Category Archives: in the neighborhood

Right Now

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  1. Settled in a great new apartment in a great new neighborhood with a great new roommate.
  2. Spring and maybe summer have arrived in Chicago. On Tuesday, it was 85 and sunny for my post-work run.
  3. A couple of great overnights in Champaign, and vacation on the not-to-distant horizon.
  4. Lunchtime walks in beautiful places.
  5. Lots of demands at work, but most of them are interesting and stretch me in good ways.
  6. So much good music in the next two weeks: Zoe Keating, Emily Wells, Front 242 (DJ set), Colin Stetson, Four Tet (DJ set). And then Movement not long after.
  7. Back to back PRs in a set of races where I PR’d last year.
  8. A new relationship that isn’t really new at this point, but that continues to fill me with wonder and joy and peace.
  9. A battery of tests proving that I’m in excellent health.
  10. Horoscopes that tell me to follow my heart:

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): Despite everything I wrote to you last week about weighing self-gratification against fairness-to-others (which probably still requires some consideration), I can’t help but encourage you to veer slightly more in the direction of pursuing whatever the hell makes you happy. While it’s useful to reflect enough on your privilege relative to your friends or colleagues so you’re not blind to their potential responses, you can’t live a satisfying life by concentrating too much on assuaging others’ discontent. In fact, with multiple 5th-house planets now moving into a supportive trine to Pluto in your 1st, I’m sure you’re feeling pretty emboldened to make the personal most of any situation… and why the fuck not? These energies sure seem to be formally inviting you to intentionally put yourself at the unapologetic center of this week’s decision-making—and not just out of some future-minded commitment to ‘becoming your best self’, but in order to choose whatever will bring you immediate joy, creative fulfillment, and/or positive flirtatious attention. In closing, yes, I suppose I should reiterate the possibility that certain social allegiances could suffer tension, as envious or disapproving others react to seeing you so unapologetically serve your own pleasure. Maybe it’s because they’ve become too accustomed to you taking care of their needs first?

no simmering life but a boiling one

1.
I woke up this morning sick as shit. I don’t know where it came from, but it felt a little like several essential parts of my body got together and decided to put me in time out. You’ve been doing too much, they said, and it’s time to stop. I ignored the message for a while, but when I looked in the mirror at work and didn’t really recognize myself, it was time to go home. I took photos with my phone to prove the point; when I checked just now, they’re not there.

2.
Last night Erin and I saw David Byrne and St Vincent at the Chicago Theater. We both had to temper our slight disappointment with the knowledge that this was David Byrne AND St Vincent, not Talking Heads. But the sound was fantastic and Chicago got on its feet and danced, and when they closed with Road to Nowhere, it was like something out of an old revival, hands in the air, voices united.

3.
I’ve fallen into that city-dwelling habit of eating out too often while observing evolution in action in my crisper. Every couple of weeks, I buy a bag of produce from Edible Alchemy and dream big dreams about what I’m going to make – and then I devour the fruit while letting the zucchinis go soft, the potatoes grow eyes, the onions shed their dusty skins.

4.
A week submerged in The Diaries of Anais Nin. I’m not sure that I can neatly summarize it. It’s been a complicated, emotional year, and so many of the things she described resonated with my experience while also being completely foreign to me. Perhaps this, from November 1933:

Allendy took pains to delineate my character, my true nature, my human attitudes, but it was by a process of oversimplification. The mold into which he tried to fit me came to a climax the day he suggested I should take love more lightly, give it less importance, to evade tragedy. That I should take a playful attitude towards it. It should be sweet and casual, easygoing and interchangeable…This was the natural conclusion to the formation of my human self, to normalcy; and if he was right about overcoming tragedy, par contre, he overlooked the deeper cravings of an artist, for whom deep full love is the only possible form, no simmering life but a boiling one, no small compromise with reality.

5.
Fall has arrived right on schedule. Last night the thermostat dipped low. It is 6:45pm in my living room, and my space is illuminated more by my laptop than by the waning sunlight. Laurie said that we’re losing 2 minutes of daylight each day. But still the ice cream truck sits on the corner, and I dream of swimming in the lake and of all of the summer things that didn’t happen amidst all that did.

6.
Six months in Chicago, and Jeremy said that it sounds like I’m home. Two and a half years in Ann Arbor. Two years in DC. A year each at MPub and Kresge, two years at Gelman. Five years in this goddamned profession. Six years in a relationship, seven months out. I love Chicago. Chicago exhausts me. I’m envious of friends who have recently moved to quieter places. I worry that my life here will burn me out. I don’t know.

