Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “What Have We Started?”
Can a song simultaneously be pop, orchestral, grandious, and intimate? Yes, if the song is Sophie Ellis-Bextor singing “What Have We Started?” Her Trip the Light Fantastic album is pretty great, but it’s one of my favorite songs from the entire album. There’s just this sort of ker-pow moment that hits me when I listen to it. (And oh look, someone put the song on YouTube.)

Green Tea on an Autum Morning
I’ve been sipping a mug of genmai-cha (the kind of green tea that has roasted rice in it) and it just fits the outside world perfectly. Not too cold, but not too warm out either, a touch of mist and wet in the sky; it’s the archetypal autumn morning for me. Very relaxing, very beautiful. And the tea is also very delicious.

Charlie Getting the Giggles
The production of All’s Well That Ends Well last night did a good job with a painful play (there’s a reason why it’s one of the “problem plays” of Shakespeare), but one of the cast members’s voice was sending Charlie into hysterics in the final act. Probably because he sounded like a cross between Buffalo Bill in Silence in the Lambs and a Hanna-Barbera animated character. So, so, so not good. The whole last 20 minutes of the play, Charlie was just silently shaking with laughter every time this person talked. (But hey, unlike at least 8 other people last night, we didn’t leave during intermission.)

Breathing
Who knew it was so underrated? It has been such a relief the last two days to be able to take big, deep breaths with no problems or issues.

An Empty Vase
I got some flowers delivered last month, and all I can think today is that next week I should bring some flowers in to fill it back up. The possibilities are endless. Who knew a temporarily empty vase could be so exciting?