1608 Miles - Part 3

When I left off in the story of our trip back to Michigan, we had just arrived at Kinsey's apartment after a frustratingly long drive through a winter storm. It was such a relief to be there! Colin and I hopped out of the rental car, grinning and excited, but exhausted.

After unloading and sending Kinsey on her way (she was also heading to a wedding that weekend), Colin and I collapsed on the couch. "What now?" we thought. Our plan had been to go salsa dancing at Habana, the bar where we had gone on our first dates. We were tired, though, and it was already 10:30. But I was not about to let the snowstorm ruin our weekend! I dragged Colin off the couch and convinced him that even if we only stayed for an hour, it would be such a special night to look back on. He agreed, we reluctantly changed clothes, and then, bundled up in winter coats and hats, walked downtown through the neighborhoods of Ann Arbor.

Interestingly, Habana had moved locations since we'd been there. It used to be in a stretch of bars on Washington (or was it Liberty?) Street, but had "upgraded" to a new location on Main Street. The entire walk over, Colin and I exclaimed over places we recognized and places that had changed. Mostly, Ann Arbor looked exactly the same. It felt like we had never left and could pick up right where we left off.

Habana was fairly crowded when we got there around 11 (the dancing starts at 10, and when we lived in Ann Arbor, we used to try to arrive early to maximize time when the dance floor was relatively empty), but we danced for about 45 minutes, then ordered a mojito to share. The mojito was mostly for old time's sake since we were both tired enough that one drink between the two of us was plenty. Around midnight, we decided it was time to head home to bed.

Mojito and dancing at Habana--where it all started more than four years ago :)

Friday morning, Colin got up early to meet with his masters thesis advisor, whom he is still collaborating with for his PhD. For some reason, Colin scheduled that meeting for 8:30. I was not that ambitious and slept in for another hour before heading out to meet a former coworker from IEc for breakfast and coffee. I took my time walking over so I could wander through the Diag and snap these photos of the Dana Building, home of SNRE:

The Dana Building during a very snowy winter.

Go Blue! Hi SNRE!

I left coffee (Espresso Royale on S. University) around noon and headed over to the coffee shop where Colin was still talking with his advisor (Espresso Royale on State St.). We'd planned to be at the same Espresso Royale, but Colin's advisor went to the wrong one. Just another excuse for me to explore campus on the walk between!

Eventually Colin's meeting ended and we began the most important part of our weekend:

Lunch at Zingerman's!

Still looks just like I remember.

And Zingerman's is so exciting that you almost don't notice the gross winter weather.

Zingerman's had changed. Expanded, mostly. I guess when you're popular enough for the President to drop by for a sandwich, you are always looking for ways to improve your facilities. Anyway, the new Zingerman's looks great and, importantly, the sandwiches and crunchy-like-a-cucumber pickles taste just as good as they always did. And the menu is just as overwhelmingly long as it used to be.

Colin can't wait to dig in.

I'm super excited for the crunchy-like-a-cucumber pickle!

Glamour shot of the food. Now if only Boston had a Zingerman's...

While walking through Kerrytown, we of course had to go by my beloved first apartment:

I loved those bay windows in my bedroom!

(I remember those giant icicles well! They were always just outside my bedroom window.)

We then made our way to the Michigan Union to play a round or two or three of pool. I should note that neither Colin nor I are any good at pool, and I am particularly bad. But pool at the Union is $4.50 for two people for an hour (it was free some nights for students) so it's just about the only place worth playing. 

It only looks like we know what we're doing.

I was so excited every time I hit the ball! It took us a while to finish the game.

After a few embarrassingly bad games, we wandered back through campus towards SNRE, making sure to stop and push "the Cube":

The facilities and operations staff clearly know it's important to plow a path in the snow around the Cube.

We obviously had to put on my Michigan hat for the photo op.

Back at SNRE, we smiled at all the students working in the commons and walked through our old classrooms, reminiscing about the many hours we spent listening to lectures and leading discussion sections there. I stopped to say hello to my advisor, Dr. Michael Moore. Unfortunately the other professor I was hoping to find, Dr. Rosina Bierbaum, was out. She's the one who was on President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and was deemed, by ExxonMobil, one of the three most worrying climate scientists. Given her national reputation, it's not too surprising that she wasn't sitting around Dana on a Friday afternoon.

