MonthDecember 2009

3BT – neighbourly, 7 people laughing, holiday grease

1. John catches one of our lovely neighbours putting out our recycling bins – after being away, we’d forgotten what day it was but our neighbour didn’t want us to miss out on the monthly collections.

2. A day in the office, the first full team meeting since P started a fortnight ago; a day of tea, progress and laughter. At the end of the day, when everyone else has gone, G and John look at old Land Registry documents and make jokes.

3. The oil from the chorizo yellows the potato. Our trip to Madrid lives on.

3BT – balance, beer and books

new-books1. As I wait for the bus to Bingley, I spy a crow perched in a tree near the bus stop. It’s too heavy for the tiny, spindly branches but it finds balance anyway.

2. After class, Katherine picks me up from Shipley and we go out to dinner at Coopers in Guiseley. At the end of the meal, we decided to both buy take home pints of ale for our Johns – she gets a Black Sheep, I get a Ruby Cascade but we somehow get them confused on the way to the car. On instant messenger later, we both simultaneously say “john doesn’t think his tastes like black sheep. he says either way it’s nice” then laugh.

3. I get home to find our book delivery has arrived. The first new-new books I’ve bought in a while – two by Richard Yates, two by TC Boyle. The off-white pages are flat and smooth.

3BT – light outside, mushrooms, future warmth

neckwarmer-thumbI’ve been meaning to start my own Three Beautiful Things posts since I found Clare’s blog over a year ago but I’ve never got around to it aside from using Twitter for the occasional beautiful things style tweet. I figured I shouldn’t start any more projects unless I could commit the time to maintaining them but while we were in Madrid last week, I thought I should just frickin’ give it a go. Don’t know how long I’ll manage to keep it up but here goes nothing ;)

1. We came back from Madrid after dark last night but the sun is shining when we wake up. I look out into the garden – at the trees, at the beck at the bottom of the garden, at the sky stretching out into the distance – and smile. Nice to see everything is still where it should be after the bad weather.

2. Later on, I venture into the garden with two of the cats, Carla and Boron. We’ve been going on walks together around the garden (and the woods next door) since we moved into the house in October. Left untouched by cats and humans for over a week, a huge cluster of mushrooms has grown on a log. I run up the stairs to the house to look them up in my mushroom identification book.

3. Workwise, I have a bad day catching up on everything – I’m still behind as the afternoon passes into evening but John insists we both stop work anyway. After dinner, I grab some lovely pinky-purply wool from my stash and crochet up a neckwarmer. It’s improvised but it turns out well.