had a tough couple of days filled with petty annoyances, so i’m hitting back with a round of 12 beautiful things:

1. the german word for stapler: Heftmaschine = which is literally, “notebook machine”. because it turns individual pieces of paper into a notebook. right? i love german.
2. i made the walk from my office (in the theatre building) to the admin office (1 block away) today WITHOUT a coat, hat, scarf, 2 pairs of mittens and a scowl. for the first time since October.
3. waking up to sunshine.
4. the opportunity to go running before work.
5. my assistant joshua, who has an unfailingly cheerful and creative approach to the world around him. today he decided that to take our extremely, unnecessarily, irritatingly complex comp ticket policy (essentially an entire page of if-then clauses) and turn it into a flowchart. okay, you had to be there, but it was awesome.
6. our cat eddie, playing the “help my humans make the bed” game.
7. eating my morning grapefruit. the methodical process of loosening each section of fruit always makes me think of my father. i prepare it exactly the same way i saw him do it every morning for most of my childhood.
8. the way that nearly everyone in my facebook feed changed their profile picture to show their support for marriage equality. regardless of what the supreme court decides about this particular case, it shows me that my generation and the generations coming after me are bringing the change.
9. Neil Turok’s lecture series, “the Universe Within” – available for purchase here (no free streaming, unfortunately)
10. the specific way zeke meows at me when he means “i want to sit in your lap” and how i absolutely understand him even though he speaks cat and i speak english.
11. that moment when you finally have everything fit into the suitcase.
12. the willow trees near the river have turned bright orange, which is always the very first sign of spring in chicago.