So, since Colin and I had no other plans that night (despite it being Valentine's Day), we spent a few minutes just hanging out in the fourth-floor study lounge, which is light and bright and was always one of my favorite spots at SNRE.

Lounging on the top floor of the Dana Building.

This was my go-to study spot as a SNREd.

 

Colin, happy to be back at SNRE.

After a day full of exploring and reminiscing, Colin and I were ready for a quiet night. When talking about Valentine's Day plans, we decided we would much rather eat dinner at one of our old favorite restaurants (mostly local microbreweries) than make a reservation at someplace fancy. So, with no real schedule for the evening, we headed back to Kinsey's apartment to freshen up then wandered down Washington St. to Arbor Brewing Company (known as ABC). We had a tough time deciding between ABC and another favorite microbrewery, Grizzly Peak, but ABC ended up definitely being the right decision--because, as we had forgotten, they have free darts and shuffleboard! Colin and I were seated at a table right next to the games area, and spent most of the meal looking longingly at the people playing. Pretty much as soon as we finished eating, we hopped up to claim a dartboard. The bar wasn't crowded, so we played about three games. We were invited by some other people to join them for shuffleboard but declined because I don't really know how to play. Gotta love the good old Midwestern friendliness, though!

Happy Valentine's Day! I'm a cheap date who is thrilled with a burger, sweet potato fries, and beer for dinner.

I'll also note that, despite my total inability to play pool, I am a fairly solid darts player. Colin offered to let me stand closer to the board because I'm so much shorter but I refused, and I still beat him fair and square. I'm not sure if he ever even got a bulls-eye, and I got several. We had to document this first one:

Bulls-eye!

After several rounds of darts, we decided to head over to Ashley's, one of Colin's favorite bars, for drinks. Ashley's is known for having something like 70 beers on tap, and Colin wanted one Scotch Ale in particular. Unfortunately they didn't have it this particular night, but we still had a great time just chatting over fries and beer. And with that, we concluded the first day of our whirlwind trip to Ann Arbor. Day two, still to come!

Colin with his second-choice scotch ale and the book-length menu at Ashley's.

1608 Miles - Part 2

It's time for the second installment of my Ann Arbor trip! Where did I leave off?

Oh right, we had just climbed into the car for what was supposed to be a 13-hour trip. (Imagine me saying that like the line from Gilligan's Island, "three hour tour....") We got up and out around 6:00 so that we could beat the Boston rush hour traffic, as well as the impending snowstorm. By the time we packed up the rental car, though, there were already flurries in the air. The weather wasn't exactly sticking to its plan.

The flurries continued as we turned onto I-90, which we would take all the way across Massachusetts, all the way across New York State, and southwest along Lake Erie through Pennsylvania and Ohio, before finally turning onto US-23 in Toledo, which would lead us straight north to downtown Ann Arbor. In other words, the navigation for this trip was super easy. Two turns to go 804 miles. Plus, Colin and I had made the reverse of this same drive two and a half years before in a UHaul, so it should have been easy.

As it turns out, though, Massachusetts does not believe in plowing its highways. The interstate (the Mass Pike! Quite possibly the busiest highway in the state!) had only a single lane plowed in each direction, and even that was slushy. There wasn't much traffic, but because we were all slogging through slush from storms past, we were going about 45 miles per hour. Colin and I were afraid to talk to each other about anything driving-related for fear that one of us would state the obvious--that this trip was going to take way longer than 13 hours. Would we get to Ann Arbor in time to meet our friend for dinner as planned? Would we get there in time to go salsa dancing at the nightclub where we had our first date? And - worst of all - would we have to do this awful drive again on Sunday??

