30, Flirty, and Fun

Came back last night from California. I was there from Wednesday until Sunday, but it may as well have felt like 5 minutes. Everything about it was perfect - Utah decided to have snowy, frigid weather while I was away, and California welcomed me with temperatures in the 70s and hardly a cloud in the sky the whole time I was there.

I managed to:

• Catch the Angels' game Wednesday night - the walk-off win on a bunt single by Howie Kendrick.
  
• Visit with my dad on his birthday.
  
• See my mom after she was stuck in Brazil for 45 days.
• Play soccer Wednesday night on 3 hours of sleep and after a baseball game and 9-hour drive before that. I was better than I would have expected, especially since I haven't played at all since January. Devastating, I know. That's the longest stint without soccer in my entire life, except for the mission.
  
• Hot tub twice.
• Magic Mountain without any lines the whole time. We just about walked onto every ride, and we got so spoiled that when they said waits extended to 15 minutes, we would just walk away instead. Nothing beats X2, but you know what else? Don't ride rollercoasters on an empty stomach. The whole time I kept thinking I was just getting old and not cut out for them anymore, but then I ate something and felt fine after that.
  
• Caught the Hurley warehouse sale and bought lots of new stuff.
• Got me some new business Rainbows.
• Spent time walking on the beach, watching rugby on the grass field in between A and B streets, walked the peninsula, and ate a corn dog at Jane's Corn Dogs, which, incidentally, are awesome. As good as any corn dog I've had.
• Went for a run in Peter's canyon.
• Hung out for Dave's birthday party, which turned out to be great, thanks to the efforts of his lovely little wife.

And now I'm back here, to my semi-real life. Coming back from vacation is really not so bad when all you really have to wake up for is golf class at 9:00 am. Even then, I debated with myself this morning if I should go or not. I did, of course, after reminding myself that I really wanted to take the class and work on my game. Tomorrow night our stake softball league is starting up, and I'm thinking that I should probably join, especially since I don't have my bowling night anymore this summer.

You know what's really great? Realizing that I have so many wonderful friends and a great family. Sure, my dad is kind of weird to me a lot of times, but he's a really decent person and does the best he knows how. My mom is the sweetest person in the world. And I have amazing, amazing friends. I also realized that I have lots of really awesome couple-friends, which can be kind of hard to find because adding another person makes it that much trickier. I wanted to drop by Laura's on the way back from Magic Mountain because I knew it was a bad time to drive home (4pm on a Friday through LA), but for some reason decided against it. Anyway, I just love that I'm from such a cool place and home is punctuated by the fact that I have so many people that make it so great. I really can't say enough about how great I have it with all the people in my life.

So here goes...trying to work on my thesis, get into a regular running schedule, fulfill my calling, and everything that's involved with life back here in Provo.

I'd post pictures, but as has been the case over the last year, I don't have a camera, so I have nothing to show for it. But trust me, it all happened, and it was all great.