101 Good Things

by Ben D’Alessio

Over the last few years, I’ve been compiling a list of “good things”. You know the song, “roses on whiskers and raindrops on kittens,” etc. etc. After 101, I’ve assembled a hodgepodge of moments, relationships, locales, and art that make life… good, for lack of a better word. It helped me keep things in perspective and sometimes even smile.

I’d recommend starting your own list. Mine is in no particular order. It’s a mixture of the universal (#1, #33, #84, for example) to the more personal (#3, #10, #40).

*This list is (mainly) PG-13.

1. Getting that text from exactly who you want

2. A sister’s laugh

3. The Millburn Deli (Millburn, NJ)

4. A worn leather jacket

5. Browned cheese on a pizza

6. Day Drinking

7. Refilling the bird feeder

8. The 2012 New Jersey Devils playoff run

9. Discovering a new band

10. Suite #304 in Reimert Dorm at Ursinus College (Collegeville, PA)

11. Barbecue Shrimp from Pascal’s Manale (New Orleans, LA)

12. Empty beaches

13. The crystallized bottom of a Marino’s Italian ice

14. Exposed brick

15. Reading when it’s raining outside

16. The first and last sip of wine

17. The popping sound of uncorking a bottle of wine

18. A good first date

19. Listening to my girlfriend sing

20. Warmth from a fire

21. Blue Jays, Cardinals, Ravens, and just birds in general. You can’t go wrong (except for Seagulls…).

22. Cooking steak on the stove (the far superior way to cook steak)

23. Small airports

24. The French Quarter (it’s so much more than Bourbon Street)

25. 2 subway trains zooming in the same direction in the dark, and you can see the people in the other car

Related posts:

When crafting a new software, we always think and plan how we should create and implement things. Variables are everywhere in your code, but you really don’t know anything about them and simply use…

I hate traveling. I love getting to my destination and adventuring in new cities or rediscovering old cities. I love destination-ing. I just hate the airports and the planes and all of the other…

Hana Kimura was a victim of cyberbullying. Unfortunately, cyberbullying is too common and it's a hard problem to fix. Who knows, you could be involved in cyberbullying without you knowing.