I think we were both about to cry out of frustration by the time we hit Syracuse more than six hours later. And then, as if magic, the flurries stopped, the roads cleared, and the sun came out. It was as if Syracuse hadn't seen snow in weeks. Traffic picked up to a totally normal highway speed, and we could finally breath a sigh of relief. Let the record reflect that Massachusetts is a great state in many ways, but they do a shockingly bad job of plowing their interstates.

From Syracuse, the drive was easy. We listened to audio books, sang along to the radio (the song of the trip seemed to be Katy Perry's "Roar," which played no less than five times), and just enjoyed chatting with each other. Every hour or so, one of us would exclaim, "Hey! I remember that landmark! Do you remember when we saw that on the move from Ann Arbor...." It's remarkable how familiar the drive felt. And, in a way, it felt like going home. You can take the girl out of the Midwest, but you can't take the Midwest out of the girl!

We gave up on our dinner plans and ate at a Panera outside of Toledo. At that point, we were practically bouncing in our seats with excitement! We were gonna make it! Maybe even in time for salsa dancing! Around 10:00 - sixteen hours after leaving Boston - we pulled into the parking lot behind our friend Kinsey's apartment, where we were staying for the night. We were both exhausted but grinning. We were back. We were "home."

< to be continued >

1,608 Miles - Part 1

I realized I never wrote about my trip back to the Mitten! The trip was one of the best parts of my year so far, so I definitely need to rectify that.

Even before we left, the trip was an epic adventure. It all started with a little snowstorm… er, a rather large snowstorm. A snowstorm so large that it shut down the entire East Coast from Boston to North Carolina. This had the unfortunate result of also shutting down airports and grounding thousands of flights—mine and Colin’s included. We were due to fly out on Thursday afternoon, but sometime Wednesday morning, Colin received a notification that his direct flight from NYC had been cancelled. Although my flight wasn’t cancelled for many more hours, I knew it was only a matter of time since I had a connection in Baltimore, which was supposed to be the epicenter of the storm. (They ended up with 15 inches of snow.) Luckily, though, I’d bought my ticket on good old Southwest, so I could cancel my flight at any time with no penalty.

When it became apparent that there was no way to fly from any East Coast city to Detroit, Colin raised a crazy suggestion: what if we drove?

I know that it’s crazy to think about making a 13-hour-each-way drive for a long weekend, but there are few places in this world as special to me as Ann Arbor. During the month leading up to the trip, Colin and I couldn’t stop grinning as we made plans for all the places we wanted to go, all the people to see, food to eat, sights to see. The trip was quickly becoming the highlight of our winter, especially since it included celebrating Valentine’s Day, our four-year dating anniversary, and one of our close friend’s wedding. It was important.

It’s actually really hard to find the words to describe how I feel about Ann Arbor. The city, to me, is just one of those places that felt like home from Day One. I remember driving in with Mom the night before moving into my Very First Apartment Ever. I was skeptical—I knew that SNRE was the right school for me, but I wasn’t at all sure that living in Michigan would be fun. I didn’t know anyone in Michigan. It wasn’t like the East Coast, where I could take a bus or a train to visit friends in nearby cities. (What nearby cities, anyway?) And despite being in the Midwest, Ann Arbor was still an eight hour drive from St. Louis. When I accepted Michigan’s offer of admission, I sort of threw up my hands and said, “Whatever. I can deal with anything for two years.”

But then, as Mom and I drove down Washtenaw toward Central Campus, my eyes flew open and my heart raced. The trees! The charming houses with wooden siding and a balcony on every single one! I didn’t know a thing about the city beyond the 24 hours I had spent there during SNRE’s Admitted Students Day and that drive down Washtenaw, but I was suddenly excited. I couldn’t wait to start my life in A2.

I also felt like I grew into myself in Ann Arbor. I found a community of people (SNREds) that shared my values and dreams, both professionally and personally. I had had a similarly close group of friends in college, but finding a group that also shared my professional motivation was huge. I found some of my best friends in Ann Arbor. Three years later, despite being scattered across the country and only seeing each other at weddings and bachelorette parties, those girls are still some of my best friends.

