Today I hauled my two giant change jars down to the grocery store to use the coin-counting machine — in the past couple of years, I have managed to save $109.39 in spare pocket change. Isn’t that ridiculous? I think in the year since buying my own washer and dryer I really added a lot to that total by hanging onto my quarters instead of using them for laundry. The reason for cashing it in today was to start my road bike savings account. Let me tell you, I am pleased and excited. I love having something fun to save for and look forward to. Yippee!

Yesterday, my boyfriend and I went for a long, hilly bike ride, and I am 100% certain that is the hardest workout my legs have had in quite some time. We’ve been going for a bike ride together every Sunday for most of the summer, but this was a new route that included plenty of long, grinding, slow uphills. You know, the kind where you keep looking at the road ahead thinking, “It doesn’t look that steep. Why is this so hard? Well, surely the hill ends somewhere around that bend just ahead,” except, ahahahahaha, how wrong you are, my friend! The road goes on forever! All slightly uphill!

At any rate, it was tough and it was fun, but I couldn’t help wondering to myself if it would be any easier to manage on a regular road bike instead of my road-commuter hybrid. I cannot lie; I have these persistent fantasies of finally getting on the Awesome New Road Bike of the Future and finding it significantly faster and easier to ride, and after having spent months and years honing the quad squad on my current bike, I will fly effortlessly uphill and downhill, creating a vortex-like draft behind me into whose rushing wind will vanish the anguished cries of everyone I pass. Ahem.

But back to reality. Did you notice how I just, like, totally casually mentioned my boyfriend above? All like, no big deal, just going on a bike ride with my boyfriend? Yeah, so that’s happening. Happy, happy, happy. Don’t expect me to say too much about the man in question (he wouldn’t really like to be discussed on my blog, you know?), but please allow me to tell you that he is The Best and we are a couple of happy, lucky people.

When I think about the first half of this year, my memories are colored by the persistent hip injury that kept me from running or biking for over six months, the suspicion and eventual discovery that I was being cheated on by my ex, and the stress of Egon’s second back injury and surgery. I can say with confidence and a gleam in my eye, however, that the second half of 2012 is more than making up for the faults of the first half. In all areas of life, I’m excited at the thought of what’s to come.