Saturday is a Special Day

Yesterday was a really fantastic day. I like Saturdays where we don’t really have any plans, but we do fun and productive things and yesterday was exactly that.

I got up around nine and went to the gym to do my third workout of the week. I’m really pleased with my progress as far as running goes. This one was the hardest so far (walking five minutes, running eight minutes, walking five minutes, running eight minutes, which I realize sounds incredibly wimpy, but for me it was a big deal), but I did manage to do it without dying, and that is a big success in my book. Saturday is usually my hardest day to go to the gym, since we don’t get up particularly early. If it’s already late, the last thing I want to do is postpone showering and getting ready for the day by another hour or so. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case yesterday, and I was able to get to the gym and back by a reasonable time.

I ran (by which I mean “drove”) to the library and then to the grocery store, where they were giving out dozens of different free samples, including tons of different barbecued meats. It’s funny to live in Texas now where barbecue is practically religion. In Nevada, growing up, I don’t remember seeing practically anything but Hunts. Sacrilege here. The last thing I tasted, some Jamaican pork, was so spicy that my mouth burned until I got home and had a glass of water. Yikes!

Bart and I set up Settlers, just as a friend of mine from church came over bearing a huge bouquet of flowers and two trays of sushi to thank me for picking her kids up from piano lessons and taking them to dinner on Thursday while she and her husband went to see The Lion King. The flowers look fantastic and the sushi was delicious (it also meant I didn’t have to make lunch). We played two games of Settlers, both of which I lost, and then we watched The Holiday which we’d rented the night before. We both really enjoyed the movie, especially Jack Black, Kate Winslet and Jude Law. Okay, everyone but Cameron Diaz who I just can’t really watch for some reason.

In the fall, a big new outlet mall opened north of Austin and we’d never been. The weather was gorgeous yesterday, just the right temperature to be outside, so we decided to go check it out (all the stores are indoors, but the walkways are all outside). We ended up buying quite a bit of stuff that was deeply discounted, including some pants, shorts, and polos from Gap for Bart, a few shirts, skirt, and pants for me, three sweaters for Bart that were $2.09 each (that’s right, two dollars and nine cents per sweater), and some new running shoes for Bart, since his are falling apart.

Afterwards, we went to Chipotle’s for dinner, which I’d never been to. We got three soft pork tacos and shared them. They put rice in their tacos, which is something I’ve never seen, and WOW was that a good addition. Definitely something I’ll be trying at home in the future.

We came home, Bart returned our movies to Blockbuster (we’d watched Eragon the night before, which wasn’t a very great film), and I made some chocolate chip cookies, recipe courtesy of my sister, Merrick.

In the course of the day, we’d also managed to clean the bathroom (Bart cleaned out the shower, bless him), do the dishes twice, change the sheets, and do four loads of laundry. I suspect that this may have been one of the best Saturdays of my life. If only I had won those games of Settlers.