Today, there are two contender events for the gratitude profile. As the days winds to an end, I find it fruitless to choose. I am grateful for them both…

1. Today, for the first time this year, I rode the grocery-gettin’ Trek to Jennifer Street Market and came back with groceries in my side baskets. This simple pleasure makes me so happy, that I will pretend not to care that two bikers passed me on the way up the hill. One of them was at least 10 years older than my father. The 2008 Inaugural Grocery Load was a bunch of bananas, a chicken enchilada, and two bottles of wine.

2. Part of my “other duties as assigned…” today was to create Teacher Appreciation Week gift baskets and deliver them to the nine Sun Prairie schools on behalf of the Sun Prairie Education Foundation. At first, I doubted my choices for the baskets and apples because I favor practicality over opulence, but as I was singing along with Iron & Wine in my office, laying out tissue paper in wicker baskets, and feeling intoxicated by the sickly sweet smell of over 70 lbs of apples, I couldn’t help but enjoy it. And they just looked so darn pretty when it was all done.