Beautiful Things, Week of January 29

Clare has at last posted some beautiful things from Africa, including feasting lionesses and swimming in Lake Victoria. My offerings this week aren't quite as exotic. Please excuse creative punctuation and grammar:

1. seeing the word "ginormous" on a sign at the bank; i'd never heard anyone use this word before except for my brother-in-law, and i thought he'd made it up
2. a young mom and her daughter skipping down the sidewalk
3. a chubby, bespectacled preadolescent boy running as fast as he could up the library steps, his jacket hanging off his shoulder and his backpack trailing on the ground. clearly, he was on a mission
4. a fat squirrel balancing on postage-stamp sized pole. if i hadn't been watching my feet while i walked, i wouldn't have seen him
5. a woman on the subway was obviously thinking about something funny and was trying hard not to laugh
6. "that's what I like about the North", performed by Lynn Marie, ends with the lines, "meet a cleveland chick and you'll never forget her; that's what I like about the north!" (heard on folkalley.com)
   
7. picking up some things for dinner without thinking too hard about it
8. i played library patron for the first time in 3 years; the book i was looking for wasn't there, but i got two books i'd forgotten that i wanted to read
9. you have to go through a long underpass to get to the subway platform at my stop. i saw two teenage boys skateboard through it this afternoon
10. i hit a very pleasant, very brief lull between school's out and rush hour walking up Park ave
11. a necklace I ordered came unexpectedly in a pretty orange drawstring bag
12. after a miserable day of walking aimlessly in upper manhattan, we went to the west village and stopped in the first restaurant we came to that wasn't italian (I won't eat italian). it was a sushi/asian place, where i had the best crispy orange peel chicken and a prix fixe dinner that included shrimp rolls with wasabi applesauce. the best part was they kept bringing us unexpected things that we didn't order, like stir fried garlicky broccoli stems, artfully cut oranges, and extra fortune cookies.
13. fairy lights in the front window of restaurants - especially red ones, especially when it's dark
14. sitting for a while in washington square park - it was late at night but there were still a lot of people around, but they weren't just masses of drunk college kids
15. watching a young woman having a meditative moment under the arch
16. watching a little boy roll down a little hill on his scooter over and over and over
17. brew-in-cup teacups
18. seeing a long line around the corner at Magnolia Bakery; for blocks in any direction there were happy looking people carrying plain white boxes tied with a string, looking frantically for a place to sit and enjoy
19. when i came out of the building after work i realized that it's not as dark when i leave anymore
20. somebody was smoking a clove cigarette on 6th avenue
21. it felt good as i was resting in the bedroom to smell the chocolate guinness cake i made baking in the kitchen. even though i had a headache and was really tired.
22. i love grey rainy days
23. getting a second wind after being exhausted for the whole evening
24. cleaning and laying out all of my vegetables and fruits as soon as i got home from the store
25. remembering I had a packet of chocolate covered almonds in my backpack
26. lettuce cut up in perfect little bite sized pieces
27. seeing a delivery truck driving through my neighborhood that read "We love hummus!"
28. an oddly assyrian-themed relief on the office building behind the one i work in
29. discovering a middle eastern import store just feet from where i work, and picking up a bottle of rose water, which i'd just been thinking about
30. I have the least stressful job on the planet, but yesterday I spent a long time on a problematic project involving making sure all place markers were accounted for on a map of ancient China. They weren't, of course, and many other cans of worms were opened, which I then had to fix up. After I handed it in, it felt really good to know that my workweek was over.