Socializing

I just finished reading The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin, a lawyer-turned-writer and there were several parts of it that stuck with me.  One of them was the importance of having close friends and spending time with people. 

It's odd, because I feel like "social time" has to be carefully balanced for me.  If we have plans every night for many nights in a row, all I want to do is have a night at home. 

But this weekend was a good balance -- time at home and time out with friends.

Friday I worked from home and took the day off from working out.  Got a fair amount of work done, then we went to my bestie's house and went to the Rangers game with her and her husband, where we met up with another friend and her husband.  The two guys other than my husband are both huge baseball friends, but my husband really isn't a sports guy, so I was a little worried he wouldn't have fun.  But I think we all had a great time.  Hubby and one of the other guys talked shop a lot, and the Rangers lost in a MAJOR way, but there were fireworks after the game and lots of laughs.

Saturday morning was the beginning of my road back to normal running.  One of my best running buddies just got his BQ last weekend -- for a guy my age, that means basically running a 7:03 per mile pace.  So in short, he is what I consider to be smoking fast.  We obviously didn't run together this year -- while he was training for his BQ, I was going the opposite direction -- slowing my pace more and more to accommodate the weight vest. 

Even in recovery mode, given my slow road back to non-weighted running, I think it was tough for him to run with me.  Which stinks.  We've run together for years, and I love talking to him, but he's just too speedy for me.  But we made it through 6 miles together -- I made him talk most of the time so I could focus on just catching my breath.  Haha.  It worked.

After the run, we met up with his wife, who'd gone walking at the lake, and we all decided to go out to breakfast together.  My running friend's wife is great, and so much fun to talk to, though I've only spent time with her recently.  So the breakfast was great.  Hubby didn't join us though because he'd drug his feet on grocery shopping, so that was his Saturday morning plan.

After breakfast, I got back home around 10:30 and got to take a little nap and read while waiting for the groceries.  We unloaded, did a bit of cleaning, a bit of relaxing, a Lifetime movie, and some cooking. 

Our Saturday evening plans were going to the local Italian meet-up picnic, back at the same lake where I'd been running in the morning.  We grilled out and enjoyed an awesome potluck (yeah, Italians are the right people to party with!), and got to spend the evening speaking Italian, including with a few people who are visiting the US and know less than a dozen words of English.

Lovely night!

Yesterday was good too.  Started off with my last long group run (9 miles, tapering), then our training group had a little tailgate party.  The rest of the day was kind of a blur.  Laundry, cleaning, organizing, reading, etc.  I managed to finish the book for book club, and then went to run errands, including a much-needed trip to Goodwill to drop off a few bags of donations.  I have a lot of work to do in terms of decluttering, but even doing a little bit is progress, and I'll take it.  Then we had book club last night at a friend's house.  Great meal, lots of fun talking, though not as many people read the book as I'd hoped, considering that I had a lot of thoughts about it.  But after most of the crowd left, one other woman (a former co-worker) and I stayed with the hostess and sat outside drinking wine and talking for another hour. 

Lovely evening again, and an overall lovely weekend.  Lots of time with friends.  Maybe not as relaxing as a less social weekend, but more memorable and it's likely true that it boosts happiness more. 

Fun stuff!