Hi, friends, and happy weekend! Hope you’re up to something fun!

Here are 5 things I’m loving right now:

1. This movie: Hank & Asha. My brother sent me a link to it after he watched it on AmazonPrime, and I watched it earlier this week. I was hooked from the first five minutes! It’s a beautiful, unconventional love story told solely through video messages the two characters send to each other. I would definitely recommend checking it out!

2. On the topic of entertainment, I’ve found a new TV show that I’m working my way through… Manhattan Love Story! Does anyone else watch this one? It’s a new show in its first season and I’ve been watching it from the beginning on Hulu. I was missing my love-story sitcom ever since “A to Z” bit the dust {you’ll always have a place in my heart, Andrew + Zelda!} and Manhattan Love Story fills this void perfectly. Fingers crossed this one sticks around!

3. I’ve tried out some new recipes that turned out pretty well this week: an Italian chicken-and-peppers quinoa bowl that I’ll share with you soon; a veggie butternut squash chili {similar to this recipe but with squash subbed for the ground turkey and black beans subbed for the kidney beans, and quinoa added}; and a raspberry-apple cobbler, similar to this one but using raspberries and raspberry preserves instead of pumpkin butter. It was delicious served warm, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top!

4. Thanks to The Literary Nest for including my story “The Man Who Lives In My Shower” in their debut issue! This story originally appeared in Zahir: a journal of speculative fiction back in 2010, and it’s wonderful to see it get some renewed attention. You can read it here.

5. This quote I rediscovered today through Timehop:

“Always remember that striving and struggling precede success, even in the dictionary.” – Sarah Ban Breathnach

Questions for the evening:

• What are you loving right now?
• What do you have on the agenda for this weekend?