Alrighty then - sallydallydo and groovyguru have thrown the meme gauntlet down (via golfwidow) - so here they are - a hundred little things that make me happy (and the trick is to not specifically mention family or friends - and I tried, but my mom, dad and husband made it in there by name. The rest of you know who you are....)And by the way - it's really really hard once you get going to limit yourself to 100. I've got several hundred more waiting in the wings. (by the way - music by Wing makes me happy too.....)

So in no particular order:

1. kitties
2. Hello Kitty
3. rats
4. my rat tattoo
5. Medieval history -especially Thomas Becket and Henry II
6. judging the Military Through the Ages cooking contest
7. playing a musical instrument, especially lap dulcimer
8. the smell of ozone during a summer thunderstorm
9. wind
10. hoisting an anchor the 17th century way
11. a Tidewater Virginia sunset
12. cicadas - any sort really
13. looking for the flaming ship of Ocracoke
14. my new computer
15. the happenstance of finding people online
16. Harry Potter
17. the front porch
18. The Late Unpleasantness
19. Belle & Sebastian - the band, not the book
20. my Victorian painting of the three legged dog chained to its doghouse in the middle of a flooded river
21. Rutger Hauer
22. Moravian chicken Pie
23. Heck - most Moravian things, except for the whole sermony, going to church part
24. our boat, the HMS Burford
25. dragonflies - especially when they sit on my hand
26. any little brown wooden thing my dad has created
27. my mother's relationship with the internet ("honey, I think I've just hacked into the Pentagon - the screen says I've performed an illegal operation")
28. my grandmothers bedroom suite - now ours
29. T.S. Eliot
30. sitting near water with my friends
31. The Slaughtered Lamb in Greenwich Village on an impossibly cold day
32. Mario Batali
33. Lark Rise to Candleford
34. Morse code
35. Merlefest
36. a full Scottish breakfast
37. and haggis, don't forget the haggis
38. the weird feeling you get whilst preparing for a hurricane. Not the hurricane itself, mind you - just the feeling beforehand.
39. a well-thumbed tarot deck
40. the realization that there's at least one more day left of the weekend
41. a newly mown lawn
42. rescuing a turtle from the middle of the road without dying in the process
43. hearing the CD of an old friend and knowing that they finally realized their dream
44. seeing the divine in the bottom of a Black and Tan
45. knowing how to pick a blue crab
46. emails from old friends who are as comfortable as pajamas
47. the hills of Winston-Salem
48. The Doctor Who theme (it actually makes me hungry when I hear it as the show came on right before supper)
49. the moment I first heard �Transcendental Blues" by Steve Earle. I was walking up to the gate to buy my ticket for a Steve Earle show in downtown Hampton and heard that song floating across the street and thought that it was the voice of God. Or at the very least an archangel...
50. Bailey's -especially that time in Dublin
51. Misty Mountain Records (where'd you go, Claude?)
52. the fact that our cat Moby sleeps in the sink. Even when there's water in it.
53. David Waters' Art of Navigation in England
54. drinking a slightly warm Viking beer in the Kevlavik airport at 6 a.m. GMT more times than I recall
55. the magical trip to the Fairy Glen near Inverness
56. June bugs
57. wee sleekit cowrin' timorous beasties…. Especially the ones that try to eat the seeds out of the bird feeder...
58. crabbing in the sounds of Carolina
59. Bloody Marys in the Big Easy
60. holding babies I know (like Clare and Mae and Jack – even though they’re not babies anymore)
61. dancing like a fiend
62. dancing like a morris dancer
63. finding some tidbit of knowledge, however minute, that makes someone else’s day
64. being able to yell out some random, bizarre historical question at work and having at least three people immediately answer
65. knowing what friends are going to say before they say it. Woof!
66. eating anything that Jim has cooked
67. our recently acquired XM radio – especially channels 12, 14, 15, 43, 44, 45, and 47…
68. …which means I can actually listen to Patti Smith, the Jam, Big Star, Nick Drake and Belle and Sebastian on the way to work in the mornings.
69. clever villanelles
70. dactylic hexameter
71. using the word peripatetic whenever possible
72. a 1998 Margaux
73. Cowboy Syd’s
74. having a season’s pass to Busch Gardens (and riding the ‘Wild Izzy’ once and refusing to get on any other ride for the rest of the day)
75. walking into Brandon’s Kitchen and not having to order – because they already know what you want
76. The George in Portsmouth
77. nailing a lecture
78. coffee
79. the Hackensaw Boys
80. Father Ted
81. Teletubbies in Gaelic (it’s just wrong…)
82. the Sea Music Festival in Mystic
83. toads
84. the funnel spider that isn’t going to kill me
85. Jim Cantore
86. The Lord of the Rings
87. The Chronicles of Narnia
88. home grown tomatoes
89. praying mantises
90. square rig sailing (forget this fore-aft stuff…)
91. the ditty bag wars of 1992
92. the London Underground
93. petting a chicken
94. the first few seconds of any Star Wars film
95. Harlan Ellison
96. stories/books/articles by my friends
97. jangly guitars
98. working where I do
99. exploring new roads
100. thinking of 100 more things…….