Pleasures:

Sherod Santos's "The Book of Blessings," the source of today's subject line

James Toupin's "From Genesis Rabbah"

Hosting a birthday dinner for my mother-in-law. It went well. She's a Beatrix Potter fan, and I'd happened across a French pop-up edition of Peter Rabbit ("Pierre Lapin"!) while meandering past one of the riverbank booksellers in Paris. And Oblation had an elegant blank card with a bunny on the front when the BYM and I visited last month.

For the dinner, I put a tall vase of sunflowers as the centerpiece, and smaller vases of yellow rosebuds in the bathroom and on the sideboard. For appetizers, I stuffed mushrooms (onion, mushroom, and ricotta filling) and set out bowls of cherry tomatoes and gherkins while the BYM put the chips and hummus into serving dishes and was in charge of serving the wine (a couple of sauvignon blancs from New Zealand). For the main meal, I cooked shrimp grits and roasted asparagus with thyme. For dessert, we brewed two cups of decaf and two cups of Yuzu Temple, and served those with chocolate cupcakes from Sweet 16th.

I also made a beet-and-orange salad (and making it pretty, even) that I clean forgot to serve. A friend will be staying with us tomorrow, so I'm thinking I'll share that with her along with some sort of soup involving asparagus, mushrooms, chicken, and rice (since I've got all those ingredients in the fridge), and maybe a baked sweet potato. (Fresh Harvest had a sale on their odd-shaped ones last week, and there's one on my counter that's near the size of a football...)

Going to bed at a reasonable hour, which I am now about to do, Spreadsheets of Doom be damned.

Giving thanks for the affection of doggies, the support of partners, the encouragement of friends, and the anticipation of new things to write/learn/absorb.

Listening to a CD from my local library titled Abayudaya: Music from the Jewish People of Uganda. Truly we live in wondrous times.