What do I usually do on Saturdays? I couldn’t quite seem to remember today. Some weekends, I’ve been lucky to have company. When Charity came we went to the movies and just gabbed away as friends do. When Steve and his sister came we spent the day walking around town and exploring. When my mom came we went to the movies and just hung out. And when Sean came we walked the beach for hours and had one of the best dinners I’ve had in Virginia Beach (at the Lynnhaven Fish House).

But on most Saturdays, I can’t seem to figure out what I do exactly. I sleep in and catch up on phone calls, writing, cleaning, and reading. My Saturdays, as well as most of my days off from work, are pretty lonely hours spent doing anything to keep me busy.

So to be in Nevada surrounded by eight other people who share my work hours and many common interests, I am living the life. My life, I’ve realized in just the short week I’ve been here, has to change. By nature, I am an introvert, but I am also a very social being. Yet back “home” at the Beach, I find myself spending the majority of life alone. 

And so today I was looking forward to spending the day touring Reno and visiting Lake Tahoe. Unfortunately, the bus our instructors attempted to rent broke down. And so, we will have to try for our tour again next weekend.

So today, instead, my peers and I spent the day randomly wasting time. Mind you there were a million things we could have been doing and probably needed to do, but instead we did none of them.

We started the morning off shopping at Kohl’s and Target. As silly as it sounds and as often as I do these same things on my own, it was so much fun doing them with six other women. 

Then a few of us went to the cutest little restaurant, where we indeed met Virginia. She was our waitress who called each one of us dear and sweetie and steered Michelle, one of my roommates, away from ordering the meatloaf sandwich. Yet she highly recommended the California burger and the Gobbler (turkey sandwich on toast with tomato, mayo, avocado, and cranberry sauce), which I had. The menus were printed as newspapers, and each one of us, being the journalists we are, took them home as souvenirs.

After lunch, we headed back to the apartment, where Michelle, YaVonda, and I cleaned, gabbed, and did just about everything to kill time (we even just sat around staring at each other for a few).

Michelle showed us pictures from Amarillo (where she’s from) and Austin (I’m surrounded by Texans). And as we looked at the photos, I fell in love with Flat Stan. As Michelle told us the story told to her by her nephew, Flat Stan is a children’s book character who once was a real boy. But Stan was flattened when a billboard fell on him. And so Stan became very helpful to other because he could get to places others couldn’t. For example, if his mother locked her keys in the house, Stan could slide through the door crack and fetch them. Being flat, Stan did a lot of good deeds. Michelle’s nephew’s teacher decided that Stan needed a vacation. So, she had the children send Stan to different people they knew who lived different places. Michelle took Stan on adventures in Texas with she and her boyfriend and cousin.

This little story is so adorable. And the pictures left my roommates and I laughing for most of the rest of the day. Today, Stan was indeed the man!