Bachelorette'n Weekend

I spent an entire 4 days totally alone.  No biggie, right?  I've been staying home alone for like 10-15 years.  I didn't realize until today, however, that I had never actually been THIS alone for an extended period of time.  Just coming from college at a large university, and going to high school in a suburb of St. Paul, I've always had lots of people to hang out with and lots of things to do.  Then, coming up on 6 months ago I moved from the familiar, homely midwest to Huntington Beach.

My main hangout partner here, Pete (duh), unfortunately had to fly home for a funeral.  My roommate and I don't talk or see each other much, or hang out due to totally different lifestyles/personalities,  and all of the other people I hang out with are coworkers and we really only get together during the week for Taco Tuesday and other random occasions.

I'll admit, this alone time made me feel like a bit of a friendless loser.  It's not hard for me to make friends with people once I'm with them, but I have found it hard to just get to that point.  I'm not really into the church thing - where it seems a lot of people meet others when they move to a new area, and the main issue is I don't have a car.  I'd love to join a running group, or join other "meet-up" groups, but not having a car makes getting to gatherings a bit difficult.  Maybe it's time to think about buying a car again...I have a feeling this week-long rainstorm coming up might do some final convincing...

Although I felt loser-like, I was actually kind of excited for the time alone.  I definitely have an introverted side, and sometimes being alone is energizing and refreshing.  I started looking for things to do, and found a few girlie goodies that I knew Pete or my coworkers (who also happen to be all guys) wouldn't be too excited about.  Pete also left his truck behind, which gave me some more flexibility if I needed it.

Thursday was typical.  After work run and yoga.  Followed by dinner and bed.

Friday I decided I wanted to check out the $3 theater and see a movie - I could see whatever I wanted!  I was set on seeing "Pirate Radio" but after an ex-coworker told me it was one of the worst movies he had ever seen, I decided to join him and his wife who were planning to see "Couples Retreat."  I had never been to a movie with a married couple before...so that was different.  The movie was hilarious!  I thought it was funnier than "The Hangover" but I think I'm part of a very small minority that didn't think that movie was funny...so I guess that comparison sucks, but I highly recommend renting it.  The best part of that experience was after the movie, without collaboration, all three of us mentioned that the 3-4 year old character reminded us of Pete.

Saturday was definitely girl day.  I started the day off by sleeping in.  Then at noon I had a hair appointment!  I'm that girl that hates getting my hair done...just because it's so insanely expensive and time consuming, but the last cut I got a couple months ago was AWFUL.  It was so bad that the person that did my hair this time said things like "I'm not sure what the goal of this cut was...I just don't understand."  I'm not really sure how I dealt with it for 2 months.  The lady worked wonders and was able to fix my hair - also the first stylist I've had that has taught me a lot about my hair and how I can take care of it better and gave me ideas about what would look good (her name is Pamela and she works here ;-)).  Anyway, here are the before and after shots. Before shot might not look that horrible, but trust me, it was.

That night I attended The Nutcracker being put on by a youth ballet company at the Huntington Beach High School historic auditorium.  I wasn't expecting it to be amazing or anything, but wow, it was a really great performance - the dancers were extremely talented and the show had great flow.  The costumes were amazing, too.  I danced for quite a few years between the ages of 2 and 15 at a fairly prestigious/well-known studio, and really appreciate this type of thing.  It's fun to get a chance to WATCH all of the talent, and also understand how much time and effort is put into such a production.  Definitely excited I found tickets!  Speaking of which, if you aren't familiar with it, you should check out Goldstar - keeps you in the entertainment loop and gives great discounts (and it's free to join)!

Sunday was long run day after sleeping in and making breakfast and lunch.  I wasn't real excited about this 9 mile run I had to do - but I had told myself I was going to stick to a training plan this time around, and finally got my butt out the door.  The run sucked - not sure if it was the lack of running recently due to the bike tour, reading all of the CIM and Las Vegas RnR tweets all morning about barfing and pooping, or if my body is starting to hate gu, but I felt like total crap right from the start.  My legs felt flat and every time I had to stop at a light I felt nauseated and dizzy, making it really hard to start again.  I got through it though, running a 9:32 average pace. I wore my HR monitor this time too to see what my rate was during an average paced run - 168 bpm.  I was told this is kind of high for a fairly easy pace - but I'm not THAT out of shape so who knows...we'll see how it goes I guess.

I got back and settled in bed, and found a spider crawling on my wall.  As a kid I watched "Arachnophobia" over and over and it never bothered me...but now, I'm nearing the deathly afraid of spiders point, so it took a lot of pepping myself up to take my Cosmo magazine and lightly hit it till it died.  I'm not about killing things, but I couldn't stand the idea of it disappearing and ending up in my bed or on my face while I was asleep.  I'm going to have to get Pete to dispose of it tomorrow.

Seeing as this was my first time in this sort of situation, I'm proud of how well I entertained myself the past few days.  I think Pete and I both feel at times that he's my only source of entertainment here (makes sense), and this was a good opportunity to show both of us I can be independent, too.  As lame as it may sound, I had a blast this weekend (minus the spider) - completely alone!  And for the record, I swear I do have real-life friends, they just happen to be thousands of miles away :-)  Can't wait for Christmas!