The only way I can describe last week is “full.” My heart and mind (and stomach, hah!) felt full. It is unusual for me to do anything other than running and relaxing at home on weekdays after work. I usually try to go out of my way to plan something to do on one weekend day, just so I don’t feel like I’m wasting my weekend by sitting around. However, this past week, I had something going on every day. While it made the week feel long, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I always had something to look forward to, and even when those things were errands, I still somehow managed to enjoy them.
On Monday, I got to leave work for a few hours in the afternoon to take my road test. I finally became a licensed driver at age 21! I already wrote about that experience here. Matt and I celebrated with burgers and beer at a restaurant near campus after work. 🙂
Tuesday was pretty uneventful, EXCEPT I had a meeting before work with someone I may be doing some freelance web development for. I got to drive there on my own AND it was in a part of Ann Arbor I rarely go to, so it was actually pretty exciting. Especially the part about being able to drive there on my own.
I also got free barbecue for lunch on Tuesday. Alternatively, I got paid to eat barbecue, since I got it on a work “field trip” to a power plant 100th anniversary celebration. 🙂
There is a local Meetup group here that does several group run events every week. I have been wanting to go for a few weeks, but until last week, I hadn’t gone. On Wednesday, I went to their Wednesday Social Run. It is at a park I have to drive to because I’m not interested in adding four miles onto their route right now, so I hadn’t been able to go until last week. Funny enough, it turns out their route passes right by my apartment, as in we run right across the street from it. Theoretically, I could do the second half of the route on my own to run to the park, then do the first half with the group and return home, but that kind of defeats the whole SOCIAL part!
The Meetup event description says, “4 to 8 miles, depending on your interest,” so I had thought there might be multiple groups doing different distances, or that there would be route options. However, there ended up being just one route that everyone did, which happened to be 6.3 miles. Of course, that is squarely in the 4-8 mile range and would normally be fine, but having not run at all the previous two weeks, it was a little rough. Maybe more than a little. I was sore for two days after the run. Two days! I had fun though and I’m looking forward to going again this week.
Since it was my first time going, I just had to go out with some of the group after. I had eaten pizza for lunch that day, but when they decided on a pizza place for dinner, I still wanted to go to hang out and make friends, so I had pizza again and it was delicious. 🙂 Hashtag no regrets. Well maybe ONE regret. Drinking even one beer after a 6-mile run and having not eaten in 5-6 hours was not one of my better ideas. I started feeling it halfway through. Oops. (I’m not someone who likes to get drunk. Nor tipsy/buzzed. At all.)
By the time I got home around 9, it was time to go to sleep because I had a doctor’s appointment at 7:50am the next day before work. This, like Tuesday’s meeting, was another one of those banal things made exciting by the fact that I could drive to it on my own. On the way to work afterwards, I was able to stop by a coffee shop I had wanted to visit ever since it opened last year, but hadn’t because it’s not within walking distance and I guess I never really wanted to bike there. It was nice and the manager knew my mom when I mentioned her. 🙂
After dinner, one of my friends came over to visit before she moves out of state in two weeks to start veterinary school. We decided to go to a nearby open-air bar to try a drink she wanted to get before leaving. It’s called Constant Buzz (strawberry smoothie, piña colada, rum, tequila, vodka, gin) and only comes in a 50-oz size, so I invited Matt and we split it three ways. (Here’s a funny blog post by a Michigan grad about the bar and this drink, by the way.) It was delicious. Then, some older ladies gave us the remainder of their sangria after we took a picture for them on their way out. Also delicious! (This time I did not get buzzed. The body is a funny thing.)
Yummy drink
Silly faces drink
Friday was the day I had been looking forward to all week. Matt and I had made plans for our siblings to come visit. We all went to dinner at a make-your-own “Italian” place, then spent an hour or two walking around downtown and showing them the university campus. I hadn’t seen my brother in a long time, so it was really great to hang out.
Shiny Happy People
On Saturday, I was feeling achy and sluggish. When I didn’t feel better after a couple hours of relaxing, I decided to go for a short run (only my second of the week) to see if it would help. I felt much better during the run, but it wasn’t until Matt and I got a late lunch at Jimmy John’s that I felt close to 100%. While we were at lunch, Matt’s parents texted him asking if we wanted to come over for dinner. I didn’t think I would even want dinner, but we didn’t go until late and I ended up being pretty hungry. We went to an Irish pub in downtown Flint and it was extremely delicious. The portions were huge and none of us could finish, so I got to take home some leftovers, which I ate for dinner last night. 🙂 With how much I ate out last week and how many times I had leftovers, I didn’t have to cook at all last week…
Finally, on Sunday, Matt and I headed up to Frankenmuth (a historic German town) for an all-you-can-eat German-style chicken dinner at Bavarian Inn. We ate almost nothing all day (he had a brownie and I had a bowl of cereal and some grapes) in preparation to stuff our faces. xD This post has gotten very long (I told you last week was full!!), so I will leave you with some pictures from our time spent walking around Frankenmuth while our food digested.
I thought this mouse/cheese statue was funny.
From “Tiny Town” outside Bavarian Inn.
More Tiny Town
Still more Tiny Town.
The Covered Bridge and someone handsome.
More Covered Bridge. 🙂
Rach Runs Her Mouth 