A2 Bucket List

I have two weeks left in Ann Arbor. Two weeks from today, I should be in Chicago, and a week after that, I’ll be getting ready to start my new job. I asked the internets for recommendations for my last two weeks here, and they responded in great force. I can’t obviously accomplish all of these things in two weeks, but it’s good to have a place to start.

  • Filmfest, foolmoon, festifools
  • Get into that little playground on the roof of the old Mott Children’s Hospital.
  • Coconut cream batido from frita batidos
  • Frita batidos, Sunday brunch at Aut bar
  • Canoe the Huron (if they’re open?) If not open or too cold, go to the DIA. That never gets old.
  • Dunny purchase from Vault of Midnight. Go see Lewis the orange tabby cat at Downtown Home and Garden. Go to Ashleys for beer on the busiest night, take $20 and play the same song (bad or good) over and over again on the internet juke box. Walk in Gallup Park.
  • If the weather is right & you still have your bike, you can take the b2b trail to downtown Ypsilanti.
  • Run through the Arb, brunch at Eastern Market, good beer at Jolly Pumpkin and then a bad beer over at the Eightball and definitely go visit Lewis!
  • Happy Endings at Berkley Front over City Club this Friday.

This is in addition to the list that Shana and I have been compiling:

  • Bell’s bi bim bap with Amanda
  • Nachos somewhere with Shana and Javan
  • Night out in Detroit with housemates
  • Biscuits and chocolate-bacon gravy at the Roadhouse (post-race brunch of dreams
  • Brunch at Raven’s Club
  • One last bakefest (Oreos!)
  • Another Knights of the West Side

Already checked off the list in the last few weeks are:

  • Afternoon Delight, which is hands’ down my favorite breakfast place in town.
  • Taco Tuesday at Sabor Latino
  • Donuts and/or ice cream from Washtenaw Dairy, which has the best donuts on the planet.
  • Plastic Passion at Necto
  • My first and only visit to the Arb
  • A very long walk along Huron River Drive
  • Treasure Mart
  • Zingerman’s

What am I missing?

Further Thoughts on Chicago

  1. Chicago is much more fun in nice weather than in the snow. In fact, it’s pretty miserable in the snow.*
  2. Last night we learned an important lesson about paying attention to parking meters. The parking ninjas here aren’t messing around, and at least four of us wound up with $50 tickets. Sheeeiiiiit. Good thing it was a cheap dinner.
  3. That said, we’re still trying to determine when it makes sense to take the train as opposed to driving. Fares are $2.25 in each direction, while parking is $1.75 per hour. If we’re going somewhere together, do we pay $3.50 for two hours of parking? Or do we pay $9 in train fare? This will all be academic when the weather is nicer and we can ride our bikes or ‘peds.
  4. I haven’t figured out why some bars are open til 2am, while others stay open til 4am. I also haven’t put much effort into figuring it out, though I have managed to see 2am at Neo twice since we landed here in December.
  5. I also have absolutely no idea how Google Navigation comes up with its time estimates or directions. I drove to Iowa yesterday for my uncle’s funeral, and the initial estimate for the drive was 3:04. I got in the car and mapped the route with my phone. 3:49. The drive, including stops for fuel and food, took 3:15.
  6. The coop in our neighborhood is sweet and well-stocked, but doesn’t carry yeast in bulk. I miss By the Pound already.**

*I would say that this had something to do with the fact that I just spent five days in California, but no. I think this is empircal fact.

**I still haven’t decided how I prefer to write coop. Co-op? CoOp? I could always go the New Yorker route and use an umlaut, but that just looks ridiculous, even in print.

Keeping Our Wits About Us

This is the obligatory ‘sorry, we’ve been MIA’ post from a neglectful blogger. It’s not that I don’t love you and/or don’t want to share things here. It’s just that it’s the end of the semester and the holiday season and, oh yeah, we’re moving to Chicago in TWO WEEKS. Put all of those things together, and you don’t get a whole lot of coherency out the other side.

On the other hand, we have been cooking: Thanksgiving dinner for friends, lentil stew and other soups with the six quarts of turkey stock, shrimp tacos, and last night’s very passable impression of chicken piccata served on the fine china. And we’re throwing diets out the window and enjoying meals at many of our favorite places. So it’s not that I don’t have things to tell you about – it’s that I don’t have time.

