Friday, March 10, 2006

Friday Afternoon Delights

I have a little extra vacation time at the end of this year (our fiscal year ends in March, oddly enough), so I've been able to take a few Fridays (or Friday afternoons) off this month, enjoy some of the warm-ish Spring weather, and spend some time hanging out with Les during weekday daylight hours.

Last Friday was a beautiful warm and sunny day, more like early May than mid-March, and I couldn’t wait to get out of the office and into the great outdoors! I left my office at 2:00 p.m. (barely “early,” but those few extra hours do count), went home and changed, and then Les and I went off in search of food (yes, I had skipped lunch to get out early). We headed to Maggiano’s Little Italy for a late lunch. It’s a chain restaurant on West End that we had heard good things about, but had also heard that it was a nightmare to get into because it was so popular. As expected, it was pretty empty at 2:30 p.m., and we were able to get in and out in less than an hour (I should say we were able to be rolled out of the restaurant an hour later, full of gnocchi with vodka sauce and roasted new potatoes), and move on to our next stop.

Being obsessed with “getting steps” like I am, the key goal for me for the day was to get my step-counter up to 10,000. I had spent most of the day at my desk (working hard so that I could leave early), so I was only at 3,000 by 2:00 p.m. We headed to Radnor Lake State Park (one of Les’s favorite walking areas because of the level terrain and the abundance of wildlife) and got moving. During our hike, we saw about 15 turtles (including two very large turtles who appeared to be mating in a small pond – racy!), a few different birds (but nothing too exciting), three muskrats, and what appeared to be a beaver (with signs of beaver activity on trees in the area). We also saw lots of cute dogs (on leashes), a few cute kids, and a variety of people walking around the lake.

Since we still had an hour of daylight 8,000 steps later, we decided to drive around the Radnor Lake area and see what we could find. We stumbled across the David Lipscomb University area, an area we had never been to before (and one where we wish we could afford to live), and got takeout from Perfect Pizza (yum!). We headed home, pizza in hand, and caught up on some of our recorded programs (we are totally digging Deep Sea Detectives on the History Channel at the moment), and both agreed that it was a perfect day thanks to good weather, good activity, good food, and quality time together.

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