So making it to Ann Arbor was important. It was important enough that when Colin sent me a message saying, “hey, I know this is crazy, but we could really do it—we could drive,” I said yes. We looked at weather maps to assure ourselves we wouldn’t be driving through the snowstorm. (That turned out not to be true… but luckily we didn’t know that at the time, so we went anyway!) We did a price comparison for car rentals to figure out whether we could afford the extra expense. We figured out that if Colin drove from New Haven to Boston that night, we could get on the road extra early to beat the storm. We planned until there was no more planning to be done, and then I shrugged my shoulders and said, "Yep, it's a crazy idea, but let's do it!" So, with the decision made, we scurried to pack our bags and buy snacks for the road, and then we were on our way.

< To be continued >

Headed back to the Mitten!

I've been having an unbelievably busy/stressful January. Like, all those resolutions about exercise and work-life balance and cooking regularly and even showering every day have just flown out the window. From January 1st (yes, even on the holiday), I have been in the office doing my best to keep my head above water. And I'm not sure I'm succeeding. I don't see anything getting better for at least a week, and it just makes me anxious to think about all that has to be done by Monday. And I'm not the only one. The whole office seems to be drowning right now. There were probably 20 people in the office today (Saturday), and it was solidly full on New Year's Eve and last Thursday, when the City of Cambridge declared a "snow emergency." I don't know what it is about January 2014, but it's kicking my butt.

So, anyway, I really need a break, and an opportunity presented itself to me this week.

I'm going back to Ann Arbor!

A friend from grad school is getting married there in February, over President's Day weekend. Initially, I thought I wouldn't attend since I traveled so much last year and this trip comes so soon after Christmas and another friend's Michigan wedding. Then, once I started thinking about it and talking with other friends, I decided just to do it. I miss Ann Arbor so much, and this is the best excuse I'll have to take a trip back. I don't spend much money on things like restaurants, shopping, or entertainment, for the reason that I would much rather save my money to travel to see friends and family scattered far and wide. (And seriously, I don't have many unmarried friends left.) So this is happening. And I am just SO EXCITED!!

I now spend my free time daydreaming about crunchy-like-a-cucumber pickles from Zingerman's, salsa dancing with Colin at Cafe Habana, drinking locally brewed beer at one of the ten or so microbreweries downtown, going to No Thai for the best drunken noodles I've ever had, strolling along the frozen Huron River, and walking past my cozy, adorable old apartment. I don't yet know what we'll do while we're there, but I love thinking of all the options!

So, this is my Christmas present to myself: Colin and I are going back to A2 for a long weekend, which happens to include Valentine's Day and (just barely misses) our fourth anniversary of dating. And actually, while in school at SNRE, we never managed to spend Valentine's Day together. The first year, we had only been dating a couple days and Colin opted to (okay, fine, I told him to) spend the evening with his best friend, who had just broken up with his longtime girlfriend. And the second year, I was teaching a class that had a Very Important guest speaker from the World Bank, and we treated him to dinner afterwards. (Imagine trying to make a reservation for eight at a nice restaurant on Valentine's Day night.) Needless to say, Colin and I are both very excited for this trip--it only took us four years and a plane flight to celebrate Valentine's Day together in Ann Arbor! No word yet on what we'll do. Maybe No Thai, Zingerman's, and happy hour beer-drinking, since those are the things I miss most about the mitten state.

Ohmygosh I think I need to go reread all my old blog posts about life in Ann Arbor now.

Last Moments of 24!

I have but a few hours left of being 24 years old, and then I'm officially, no doubt about it, in my mid-twenties. One-quarter of a century old. Scary!

I'm excited, though! Life mostly seems to keep getting better and better the older I get, although there's definitely still room for improvement. Just think--this time last year I was packing my apartment to move to Boston, I had never considered learning to sail, and I didn't have a little windowsill garden. I did have Zingerman's, though, and I sure miss those delicious sandwiches and like-a-cucumber pickles.

My birthday also marks my almost-one year anniversary of being a working woman at IEc. That, too, has just gotten better with age. I'm now the lead analyst on multiple endangered species critical habitat analyses, I alone conducted the benefits part of the cost-benefit analysis for EPA's coal ash regulation soon making its way through OMB, one of my maps may show up in the National Climate Assessment, and I developed a model of sea level rise in Madagascar for the World Bank. (And, more on this later, but my masters project has inspired a project proposal for the United Nations Development Programme!)