In lieu of actual content, here is a picture of our cats behaving strangely:

Cat Train

We’ll be back soon. Promise.

Things I Miss About Champaign

I’ve been meaning to make this list for a long time, but Gemma’s recent photos have pushed me to actually writing it up.  My feelings for Champaign are all wrapped up in my grad school experience, my first really fulfilling (and challenging) professional job, and a prolonged period of personal growth and experimentation between the end of my marriage and the beginning of my relationship with Shane – so lots of complicated, complicating things factor into my relationship with that little city in the corn.

  1. Riding my bike down University towards GSLIS early in the morning in the summer – empty roads and the sun coming up through the trees.  A 7 minute commute on a good day.  And then the long months when I couldn’t ride because my arm was in a cast.
  2. West Side Park.  Living across from West Side Park.  Walking home through West Side Park after a long shift at Aroma or a movie at the Art or a too-late night at Mike & Molly’s.
  3. Coffee and sandwiches at Paradiso.  Consistently good music on the stereo.  The smoking section at Paradiso, barely partitioned off by a row of ficus trees.  Books or homework on the “patio”.  Paradiso’s perfect imperfectness.
  4. Living near downtown Champaign, where I never paid more than $500 for a one bedroom apartment, and even that included utilities.  My first solo apartment directly across from the park.  My studio apartment that never really got above 50 degrees in the winter, but that in the summer offered the most fabulous porch for parties.  The apartment with the Wild Things on the wall and the yellow kitchen.  Our last place on Clark, where we rented the entire ground floor for around $750, planted our first garden, spent $300+ on heat in the winter, and enjoyed the mixed blessing of a screened-in entryway – great for cats in the sun, not great for cats escaping.
  5. Saturday mornings at the Urbana farmers’ market, bringing home things I didn’t recognize and that would eventually go bad in the fridge. Splurging on fancy cheese, meat, and a croissant from Art Mart.  Riding our bikes to the market and bringing a dedicated backpack for watermelon or canteloupe.
  6. Friday afternoon Revolution Lunch at Jerusalem Restaurant with my favorite nutters.  The food was fine, but the company was effing crazy.  I’m glad to hear that it hasn’t changed.
  7. French toast at Sam’s, where Shane and I went for breakfast one of the first times he spent the night.  We drew maps of our hometowns on the rectangular napkins.  In case you ever forget, the special is at the top.
  8. Late nights studying at Merry Ann’s with Sarah and Nicole, drinking TERRIBLE coffee and eating fries and goofing around with the servers.  Going to Merry Ann’s at bar time, ordering a grilled cheese sandwich, and being in and out in under 10 minutes.  Greg and I standing on the booth and singing happy birthday to Mark, who brought us screwdrivers mixed in the back.  Hanging out with Shane for the first time after Carl and I had gone to see 2046, all three of us wasted but on totally different things (exhaustion, alcohol, an emotionally weighty movie).  Many many plates of fries before Subversion.
  9. Boltini bingo.  We went almost every week the last summer we lived there, but I didn’t win ANYTHING until my very last card on my very last bingo.  Marv gave me his oversized clapper, which I kept until we moved to Michigan.
  10. Aroma.  Working at Aroma.  Drinking mojitos outside Aroma in the spring of 2003.  Working 20 hour days (Aroma + Carle) in the fall of 2004 when it was easier to not sleep than to deal with my heartbreak.  10 hour kitchen shifts with all New Order all the time, getting fake engaged to Sam, smoking out front with Carl and Erich and Leah in the summer.  Ryan’s shark mug and Dave catching flies out the air.  Flirting with customers who became friends.  Coffee grounds permanently under my fingernails.  A good place and a good time, though definitely not the best coffee in the world.
  11. Symposium at the Esquire, and the Esquire in general.  For at least the first year after we left Champaign, I would often sigh and say that I just wanted to go the Esquire for dinner – cheap beer, cheap bar food, endless bowls of peanuts.  Always the same, never disappointing – just a solid townie bar.
  12. The Blind Pig in the winter of 2004-2005.  Holding hands with Carl on my 25th birthday.  A snowball fight in the middle of the night in the middle of Walnut Street.  It’s still a great bar, and I know Shane misses it greatly, but (oh this is so hipster) I stopped truly loving it when the sign went up.
  13. Swimming laps in the outside pool at IMPE in the summer of 2005.  I had started exercising that spring, but realized after my first botched length that Curves had nothing on laps in the 50 meter pool.  Sunshine, chlorine, hard work, bliss.
  14. Sunday nights at Bentley’s – our Local Neighborhood Bar – with the GSLIS crew.  Beth’s Bloody Marys and Blue Moons adorned with loads of snacks.  So many games of Bohnanza that we bought a second copy – one for the bar, another for occasions when we were less likely to spill drinks.  Planning our first Bonnaroo, celebrating our first NYE, eating a whole lot of miniature pizzas.
  15. Gyne instruction totally changed my understanding of my own body, and of the range of what constitutes ‘normal’.  I am so thankful for having the opportunity to work with such a remarkable group of women and to become empowered to advocate for my own health.  In the years since, a number of friends have felt comfortable asking me about gyne health stuff because they knew I had this experience and was willing to talk about it openly.  What a remarkable gift.
  16. Porch parties at my place on Springfield.  There weren’t many of them, but oh, they were wonderful.
  17. So much enduring love for Cafe Kopi.  I can’t believe I lived in Champaign almost a year before I found it, and can’t believe I haven’t found a comparable spot since.  Actually, I can believe it.  Kopi has something really special going on.  The coffee and food aren’t remarkable, but they’re solidly good, as are the staff and the ambiance.  I spent way too many nights doing my grad school reading over their cafe miels and tuna salad salads – and swatting away the ever-present flies on the patio.  Those things will survive the apocalypse, I swear.
  18. Mike & Molly’s may be my most favorite bar ever.  Shane preferred the Blind Pig, but my heart belongs to M&M.  Lots of nights reading with a beer, hanging out with townie friends, dancing to music played in the loft by friends.  Someone – Tim? Steve? – trying to explain darts to me.  The chalkboard in the bathroom.  Knowing that I was a regular when I forgot my ID and the bartender vouched for me to the doorman.  The bar’s vignette in Tell Me Do You Miss Me.  Carl arranging for my induction into Pi Omega Omega on my next-to-last night in town.
  19. Nox/Subversion and the year that saw me on the dance floor almost every week.  I told Shane recently that I missed out on being a raver girl because I didn’t live in a big city in my early 20s.  Instead, I had Tuesday nights at the High Dive with Emily and Jim playing the music I always wanted to listen to but didn’t know how to discover on my own.  Saturday nights with Tim in the booth and reciprocal pants protection with Shane and Karin.  Meeting Brian and Ben and Kristina and so many others.  Dancing when I was sick, dancing when my heart was breaking, dancing when I’d had too much to drink, dancing on the patio in the pouring rain.
  20. And then there’s everything about GSLIS: getting my job, making my friends, meeting Shane, finding a career path, getting a real job, discovering and falling in love with and then hating and then loving research.  All the wonderful, remarkable, challenging, and exceptional people who over the years became friends, colleagues, trusted associates, and family.  I can’t even begin to articulate the ways that this school changed my life.

