Three Things (plus three more)

Sunlight shadows on the sidewalk, Friday afternoon, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

This afternoon, after clicking over to Blogger.com and pausing before signing in (believe it or not, this is something I do often: I decide I want to update this weblog, I click over to Blogger, and then I just stop, overcome by a feeling of overwhelming helplessness: Where do I even begin? - too many stories to share, and, clearly, I think too much and thus end up writing and sharing nothing)...so, anyway, in the few moments today as my fingers hovered restlessly over the mouse and I debated yet again whether or not to sign into Blogger, I discovered my new favorite weblog: it's one in the list of current Blogs of Note, and entitled Three Beautiful Things. Someone named Spitfire left a lovely comment there that summed up the entire premise of the Three Beautiful Things weblog:

The natural, simple happiness of the commonplace things is subtle and beautiful, and yet it requires a well-trained eye to appreciate it.
Those who find in the small details the true reason for being alive are to be praised. The search for sources of authentic smiles is a difficult, but noble and delightful activity.

And as Clare herself of Three Beautiful Things notes:

The thing about 3BT is, it's not that my life is particularly beautiful (although I know as a single woman living in England in 2007, I have a lot to be thankful for) but that I find myself constantly on the look-out for beautiful things.

Leaving work at 5.30pm today, I swung the front door shut behind me, and something about the late afternoon light made me stop dead in my tracks. Seconds later, my bag hit the ground and I was kneeling on the walkway, camera in hand, snapping photos of the sunlight on the grass. When I'd decided a dozen photos was more than enough, I stood up, brushed off my knees, and, before turning away to head back to my car, I stopped and aimed one final, level glance at the shadows, thinking, I have to remember this moment so I can write about it later.

So, because I am nothing if not a proponent of celebrating the mundane (and a lover of the word beautiful), I've decided I'm going to try this three beautiful things exercise myself, in order to get myself back into the swing of writing regularly. Perhaps (I'm pretty sure) I'll end up recording more than three things at a time, but the point - for me - is to just write. Simple, seemingly mundane things would be a good start, because in the last few months I've become so overwhelmed by what I haven't written that it's been difficult to get myself out of this blogging backlog and actually write.

I'm aiming to try this everyday. Ambitious, I know, but I've got to start somewhere. And because I've missed Blogistan comment-box conversations with my fellow bloggers and blurkers [blog+lurkers] so much, you are more than welcome to add your own three-things to the comments.

So, here's my Friday: Things that made me smile, in numerical form. One, two, three, GO.

1. The way the late afternoon sunlight and shadows slant across the sidewalk. [See photo above. It took me far too long to decide which photo to post; they're all so sunshine-y beautiful and make me especially happy because this past week has been all about the rain.]

2. Organizing a conference call for work - and having it go off without a hitch - and crossing everything off Page One of my four-page project plan. (I love the strikethrough function! Pages 2-4 must be completed during this upcoming week, though. Gross.)

3. GMail chat conversation with HijabMan about how he's planning on flying notes around his office. The mental image made me laugh, and what's even funnier is that I can imagine my co-worker/buddy B and I doing the same.

4. Phone conversations spent remembering karaoke with old co-workers, back in the good ol' downtown Sacramento days.

5. Accolades -
HijabMan: "Wow, how did you get so lucky...? Dude, you are so a rockstar."
Yasmine: "Because they love me!"
HijabMan: "I've never heard you say something so...self-centered."

6. Quick GMail chat conversation with the buddy Z about how, as children, we used to light things on fire, which inexplicably ends with him exclaiming, "You, sire, are a DILETTANTE."