue from the weather and think about beauty: specifically, three beautiful things from the past week.

1. On Saturday, I was in the wedding of my friends Heidi & Jeremy. When the minister pronounced them husband and wife, Jeremy exclaimed “Woo!” with a huge grin at his bride. It was such a beautiful, spontaneous expression of joy — for me, the high point of a day filled with happiness.

2. On Friday night, a bunch of folks in the wedding headed across the river into Kentucky for beers and brats at a hofbrauhaus. After dinner, when the valet returned my rental car, the right-rear tire was flat as a pancake. In searching for a gas station to get enough air in the tire to head back to the airport to switch out the car at Alamo, we happened upon a garage that was, surprisingly enough, still open at almost 9 p.m. The mechanics agreed to put some air in for us, and in doing so, found a two-inch screw in the tread. They offered to plug it, and $10 and 10 minutes later, we were back on the road. They absolutely went above and beyond in showing kindness to strangers.

3. While I was visiting last weekend, I finally got to finish teaching Wendy to knit, a project we had started on my visit in July. She took to it as if she were born to it, and had managed several inches on her first scarf before I left. (I know, this technically exceeds the past-week time window, but I forgot to mention it last week, so it’s still fair game as far as I am concerned.)