Those of you who just started reading my blog this spring may not be familiar with my "Happy Lists"--occasional lists of things that make me happy or that I'm grateful to have in my life. I usually try to compile one at least once every three months; by accident much more than design, I haven't done one since last November. As a result, this list will be far from exhaustive, but here goes:
- Clicking down New York City streets in heels
- Torchlight processions
- English country dancing
- The shape of the whiskey glass I received at the Scotch Whiskey Heritage Centre in Edinburgh (where we rode in reproduction whiskey barrels through a diorama tour of whiskey-making history)
- Guinness and the Guinness Storehouse
- Literary pub crawls
- Cobbled streets
- The music of Lyle Lovett
- Brad Pitt and Eric Bana in "Troy"
- Midwest Airlines, especially their wide leather seats and hot chocolate-chip cookies
- My new black Bandolino heels
- And my little black J. Crew dress
- Hotel beds with down pillows and comforters
- Having my hair washed by someone else
- Free Wi-Fi
- Jacques Torres chocolate
- John's Pizza in the West Village, which is possibly better than Lombardi's, though I believe I need to do more exhaustive testing before I can come to an official conclusion
- Letting a laundry basket slide down stairs, and the satisfying crash it makes at the end
- Also pushing a shopping cart into a cart corral in a parking lot, and the even more satisfying crash there
- Dance numbers in movie musicals, including "Dirty Dancing" (sigh), "High School Musical," and "Singin' in the Rain"
- Croquet, particularly as played by my ruthless, cutthroat, utterly hilarious family (a version known as "Killer Klein Croquet")
- My sister's dead-on (and also hilarious) imitations of our dad
- Playing pool
- Jacuzzis
- "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" and "House"
- My little Palm Zire
- Fresh bedsheets
- Eating an entire saucepan of macaroni and cheese from a box all by myself
- "A Little Night Music" and the current Broadway production of "Sweeney Todd"
- Brooklyn Bridge Park
- Mini Coopers
- Long drives listening to good music
- Making flower chains
- The blessed Automated Postal Center at the Soho Post Office
- The beautiful terraced loess hills of western Iowa
- The satisfaction of discovering something true as I'm writing
- The fact that when you delete spam from gmail, it says "Hooray! No spam here!"