Do good things come in threes, like bad ones?

Received two very exciting emails tonight!

Cool Thing #1: i won a free book on Goodreads!

Yesterday, for no reason except that i love books and often have a hard time deciding on a new one to read, i threw my name into the hat along with hundreds of other voracious readers in the hopes of winning an advance copy of a book (or two?). There were thirty or forty entries to choose from, and i found five that looked interesting. Tonight, i received word that i will be the proud new owner (and a "first reader"! strangely thrilling...) of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. i am so excited! i can hardly believe it. Not only do i never win anything, but a (presumably) lovely book? Wonderful! The pressure to review it is a little needling, especially since i have fallen out of my reviewing for the most part, but i suppose i should do my civic duty. Can't wait to get it in the mail!

cool thing #2: my photo was chosen to be in Schmap!

Okay, this is much much sillier, because it's only one photo of many, but it felt good all the same. (The fact that Nat was more excited about it than i was, i found extremely endearing.) Basically, Schmap is an online database of travel destinations in the U.S., with a sort of Yelp-like aesthetic. An editor of theirs found one of the photos i took of the Flower Fields in Carlsbad last year and sent me a message on Flickr. i said sure, go ahead: use it! And today i received word that it's officially in there :) It's extremely gratifying, because i was never the person who was chosen for anything, or whose stuff was ever chosen for anything. That probably sounds really sappy, but it's simply the truth. The funniest part (to me) is that it's not even the best photo i took that day. But hey– to each his own.

::jumps up and clicks heels together::