Perfectest Day

Today has been just the peak of lovely.

The weather has been beautiful--mid to upper 70s, sunny, breezy...

Just now I was listening to Cast On while knitting on Tempting, while Nick experiments in the kitchen with a dolmades recipe (I love when he tries new recipes), and with the sunset and the pretty light and a tasty glass of red wine...

And today a dear friend who has moved to the East Coast, and with whom I had lost touch, dropped in to see me at work. Completely took me by surprise, as we haven't seen each other in ... two years? Three years? I don't remember (plus the wine!). Anyway. She is in the area visiting her family over the long weekend and dropped in to see me.

I can't even express how happy I am to reconnect with her. We met on a school-sponsored summer trip to Oxford in 2001 ... actually met while sitting up all night at Heathrow (my plane got in much later than expected). Those six hours of non-stop talking (because we're both good at the talking) made it pretty clear that we were of like mind ("You voted for Al Gore in the last election? So did I!!" "You like the Indigo Girls? So do I!!").

We talked at the library for a while, and then we had lunch together at the Thai place in town and it was just like old times, but better. It turns out she's a knitter ("You're a knitter? So am I!!") and has been surreptitiously reading my blog for a while now and knows what I've been knitting (and oh my god, she knows what kind of sentence structure I have [she was an English major] and I'll have to fling myself from a bridge into the raging waters of the mighty Kishwaukee river as a sacrifice to the grammar gods). It was great to catch up on old stuff, new stuff, and knitterly stuff ("You made wrist warmers? So did I!!" "You made Clapotis? ... That's great!") (She's been knitting longer than I have. My excuse.).

I am so happy she stopped in, and so happy to have her in my life again. What a delight. This is way better than yarn shopping stories (but I'll tell you all about that later, I promise).

And because I know she'll get a big kick out of this...


This is the 3rd Quad of Oriel College. We spent an entire weekend inside this quad once. We made it our goal to not leave 3rd Quad for any reason. I think we sent kind gentlemen out for pizza in order to keep up our strength. (I lived up a staircase just out of frame on the right)


This is the Radcliffe Camera. It smells of old books, and is quite possibly the earthly representation of paradise. We walked past it a lot. I never got inside, and I don't remember if she did.


The gate into Oriel College.

And that is my perfectest day that makes me smile. Hooray!