Ultimately, though, what I miss is being able to walk everywhere – and the fact that wherever I went, I would run into someone I knew.  Hell, it’s been four years and that is still often the case.  And it goes without saying that the people and relationships made Champaign my home, but there are far too many of them to list here.

Why I Will Be Paying the Bank of America Debit Card Fee

A lot of people are up at arms at the news that Bank of America may be implementing a $5 monthly maintenance fee for debit card use.  They’re talking about changing banks.  On Marketplace yesterday morning, they read a letter from a listener who declared that she would be using her credit card and paying it off every month rather than paying the $5 fee.

On the one hand, I agree with the sentiments.  $60 isn’t a negligible amount.  Debit cards are less expensive for merchants to accept.  If you have bad credit – as I did for many years – the Visa logo on your debit card may be the only way for you to shop any way other than in person.

On the other hand, and for a variety of reasons, I’m a little irritated by these sentiments.  We’ve all gotten so used to “free” checking that we’ve forgotten that monthly maintenance fees used to be standard.  I worked in banking from 2001-2004, and spent much of that time explaining the suite of fees charged for services ranging from using a foreign ATM to getting your checks back in your statement to transferring money by phone.  Cut off times governed by geographic distance restricted when transactions could take place.  Need to make a deposit at a branch at 6pm on a Friday to beat a check to the bank? Sorry.  We accepted these fees as the cost of convenience and of doing business.

