this was a good week

This was a great week! Here's why:

• I had a great trip to San Diego this week. A digression: I never cease to be astounded by the weather in San Diego. What is with all that temperate perfection? I'm also amazing by how nice everyone is. Because believe you me, if I lived in a place that was that perfect all year long? I'd be intolerably smug, 24/7. Incredible.

(• Also a little sub-bullet of gratitude right here to say that I'm thrilled that I got back home safely. Our plane had to fly through a bit of a storm over New Mexico, and that was some turbulence like I don't remember in recent history. It didn't last long, but there were several screams throughout the cabin of the plane. Not by me, surprisingly. I was too busy praying fervently.

One more flight next week, and then I think I'm done traveling for the year. Halleluia.)

• Someone is leaving very funny signs all over Los Angeles. Awesome.

• National Geographic is currently accepting entries for its 2015 photo contest, and you can scroll through the best ones so far here. Such beautiful work.

• Speaking of beautiful work, my friend Justin had an adventure in Peru, and since he's a gifted photographer, he shows us how gorgeous it was.

• Astronomers may have found a giant alien megastructure in space. I know this sounds like something out of a tabloid magazine, but it's not. Also: whoa.

• A drought causes a 450-year-old Mexican church to rise from the waters of a reservoir. (Now that I think about it: drought, or ... aliens?!?) (I'm kidding.) (Or am I?)

• And finally, this really, really lovely TED talk by singer/songwriter Meklit Hadero, about the soundtrack that is constantly playing all around us. It's a little over thirteen minutes long, so you might want to grab a cuppa before settling in to watch it, but it's so worth it.

Click here or the image below to watch.