Anyway, here's to 25! May it bring lots of adventure and fun, new friends, good times with old friends, new things (who knows what I'll be reflecting on this time next year), and more of the same old stuff I enjoy now, like running and sailing and reading and knitting.*

*I'm optimistic that it will because, as I write this, I've just finished packing my bags for a weekend adventure at a waterpark resort (technically my good friend's bachelorette party). In 24 hours, I'll be ringing in 25 with a mini-vacation full of my best SNRE friends, and I couldn't ask for a better way to celebrate!

One Year

As a side note, today is the University of Michigan graduation. That means it's been exactly one year since I graduated with my master's. Crazy! That time has both flown by and dragged on with no end-of-semester vacations or final exams to break it up.

But congratulations to all those newly minted Masters! 

Another Story

This one written by the New York Times about my old home!! Once a Michigander, always a Michigander.

Not to say that Cambridge isn't awesome; I'm starting to love it. I may not have a farmer's market, but I have a nursery and a Japanese grocery down the street. And I haven't actually been there yet, but this place is at the end of an 11-mile bike path and has the potential to become my favorite spot in the city.  And although nothing - NOTHING - can compare to exuberant Football Saturdays at the Big House, I can watch the games with a hundred other exuberant UM alums at a bar one block from my apartment. And to give the Boston sports scene some credit, at least when teams lose here (*ahem, Red Sox*), they do so spectacularly.

My Last Night

I'm so sad to be leaving Ann Arbor!! Plus, I hate moving, even if it's somewhere I'm excited to go. And here I go again, off to Massachusetts tomorrow morning.

To sum up my last couple weeks in Ann Arbor, they've been great. I went ballroom dancing twice, salsa dancing once, watched Footloose on an inflatable outdoor screen, climbed the UM bell tower to peek at the carillon, barbecued several times, waded in the shallow Huron River, saw the final Harry Potter movie, went to a documentary about the New York Times at the old Michigan Theater, got free bagels from Zingerman's for my birthday, toured the overwhelmingly crowded Ann Arbor Art Fair, ate at Blimpy Burger - famous for being featured on the Food Network Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives - and ran four miles around the beautiful Argo Pond. It's been busy.

I may not want to go, but my things are all packed so I have no choice. My next crazy adventure starts early tomorrow morning and won't end until weeks from now when I'm settled into my new, working-woman life. Wish me luck.

Fairy Doors

As I mentioned in my To Do For Fun list, Ann Arbor is inhabited by a fine crew of fairies. Their world is tiny (of course), but just as vibrant as the human-sized city in which they live. Although to my knowledge no one has ever seen the fairies, you can definitely see their houses.

Since you aren't here to see for yourselves, I'm providing photographic evidence of this charming parallel world.

This fairy abode is inside Sweetwater's Coffee shop. I bet they never go hungry.

It's appropriate for visitors to leave trinkets for the fairies, and as you can see here, a child has left a hand-drawn portrait of the inhabitant.

You can peer inside this glass door for a glimpse of fairy life.

This fancy door is outside The Ark, a local performance venue.

Apparently fairies like shows, too, because they have their own small ticket window.

If you're worried about why the doors are so high above ground without stairs, it's obviously because fairies can fly.

Although most of the fairy doors were designed by a local artist, the fairy epidemic spread, and this is an "unofficial" door. (Ann Arbor welcomes all fairies, whether official or not.)

This is my favorite. This fairy built his/her home in the children's section of the District Library.

Quite appropriately, they chose the fairy tales shelf.

The notice reads: "Please do not touch. These books are out of circulation. Besides there may be someone living in them."

 

Architects of Air

As part of Ann Arbor's Summer Festival, a traveling art exhibit from the UK came and parked itself on Palmer Field. From the outside, it looked like a weird bouncy castle--gray plastic appendages with colored hats perched upon the turrets. No one quite knew what to expect.

