My first weekend of the new year was also my last weekend of my holiday break. I was bummed not to have gotten more done in my two weeks at home, but I also felt pretty relaxed going into the weekend. Maybe there’s something to be said for doing nothing on occasion? This weekend, I didn’t have a lot planned up front – but at the last minute, some fun stuff came together and turned it into a pretty great first weekend of 2018.
Work was pretty busy on Friday, but my weekend kicked off with a happy hour at The Family Jones in LoHi with a few coworkers. The Family Jones is a new distillery with a hip mid-century modern vibe, and I really enjoyed the gin tea I got there, as well as the rye spaetzle. In general, their happy hour menu was pretty good – all the cocktails were only $8 (not bad for handcrafted with house-made spirits), and they had a lot of small plates for $5 each. I’ll be back!
After Family Jones, I headed to downtown Denver to meet some friends for a night at Comedy Works. The headline act was Beth Stelling, and I enjoyed both her performance as well as the opening acts that started the night. None of the comedians nailed every joke, but there were enough good ones to keep me laughing most of the time, and it was a really fun time. I definitely need to get to Comedy Works more often – it’s a fun and relatively inexpensive way to enjoy an evening with friends!
I’ll be writing more later this week about my 2018 New Year’s resolutions, but one of them is to do yoga once a week. I’m hoping to do as many free classes as possible (there are so many of those!), and Saturday morning, I thought I’d kick off with a free event at Boulder Running Company – a group run followed by a yoga class. But when I was messaging with my friend Sarah on Friday afternoon and invited her to join, she offered up a counter proposal: to do a half day of skiing at Keystone. She and her husband had gone the week before, and they said the snow was actually passable (contrary to all the rumors that there’s no point in even going). So I decided to shift my plans and head up to the mountains with her.
Saturday started out a little rocky – neither of my two alarms went off, and I didn’t wake up on my own until 6:30am! I was supposed to meet Sarah at 7am to drive up to Keystone together, so I somehow managed to get ready with all my ski stuff by 6:45am… not bad when it’s my first ski day of the year and my stuff was all over the place. But when I called Sarah on my way out the door, I lucked out – she was running late too! That meant I had time to heat up a quick breakfast burrito at home and take my time getting to our meeting point at our new 7:30am departure time. As Sarah pointed out, we had all day and no agenda.
We had a great ride up to Keystone and didn’t really hit any traffic despite leaving so late. And then we got to enjoy a pretty lazy morning of skiing! The snow was covering the ground, but just barely, so we stuck to greens / blues, so we wouldn’t have to worry about steep pitch along with the scratchy icy surface. I had a mess of a time with my left boot as I kept trying to adjust it to fit just right (first my calf hurt so I tightened it, then my foot went numb so I loosened it), but eventually it was comfy. Of course, by then it was time for us to take a break 🙂 The weather wasn’t cold at all, but we were meeting some friends at the lodge… and I never say no to hot cocoa.
We headed to the lodge and met up with Kelli and her boyfriend Kyle; after relaxing and catching up there for a while, we then hit the easy trails together. Sarah and I ended up staying much later than we had originally planned (1:30pm instead of 11:30am), but we enjoyed taking our time and not feeling like we had to get in a certain number of runs. And, miracle of miracles, we still didn’t hit traffic on the way home! That was a pretty successful first day on the slopes.
I got home around 3:15pm, and without skipping a beat, got ready to go for a run. I’m doing a running streaking challenge for the month of January, and I needed to get at least two miles in before it was dark out! The last week of running has been pretty difficult for me, as I realized that the penicillin I’m still taking to kill every last bit of streptococci bacteria is making me really sluggish. But, Saturday’s run wasn’t that bad, and I was glad to get my new-regular 3 mile neighborhood loop done!
Finally, I ended my day with a delicious dinner down in LoHi at Bamboo, the sushi restaurant I raved about a few weeks ago. It seems the secret is out, as it was pretty packed, but there was room at the sushi bar, which was where I had wanted to sit anyway. We again opted for omakase, where the chef decides what to serve you, and it was so fun to see him make everything and wonder if what he was preparing was going to be for us or someone else! We ate a lot of sashimi (loved the trout with pesto), but that didn’t stop me from enjoying every mouthwatering bite of the chocolate grenache we decided to get for dessert. Seriously, Blossom is incredible – if you live in the Denver area, go!
Sunday morning was a bit lazy, but then I got convinced to go to Core Power Yoga’s C2 class in LoHi. Since one of my new year’s resolutions is to do yoga at least once a week, I had to do yoga at some point on Sunday… why not knock it out at 9am? I ended up not really minding it, and maybe even a little bit liking it – which put me in a great mood that I wasn’t going to hate having to do this every week! This class had only a tiny bit of the woo-woo meditation and om-ing, and the flow was pretty fast and intense in the middle. The core section was also killer! I was sweating quite a bit (though that’s really more from the high temps of the heated studio), and I left feeling like maybe doing yoga every week for 2018 isn’t such a bad idea 🙂
Next up, a nice long visit to Amanda’s house, since I had somehow not seen her for all of my winter break 🙁 How did that happen?? We made up for it with a solid catch up session, and then I headed back up home to take care of chores and get ready for the week of travel.
But before I settled in for the night, I had one more obligation to fulfill. Yoga was done, but I still needed to get my daily run in! It was pushing sunset when I got home from Amanda’s, but I quickly headed out to Flatirons Vista to run my favorite 3.6 mile trail loop and enjoy the mountain views (follow me on Strava for details and more pics). It was a little chillier and windier than I expected, and I did take the run slow, but that slow pace didn’t feel too bad… perhaps because I accidentally skipped my dose of penicillin in Saturday?? I can’t wait to be off this stuff and feeling my usual self with workouts!
Although I had gone into my run dreading it and seeing it as just another task I needed to complete to check the box, I ended it feeling fabulous. I had gotten a lot done this weekend, while also getting to relax a decent amount too! It was a nice blend of relaxation and GSD, and I hope it sets the tone for more weekends in 2018.
The only thing that wasn’t great about the weekend was the knowledge that I’d be flying out first thing this morning, which kind of loomed over me 🙁 It didn’t help that I had no plans Sunday night,. When I lived in New York, my best friend Mat and I had standing Sunday dinner plans, and that helped a lot with making me feel like the weekend wasn’t over till it was over… so maybe I’ll try to get something like that going in Colorado too. One last hurrah before the airport beckons!
So with that – I’ll say goodnight from Florida. Hope you had a great first weekend of 2018 as well!