1. Silver droplets of rain clinging to the bare branches of trees

2. Learning Coptic bookbinding

3. Getting groceries delivered to my home

1. Running into Wes C. at Borders and getting a chance to catch up

2. Getting to buy decadent and frivolous items like dark chocolate-covered gingersnaps and French truffles at Trader Joe's with the gift card my mom got us for Xmas

3. Meeting Sugar for an Indian food dinner near campus

1. End of the semester potluck. Most everyone sits down and eats together, leisurely conversing all the while. The parade of fabulous home made side dishes and desserts.

2. The rapid construction of the new campus building. Every time I go to school there is visible progress.

3. A trip to the Ace Hardware in town, which always evokes in me an element of child-like wonder as I wander through crowded, narrow aisles and consider the hodgepodge of products on display--working train sets suspended over head, mugs printed with Ann Taintor works, Christmas trees simultaneously bedecked with white feathered birds and sequined aquatic creatures, bins of cookie cutters, a wall of drawers containing different kinds of key chains, all alongside the usual hardware.

1. This afternoon's critical decision: tea or hot chocolate?

2. Though the streets of downtown Berkeley are soggy with our first autumn rain, they still throb with life: women in stylish wool coats and boots, teenagers sharing pizza out of cardboard takeout boxes, canvassers and vendors, etc. I am reminded of London.

3. Running into a classmate on the street

4. Bringing home the two videos Sugar has been patiently waiting for in the library hold queue. He will be so happy.

1. A girl who looks to be about high school age stops me on the street and asks where I bought my jacket.

2. Catching up with Davin over lunch

3. Treating myself to a slice of pumpkin pie after finishing the last lesson with my first tutoring client

1. The middle-aged ladies in my apparel construction class giggle like junior highers when the instructor demonstrates "prick stitching." The laughter only grows when he talks about how the connotation of the word "prick" has changed over time and how it simply means "some little thing that pokes you and annoys you."

2. I manage to eek out the 10 10" x 5" muslin rectangles I need for my sewing assignment from the leftover muslin of last class. This means I don't have to buy more muslin in class despite having an entire bolt at home.

3. A cold glass of limeade on an uncharacteristically hot afternoon

1. Flush with new cash, I am finally able to try the fries at Amanda's, the hip new organic burger joint on Shattuck.

2. Catching up with old friends--lunch plans with Davin in two weeks and a 2-hour phone conversation with Mony

3. A new job

1. A young girl selling home grown bunches of fresh herbs on the sidewalk next to her home.

2. Panini at Guerilla Cafe

3. A day mostly spent in bed asleep

1. Driving by what's left of TJ's Gingerbread House, a former Creole/Cajun restaurant in Oakland decorated to look like gingerbread house with gingerbread man cutouts and all

2. A flock of Canadian geese taking refuge from the midday sun under the shade tree by the walkway from the parking lot

3. Eating the lunch that Sugar made me yesterday

1. Sleeping in with Sugar

2. Whole, unpitted kalamata olives--their perfect roundness, their deep purple color, their firm flesh

3. Finding my Tigger pencil mug in my electronics bag when I thought it was lost somewhere among the unpacked boxes clogging the storage room