But word of mouth was that it was pretty awesome, and so on the last of the four days it was here, I wandered over with two friends to see what it was all about. Little did we know (nor did anyone else know!) that it was so popular that for a twenty-minute experience of light and color, you had to wait at least two hours. And no, the nice staff member told us, the wait was not expected to ever get any shorter.

You can't read the sign, but it says "Wait is approx. 3 hours."

Because we had nothing else to be doing, we decided to stick it out. The wait wasn't so bad (despite sunburns for my two fair-skinned friends) because 1) the staff handed out a ton of free water bottles, 2) a Michigan drumline came to play for the weary audience, and 3) there was excellent people-watching.

Eventually we made it to the door of the giant bouncy castle (real name: Amococo, by the Architects of Air) and were instructed to take off our shoes and be mindful of any sharp objects in our pockets. (How embarrassing would it be to accidentally deflate the exhibit with your house key...) The whole "building," we were told was entirely supported by air and the colors seen inside were the result of sunlight shining through pure colored plastic pieced together by hand--no electric lights whatsoever. The building had four domes: one red, one blue, one green, and one multicolored. The design was said to be inspired primarily by nature and also by Islamic architecture. Once inside, you could take about twenty minutes to walk where you pleased, to sit down or lay down, to meditate or take pictures.

I did all of the above, and I have to say, it was worth the wait. This was one of the coolest things I ever saw, and it made me want one in my own backyard.

Take a look:

 

Totally worth the 2.5 hour wait! It's like a huge silvery space station.

Colin is mesmerized. I feel like I'm a bug on a leaf.

This striped column had lily petals (not pictured) at the top.

The whole thing feels very surreal.

Summer O' Reading

Well, it took me long enough but I'm finally a card-carrying member of the Ann Arbor District Library! I was browsing at Borders this morning, trying to decide how to spend a $10 gift card, and I realized there were tons of books that I wanted to read but very few I actually cared to own. So I hurried over to the library, got my card, and promptly checked out two books (American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld and The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, if you are interested).

Meanwhile this summer (or judging by our week of 45-degree weather, spring), I've already read Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen and The Witch of Portobello by Paul Coelho, and I'm halfway through Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. If you're interested in my reviews, I loved Water for Elephants although found it was a very different story than I was expecting. It was a quick and easy read--great for beach bumming. I actually really did not like The Witch of Portobello, which was surprising given how great Coelho's The Alchemist was. I thought this book was pretty one-sided and superficial; it didn't explore in much depth why celebration of the female divine is important. On the other end of the spectrum, I'm loving Three Cups of Tea! I have never traveled to Asia or the Middle East, but Mortenson's experiences in Pakistan remind me exactly of my time in Botswana and Madagascar. Little things that are so difficult to articulate come through in his book--the frustration with the "greediness" of the Pakistanis who fight and manipulate to get Mortenson's school built in their village, at the same time deciding (hoping?) that greediness is maybe explained away by extreme poverty, and the impatience with a society that seemingly never sticks to deadlines and moves at the pace of molasses. And then, the description of Mortenson's disbelief and disgust upon returning to the States, where he stands with a half-empty camping backpack in the middle of swarms of suburbanites dashing to their next espresso. Love it! To anyone who has ever spent time in a developing country, this book does a great job of expressing all the mixed emotions of being a foreigner trying to do good in a world that most fellow Americans don't care to understand.

So, I do hope that the weather here shapes up, quits raining, and decides to actually be summer, but if it doesn't, at least I now have endless opportunities for reading!

FYI: Composting

My friend Lael has a great blog and just posted a video we made last year for our environmental journalism class. I hadn't watched it since that class ended, so when I rediscovered it on her blog, I was really impressed! (Maybe if environmental consulting doesn't work out, I will go into film production.) If you're interested in vermicomposting (using worms to compost inside rather than in a garden), check it out.

And if you have a garden and don't like the idea of worms as pets, just know that the instructions are the same for outdoor composting: include plenty of newspaper or cardboard along with food scraps to balance the nutrients for decomposition, bury the food and mix the compost regularly to speed up the process, and don't try to compost meat or dairy unless you have very good protection from raccoons and things.

