Living close enough to work

Living close enough to work that you can get up at 8:00, get dressed, pack a lunch, leave the apartment, return to the apartment to get the aforementioned lunch that you forgot, go to Starbucks, the post office, and the gas station and still get to work by 9:00 is nice.
I had a pretty good weekend, and enjoyed finally being home without much to do for the first time in about a month. I played soccer on Saturday and we won, which was a nice change of pace. I’ve gotten complimented at both of the past two games for improvements in my play, which is a little strange because I don’t actually feel like I’m any better than I was a year ago. But on Saturday, our team manager turned to me after the game and said “Sarah, you were awesome today! I mean, you were good before, but this season you’ve been great!” So it was an unexpected and maybe undeserved compliment, but still nice. I hope I can keep it up.
Saturday night Becca, Cari, Jo, Jen, Melanie and I had a girls night. It was supposed to be girls night all along, but then boys worked their way in…but in the end, all the boys cancelled! We had Star Pizza for dinner and then went to the Mad Potter, a paint-your-own-pottery place. I made a large vase and painted a mountain scene on it. Melanie did a fish (painting it to look like Nemo), Jen did a picture frame and bowl, Jo did a teapot and tile, Becca did a set of coasters, and Cari did an airplane bank. I had so much fun; I love doing creative things. I don’t get to be creative nearly often enough.
I even got to paint more than expected when I realized that the light blue I’d asked for (and painted on my vase) was actually gray. It happened to Becca and Jen as well. It was actually a bit frustrating, since we’d harassed the guy multiple times with “are you sure this is light blue?? It really looks gray…” and he’d reassured us that it was definitely light blue, and that the colors just looked different before they get fired. Sigh. It was not light blue, as I finally had to figure out on my own. (They had two bottles labeled as the same color number, but they were obviously different when I finally looked at the color names — “Pool Party” is blue, while “Copenhagen” is not. I shouldn’t have trusted the guy.) So I had to erase what I’d already painted with a sponge and do my sky all over, but I think it will be ok. I’ll get it back next weekend.
Yesterday I slept in and then took it easy, cleaning the apartment, watching the Astros, and reading. I just finished The Sex Lives of Cannibals, a hilarious account of two years of life as a foreigner on Kiribati in the equatorial Pacific. Nancy was reading it in Peru, Becca bought it when we got back, and I just had to read it. I highly recommend it.
Around 5:00, I went for a run — almost 8 miles, with the sole purpose of reassuring myself that the 10-miler I’m signed up for next weekend is doable. The whole marathon training thing is going to be tough! (Oh, if anyone out there is curious about my marathon training, I made a separate site that I’m going to use to document my training. You can read it if you like that sort of thing, or ignore it entirely. I don’t care. It’s only real purpose is to publish my training schedule in an attempt to keep myself motivated — it’ll be hard to skip a workout if I know people will read about it the next day.)