The sun also rises

I want to recount for posterity the small and simple ways that today has been the best day:

1. Waking up early to a good shower, because showers are always nice.


2. The blooming of my irises.


3. A brisk walk to the doctor's office in which my umbrella was not upsought despite the wind.


4. Meeting my new doctor, who is awesome and I may have a friend crush on. My new highly pleasant and cute doctor who wore slim fitting black corduroy pants not unlike a pair I own myself with the most darling of shiny red flats, which I would be willing to add to my red shoe collection. She demonstrated her extreme competence by actually listening to what I had to say, offering home remedy alternatives to prescriptions, showing an interest in my well being, and potentially identifying the cause of my impossible plugged ears. I love her. I just love her.


5. Walking right in to take care of my follow up lab tests, with which my doctor was not stingy about ordering. I was back on the street within five minutes of discovering the location of the laboratory.


6. The blending of a successful banana-lime-orange-soymilk smoothie, which was delicious, and the whipping up of a lovely egg-leek-spinach-garlic-tomato-sundried tomato-mushroom-manchego-milk fritata, which I ate with toast, which I did not burn, while reading The Stranger.


7. The finishing of my breakfast feast in precisely the right amount of time to gather my things and read up about the Suding Lab before heading out to meet them.


8. The arrival of my cast iron cookware, to be followed later by the arrival of a lovely handmade card, not to mention emails from some of my favorite people.


9. The perfectly timed departure from my apartment, which coincided precisely with the arrival of the 1R bus I rode to the Berkeley campus.


10. The extreme friendliness of everyone in the Suding lab, not least Katharine Suding herself, who is certain that I can volunteer in her lab and that things can be arranged such that I even get something out of it.


11. The acquisition of my favorite kind of notebooks from my favorite corner office supply shop in plenty of time for the new semester.


12. The sunniness of the sky for my walk from Ridge Road, through campus, and down Telegraph.


13. The fantastical and thunderous rain and hail storm I enjoyed from the used fiction aisle at Moe's books, where I found stacks and stacks of books to read.


14. The pause of the rain timed perfectly with my walk to the bus, and the simultaneous arrival of myself and the 1R bus at the bus stop.


15. The good news that I don't need to buy a Statistics textbook after all.


16. The successful making of paneer, my first foray into cheese making, followed by the making of a delightful saag paneer, followed by the consumption of a most delicious milk chocolate truffle with marzipan from France.


17. The incredibly quick return of initial blood test results which show in no uncertain terms that my hemoglobin levels are fantastic and even my iron levels have skyrocketed sixfold from 4 to 24, suggesting that I can continue to eat wheat gluten to my heart's content, though the official celiac test has yet to come back.

In short, everything has gone just right today. I am brimming with gratitude.

Now I believe I will finish my fourth book of the year.