I've also heard that 10% of the garbage from an average household is food waste, and (this is super cool) since rolling out their new/expanded residential recycling and composting program last year, Ann Arbor has actually been able to reduce time spent on trash collection, saving the city some much needed money. Both good reasons to compost!

To Do, For Fun!

This time two years ago, I had a long list of things that I simply had to do before leaving Brown. (How did I do? Pretty well.) This time around, I've been again working on a "To Do For Fun" list. Since I was so busy during the school year, most of these will have to happen over the summer. Here's my list! I'd love your suggestions if you know of other iconic Ann Arbor things that I should make sure I see or do before July.

• Big Ten sports: check! I had season tickets for football both years, and that is honestly the thing I'm going to miss most about Michigan. Football Saturdays are... amazing! I also went to two hockey games (one in the hockey arena and one outdoor game on the football field!), and three basketball games (we won one, lost one, and I can't remember the outcome of the third, but we did make it to an 8th place seed in NCAA March Madness!)
• Selma Cafe: check! This delicious "cafe" is only open from 6-10am on Fridays in some people's house, and it's pay-what-you-want for a local food, homecooked breakfast. They bring in visiting chefs each week and all proceeds support local hoop house farms. The food is extraordinary. 
• Mackinac Island: check! Thanks to Grandmother and Grandaddy, I was able to explore the quaint island where cars have been banned since the 1800s. Even though May is apparently not the right season to sightsee in Northern Michigan, we had a great time. Ate some delicious fudge, too. 
• Canada: check! I've now been to Canada TWICE. Once to Windsor, across Lake Huron from Detroit, and once to Sault Ste. Marie and Lake Superior. 
• Great Lakes: I've now seen four of the five (Huron, Michigan, Erie, and Superior). All I'm missing is Ontario, but unfortunately that will be easier if I go to New York rather than staying here in Michigan. 
• Fairy Doors: Apparently Ann Arbor artists have created a cute series of miniature fairy doors scattered across the city. You have to hunt them to see them! I've never managed to see one, so my plan is to look up locations online and go on a Fairy Door hunt one nice day. 
• Bell Tower: The iconic clock tower on campus is just begging me to go inside. I'm not even sure you can get to the top to look out, but I intend to try. 
• Top of the Park: a summer festival in Ann Arbor with lots of outdoor music and events, only a couple blocks from my house!
• Ann Arbor Summer Art Fair: another summer festival that is apparently a huge tradition. I'm a sucker for summer festivals!
• Krazy Jim's Blimpy Burger: apparently this burger place is worth checking out (according to the Food Network...), although after watching the video, I have to admit, I'm a little nervous about knowing how to order what I want!

Looks like I'll have a busy summer ahead of me!

Mastered science; now on to life.

Yay! I officially graduated almost two weeks ago and spent the following days exploring Michigan and Ontario, Canada, with my family. Now that I'm back in Ann Arbor, it's finally spring, and I'm loving all the free time I have to enjoy the weather. Soon enough, I know, I'll be busy moving myself to Boston and getting used to the working world. Here is a sampling of the events of these couple weeks:

 

Master Claire, adjusting my academic regalia.

Fellow SNREds process into the Big House!

Five-mile bridge across the Straits of Mackinaw.

The only state highway never to have been driven on by a car! (On Mackinac Island.)

Arch Rock and Lake Huron on Mackinac Island.

Carriage tour past beautiful, wealthy homes on Mackinac.

Lake Superior is still ringed with snow in Ontario.

Tahqemenon Falls on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, colored red by the tannin of the trees. 

Almost Summer?!

First, to prove that I am not crazy and it did actually snow the day before the official last day of classes/start of summer vacation, here you go:

My street. April 18th snowfall.

SNRE in an early morning dusting of snow (SNREds still bike no matter the weather).

But all this time while it was snowing, I was working on finishing my master's project.  And here it is!  Probably only my grandparents will bother to look at the document (and it's okay if even you don't), but if you do, admire how pretty it is.  We didn't want to create just another academic journal article devoid of life and photographs, so my team member Olivia spent hours on layout and design. 