Now, I’m not going to defend the actions of Bank of America or any of the other big banks in this era of rampant financial speculation.  They’ve screwed up, and taken our economy down with them.  What I am saying, however, is that we’ve been able to take for granted that banking services are free.  Opening an account? Free, and in some cases, they’ll GIVE you money as long as you keep the account open. Depositing cash into an ATM without using an envelope? Free. Transferring money using a (free) mobile app from your phone? Free. Talking to someone on the phone? Difficult, but free. Writing checks? Free, though you have to buy the checks. Receiving, viewing, and paying bills online? Free. Withdrawing money from ATMs in any state plus a few foreign countries? Free, as long as you use the right ATM.  In the grand scheme of all of the things I’m able to do with my money through my bank, $5 per month in the months that I choose to use my debit card seems pretty minor.

I also understand wanting to keep your money in your community, rather than putting it in a national bank.  I did that for a number of years, banking with AMCORE until I moved to a Champaign, more than an hour away from the closest branch or ATM.  I loved AMCORE, and would have kept my money there if it had been remotely convenient.  I loved it for all the reasons one loves a local business – with the added layer of affection from two and a half years of working there.  In 2010, AMCORE was failed by the Fed, and is now part of Harris Bank.  I worked for Busey Bank for the first year I was in Champaign, and immediately felt the limitations of having my money at a small town – not even regional – bank.  I paid ATM fees at least 50% of the time I needed cash because Busey ATMs weren’t conveniently located in town, much less available out of town.  I switched to National City, then we moved to DC, where there were no National City banks.  We started using ING, but still couldn’t find ATMs.  So, in 2007, we opened a joint account with Bank of America – first to give us an option for depositing cash and checks, then for all of our banking.

So here’s why I’ll be paying the Bank of America debit card fee: the convenience is worth it.  It doesn’t make sense to me to change banks over $60 per year.  We would pay far more than that in foreign ATM fees if we were to change to the local credit union, for example, considering that we’ve been out of town 12 of the last 20 weekends, and taken day trips 4 of the remaining 8.  I don’t have a problem with paying for services I use, and the convenience of using a debit card is FAR GREATER than the cost.

Where Have We Been?

I suppose a better question would be: what have we been doing?

The short answer is: making some changes.

In July, we both read The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman, Timothy Ferriss’s guide to hacking the human condition.  In the book, he presents a series of self-experiments whose results have been successfully replicated by a team of testers.  None of these testers are professional scientists, though Ferriss consulted with a whole slew of professionals in a variety of related fields in order to form theories and verify subsequent results.  Having spent the first half of the summer trying to hack our own bodies through lower carb eating (Shane) and P90X (both of us), we decided to give some of the experiments a try.

Let me tell you, it’s difficult to know how to approach a food blog when you’re actively trying to change your diet and restrict the sorts of foods you used to write about in lavish detail.  The diet recommended by 4HB is as follows:

  1. Avoid white or starchy carbohydrates – so no bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, pastries, baked goods, crackers, cereals, corn, chips, tortillas, fried things with breading, etc.
  2. Don’t drink your calories (with the exception of protein shakes).
  3. No fruit and minimal dairy.
  4. Eat the same few meals repeatedly.  These meals should include lots of protein, non-starchy vegetables, and a hearty helping of legumes.
  5. Once a week, eat whatever the hell you want.

So we tried that for a few weeks, and it was mostly really good.  We both felt great and were satiated by our meals.  On the weekends, we Ate All The Food: toast, ice cream, sushi, baked goods, etc.  The only problem for me? My running was very negatively affected – as in: I couldn’t do more than a mile or two without bonking.  And Shane was starting to feel crazy about all the counting, tracking, etc.

So we switched it up again.  I’m now ignoring rule #3 and trying to focus on post-workout nutrition, eating more carbohydrates after a run or the night before a long run.  Shane has been trying the LeanGains approach to eating, and has been adjusting his meals based on whether/not he’ll be lifting that night.

Since our vacation, I’ve lost 3% body fat and he’s lost at least 10 pounds.  We’re both pulling down or putting up more weight, and last night I did my very first push-up ever.  My runs have gotten faster, and my endurance better.  We’re drinking less during the week, and trying to curb cravings with healthy alternatives.  And on the weekends, we eat whatever the hell we want.

A couple of years ago, we made a fairly dramatic shift in our eating to favor local and sustainably grown food.  This is nearly as dramatic a shift, especially as we try to strike a balance between our nutritional requirements, our values, and our checking account.  In the coming weeks, I hope to share with you some of the ways we’re managing these things – while also talking about the delicious foods we’re eating on (and off) this new plan.  Stay tuned for more!

