The blog of joy, as yet in its early infancy, has already hit a road bump.  Or rather two.  First, the mundane one, I forgot to write anything yesterday.  To make up for that, here are three good things about yesterday:
1) My fiancee got tipsy off of two drinks, and became--there is no other word for it--silly.  Frankly he is one of the better drunks (or rather tipsies) I've encountered.  When he gets this way he is a wonderful combination of small child and slightly amorous adult.
2) I got to eat left over lasagna and strawberry cake, both of which tasted better after a night in the refrigerator.  It was a pretty damn good dinner.
3) I got in bed early enough to have real time to read...although that brings us to:

Second, the less mundane (or at least, I imagine, less common excuse for blog negligence, supposedly references to Hitler are where most bad arguments end), I am reading a book about the Holocaust.  More specifically, I am reading about 230 women who participated in the French resistance and were then captured and sent to Auschwitz in 1942.  The first half of the book was all about their resistance activities; I really enjoyed learning about France at that time and the underground movement against German occupation (although the book is a bit of a disjointed read, I don't totally follow this author's sense for organization or paragraph breaks).  Now the women are in Auschwitz and the description of life--and more commonly death--there is truly horrific.  It is hard to keep focusing on the good in life while realizing that, less than 75 years ago, people were doing this to each other.  But I have always been encouraged by Anne Frank's statement that, in spite of everything, she still had faith that humans were really good.  She wrote that before she went to the camps, and I'm sure her faith in humanity was further tested there far more than she could have imagined, but still she was a teenage girl living in captivity in her attic because her society had turned against her merely for her ethnicity and she still believed.  In light of that, I'm pretty sure I can find things to be happy about even in a world where the Holocaust is still a recent memory and other atrocities occurr regularly.  With that said here is what I am happy about today:
1) I had a wonderful hot shower after I worked out today.  The showers in have those showerheads that are mounted on the ceiling, to produce a rain-like effect.  It felt really, really good.  They have some how mastered the correct water pressure in a way I quite admire.
2) I get to work out with three other people two mornings a week, in a way that is both social and healthy.  I think I may be living the dream on this one. 
3)  My fiancee suggested I could be happy I am not in the Holocaust, and believe me, I am.  But I decided what I am really happy about is how surprising I find this book's description of what human are capable of.  The people I know and even the vast majority of the people I merely know of (i.e. most of the world) simply give no reason at all to believe they could ever do even a tiny percent of what the Nazis were doing.  Of course I am aware that this is in some sense a danger--we are lulled into a false sense of security and don't prevent atrocities because we don't believe they can be happening.  But I think I am sufficiently vigilant of that, and so instead I choose to focus on the fact that the reason I can't imagine people doing these things is simply because they couldn't.  Society and humans do evolve and improve and we do learn from our past.  That is defeinitely something to be happy about. 

The experiment begins.

I have always thought of myself as the ultimate cockeyed optomist.  Like Mary Martin, so full of the joy of life that I'm ready to burst into song at any moment.  Then a few weeks ago someone commented that other people might be coping better with job stress than me because "they just generally look on the bright side of things."  But wait, I thought, I generally look on the bright side of things...Or do I?  I think somewhere a long the line my focus may have been drawn away from the bright side, towards things that could be improved or done better, towards what I miss about the past, away from those things that are very good about the present.  So here is my blog of joy to remind me, every day, of what I should be thinking about to recapture my inner-Nelly Forbush:
1) This morning I had a toasted everything bagel and -- as is typical -- the little onion flakes on top browned up nicely to make crispy bites of delicousness.
2) A stereotypical businessman in the Au Bon Pain had a set of four fantasy novels that looked very well read and he evinced an odd possessiveness towards them that suggested how much he loved reading.
3) I am supposed to meet a friend for dinner and we had very specific needs: quick, outside, dog friendly.  I actually know my neighborhood well enough that I was able to think of such a place!  Plus, the place serves beer in those wonderful large beer mugs that make me feel like a leiderhosen-clad 18th Century German student when I use them.