Friday night was dinner at my favorite restaurants (I'll try to put a few photos below), then the Andrea Bocelli concert. Amazing. I'm not a musical person, but there was music in my heart for days after the concert.
Saturday morning was a run with some very fast friends from one guy's house -- I kept up for 2 miles, then slowed down with two guys who are much faster than I am, but were running easy for various reasons (one was sick this past week, one ran a marathon last weekend with horrible stomach cramps from salmon fettucini (still ran a 3:24, but he'd been aiming for a 3:12-3:15)). It was nice of them to keep me company, while a faster crew went way ahead of us. After about an hour of running, we all met up and then had breakfast back at the house. His house was spectacular. This guy is someone I don't know very well, we've shared miles together a few times, but he's not like the guys I've been running with for years, he's newer to our group, has only lived in Dallas for a couple years. But given that he drives a Maserati, I should have guessed his house would be amazing -- and it didn't disappoint. The weather was nice so we moved the lovely breakfast that his wife had set up out to the pool. A couple friends stopped by who had skipped the run, and then a couple spouses (including mine) came by. And we all just hung out, talking and drinking. I stayed with mimosas, but it was the most I've had to drink before 11 a.m. in a very long time. The morning goes down as completely awesome in my book.
Saturday afternoon, we wanted to go on a Dallas architectural tour that started at a new downtown park. One of our neighbors came with us (her husband wasn't feeling well), but when we got to the new park, it turned out the tour was canceled, they just didn't post that info on the website! But we had a great afternoon walking around the park, and we can do the architectural tour some other weekend.
After a while downtown at the new park, all three of us went back to their house to hang out for a little while. After an hour or so of chatting, we talked them into coming to our house to continue the conversation while hubby and I decorated our tree. That was perfect. We got to spend time with them, and we got something fun around the house done too! Now we're all decorated. When we lit the tree, we stood around holding hands and sang Silent Night -- it was a little cheesy but actually so wonderful it made me very teary. We're lucky to have such wonderful neighbors.
Sunday was also busy -- one of hubby's two work parties was during the day (this was the bigger one, his smaller department party is next week Saturday night). Some of the other wives and families came by, hubby was working all day Sunday, but he was able to take some time to hang out, so we had brunch together and spent some time just hanging out, and then hanging out chatting with some of his coworkers (a bit of gossiping, oops!), before he got called back to work.
After his Christmas party, I went home and worked a little bit on cards, then I set out for Toys R Us. What a pain that was! But I basically finished the shopping for my godson, a charity toy drive, my godson's sister, and my nieces (my nephew was already done). Then I ran a couple more errands to the bank and to buy a cake. Then I came home, wrapped a couple gifts, then hubby finally got home from work and we went over to our other neighbors' house. They are from Taiwan and we were getting together for Chinese food and to show them pictures of our trip. One cool bonus was that we took photos of several signs we hadn't understood, and they were able to translate them for us. I stayed way too late, so it's going to be a long Monday, but wow, what a great weekend!
Since we're now 3 days into December, I'm officially behind, but I'm hoping to do the Reverb prompts again. I did these daily prompts two years ago, and I loved them -- such a neat way to think about the prior year and the upcoming year. I'll have to gradually catch up on 3 days now!
Day 1 – How Are You Starting This Last Month of 2012?
Take a moment, close your eyes, take a deep breath and ask yourself the question: how do you feel… … in your body? in your mind? in your day job? in your creative life? in your heart?
Excited. It has been a slow year for me in terms of fitness. When I started wearing a weight vest while running almost exactly one year ago, I slowed down so much. After the weighted marathon was over, in April, I tried to get back to where I was before I slowed down. I was making some progress and then in September, my new goal (the Beijing Marathon) was yanked out from under me when the race was postponed (but our plane tickets were already purchased). Then a month of vacation and a few weeks of being kind of lazy, now another year has passed. But just recently, in the last week or two, I have started to see inklings of where I used to be. I'm not back there yet, but I'm going to work hard at it. So mind and body aren't quite there, but I'm ready to work hard and I'm so excited about that. One year from now, I want to be in the best shape of my life. That's an exciting (and daunting) prospect. In terms of my day job, I'm happier than ever. The job change I made in Feb. 2011 has worked out so well for me. In terms of my creative life, I don't know what that means, but that's fine with me. I'm not really a creative person. In my heart, it's all good!
Photos from our dinner Friday night -- an apple-based salad (the cup of cherries was for me from one of the bartenders, I used to love to sit at this bar before I was married and suck on marascino cherries all night...):
My entree, a truffle risotto topped with roasted veggies and crispy artichokes:
And dessert, on the house -- did I mention I used to be a regular here? The dessert was awesome.
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