Bike Angst

I really want to ride my bike.

I miss being a bike commuter. I miss the ride to GSLIS from our house, 7 minutes flat on a good day. I miss feeling superior in January when I would arrive at work in a bundle of layers. I miss the freedom of being able to hop on Yellow and go wherever I wanted in town.

I miss biking into DC. I didn’t do it all that many times, but it was An Adventure: crossing the GW Parkway and riding up along the river, past National airport, over the Memorial Bridge, then up the brutal hill on 23rd by the State Department, arriving at work jelly-legged and drenched in sweat, but secure in the knowledge that I could shower at the gym.

Shane has a new bike, and on Monday we set off for work together, resolved to be bike commuters once again. But here’s the thing: I fucking hate biking in Ann Arbor.

My commute is literally up hill both ways.  The route to work is more downhill than uphill, but the uphill parts are situated in the midst of a series of one-ways and stoplights – as in, a light at every block for the last mile of my commute – making it impossible to build up or sustain any momentum.  In the course of a one-way commute, I gain and lose 100 feet of elevation, all on my single-speed bike.  The Statue of Liberty is 93 feet tall, just for the record.

While in most places, a bike is treated as a vehicle and so expected to be on the road, in A2, that seems to be up to the discretion of the cyclist.  This means that cyclists are on and off the sidewalks, in and out of the roads, riding wherever they damned well please – which then means that drivers don’t know what is going on and respond as erratically as the cyclists behave.  This means that today, Shane nearly collided with a cyclist running a red light (or possibly going the wrong way against traffic?), while I was almost hit by a car that ran a stop sign.

I’ve complained about the roads before.  They’re terrible.  This is even more noticeable when you have an uncomfortable seat, and when you’re trying to avoid getting hit by cars or doored while also trying to avoid seams, cracks, and potholes in the poorly maintained pavement.  Shane nearly wiped out in the gravel at the foot of our driveway, and I skidded on a crack in the road today.

In short, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s just not worth it to try to ride my bike to work.  I arrive in a seriously disheveled and sweaty state and often in a foul mood from the exertion and annoyance of the ride.  I rolled into work this morning and had no willpower to resist Oreos in the breakroom.  I took a different route home and arrived in tears, winded and sore.  I thought that changing out the freewheel would help – and it has – but I’m still actively unhappy on almost every ride, and that’s just not worth it.  Sorry, Orange Porange.  Maybe we can have adventures in another city.

Vacation: A Prologue

Beyond the obvious getting away from it all, there were a couple of reasons we were eager to leave on vacation.

First, it’s been effing hot here.  Has it been hot where you are?  Do you have air conditioning?  If yes to the latter, I don’t want to hear about it.  We don’t have AC.  Rather: we have a portable AC unit that is only effective in cooling things situated directly in front of it.  While it does that, it heats the areas directly surrounding it, making it basically worse than useless, especially as its placement in the large front window means we can’t get a cross breeze in the one part of the house where that is possible.  We finally gave up on it on a day when Shane’s very scientific brewing thermometer registered indoor temperatures in excess of 85 in the evening while the AC was running.  So we have no AC.  Our windows are too narrow for even the AC units expressly built for narrow windows.  We have no ceiling fans, and our light fixtures don’t have the right wiring for contemporary ceiling fans.  We’re sweaty messes.

The day before we left for vacation, the temperatures topped 100.  My library was closed due to a cooling shutdown elsewhere on campus.  It was 95 in the apartment when we got home – too hot to cook, pack, or think.  We tried to go out to dinner.  Every place had a 30-60 minute wait.  We ended up at Whole Foods, followed by beers at Wolverine State Brewing.  By the time we left, we could breathe outside.  It’s remarkable how good 85 feels after a heat index of 115.

Vacation: A Prelude

The other reason? Art Fair. Neither art nor a fair, as the saying goes, Art Fair is a giant monster that takes over all of Ann Arbor in late July. 500,000 people. Lots of street closures. Impossible to drive anywhere downtown. Basically a total ridiculous mess. We had really hoped we’d miss it by leaving town, but no dice.

So suffice to say that we were delighted to be heading north, west, and south on the most epic road trip either of us have attempted. 10 days on the road. Two librarians who aren’t particularly good at relaxing. These Are Their Stories.