And a very happy day to you as well!

After my last post, I knew that it was time to start living here as though I'm LIVING here, instead of just feeling like I'm a long-term visitor. With that in mind, I made mental and logisitic preparations for the weekend, and had a wonderful time.

Saturday. Ah, Saturday. You were a wonderful day.

The day started off cool-ish (cloudy!), so after waking up early I made the (roughly) 2 1/2 mile walk to Holland Village for coffee and breakfast (a coddled egg, toast, and salad - I love that salad comes with breakfast!). A bit of puttering around and reading later, I headed home to get ready to go to...pilates! Yes, I found a studio not (too) far from me, and they had an early Saturday afternoon jumpboard class, so off I scampered. I didn't like the studio quite as much as my old one in Chicago (though, to be fair, I've never been to any studio anywhere that I like as much as Spring), but the people were nice, the space was clean, and the class kicked my butt (and thighs, and abs, and arms). So there's that. I will, I'm sure, be going back.

Class over, I took my stinky self home and was about to jump in the shower when I thought, "Hang on, as long as I'm gross already..."

Meet Callie. Callie is my dear little sage-green Dahon Speed purchased from this place. The people were incredibly nice and helpful, and I'm a little bit in love with the bike. No offense meant to Sars (my beloved Trek hybrid in Chicago), but Callie is more of a Singapore bike. She's smaller, lighter, and has a tighter turning radius. Sars is the perfect bike for Chicago, and I don't know that I'd be as comfortable on Callie there - for one thing, I don't know how Callie would handle the snow! I don't get the speed on Callie that I could get on Sars, but she had me sailing along on my commute this morning and afternoon, and I was so, so happy to be back out on the road with a helmet on my head!

(But back to Saturday...)

So, bike purchased, I rode around for a while, and finally made my way home. Jumped in the shower, changed clothes, and headed out (to the bus - yes, yes, but I wasn't entirely sure where I was going and it was getting late for a first long ride!) to meet up with a Meetup of expats and friends. One of my coworkers met me there, and it was such a great time. Really nice people from all over the place gathered together for a beer and a chat. There may have been dancing. There were definitely fries at around 2AM.

I was oh-so-very sleepy when I went to bed, and so happy when I woke up. A lovely day, and feeling more like myself than I have since, oh, December?

Happy!