Go team!  With that submission, I've officially met all my requirements for graduation, so even if I fail the one exam I have left to take (doubtful), I am now a

MASTER OF SCIENCE. 

Update on the Weather

Lest you get confused and think that mid-April is spring, let me assure you that it snow flurried in Ann Arbor today!  And it's supposed to keep snowing tomorrow. 

:-(

I might ought to start looking for a pretty sweater to wear to graduation (less than 2 weeks away!) instead of a sundress as I had planned! 

The Good News

It's thirty degrees today, and that feels freezing!  That must mean it's getting warmer because 30 used to be warm...

The other good news is that I have exactly 4 weeks of school left.  EVER.  Like, for the rest of my life. In four weeks, I will have mastered science.

Somehow those two things don't seem to go together in my mind.  How is it still winter while I'm almost graduated? 

Sustain-a-Ball, and Still Not Spring

Just in time for the official first day of spring, Michigan has a winter storm warning!  It's been raining and hailing off and on for days now, and the temperature finally dropped back into the 20s last night.

But before it did that, we had  a few days of nice weather, just in time for SNRE's annual Sustain-a-ball!  SNRE definitely throws the best parties.  Sustain-a-ball was great: delicious food, fun people, good music, and pretty dresses (I so rarely get dressed up beyond jeans and a sweatshirt...). I had a new pink dress to wear, and it was so bright and cheerful it made up for the ugly Michigan weather.  Plus, my hair is just now getting long enough again (after cutting 11 inches last May for Locks of Love) for me to feel like a girl. And, Colin let me play dress-up with him and choose his outfit!  I think he looked fantastic.

Here are a few of my favorite photos from the night (credit to my friends Jazmine, Meredith, and Emily):

Dancing with Colin!

Claire, Meredith, Patty, and Miranda (why do I appear tallest?!)

Colin's plum-colored shirt coordinates so well with my hot pink dress! (Not an easy feat.)

STILL not spring

So I started writing this blog post soon after I returned from spring vacation in St Louis:

As a follow-up to my last post, I came back from a week-long "spring" break to find Ann Arbor rainy with huge, lingering snowdrifts and temperatures barely above freezing.  I am so ready for spring, for grass and flowers and sunshine! 

I was interrupted and quit writing, only to come back hours later to find that no, it was not rainy with lingering snowdrifts--it was snowing!  The weather had dropped a few degrees, turning our rainstorm into a four-inches-of-snowstorm. 

That's when I really lost it.  I am so sick of winter!  It was lovely to be in St Louis where I could wander around in only a fleece jacket, where I needed sunglasses, where people were running and biking outdoors.  It made me so happy.  I had this vision that I would come back to Ann Arbor and pull my bike out of storage and start riding to class again.  That round-trip commute would save me 15 minutes every day, and I could use those 15 minutes for watching television, reading online news and my favorite blogs, or even taking a powernap.  Those 15 minutes a day would be a little stress relief from the horrible two months to come (masters project, teaching, final projects and exams, job apps and interviews--this is when it all gets crazy).

But NO.  I had a couple hours of thinking to myself upon my return, "Well at least it isn't snowing!  It's rainy and gloomy, but it's warm!"  (That in and of itself was misguided thinking, the temperature only being 33.)  Then Mother Nature had to go and burst my beautiful springtime bubble.


Which got me to thinking... when the groundhog sees its shadow on February 2nd, that means 6 more weeks of winter.  That implies that if he doesn't see his shadow, there should be less than 6 weeks of winter, right?  And I'm pretty sure Puxatawny Phil didn't see his shadow this year (I think he was buried in snow).  But here it is, 4.5 weeks later, and still no sign of winter ending.  Apparently groundhog's day rules don't apply in Michigan.

So there you have it; I'm cold and impatient and the long winter has left my houseplants withering from lack of sunlight.  I feel like I'm withering, too. 

Please oh please oh please can't it at least get up into the 40s?!  Mother Nature, I'm begging you!

Not Spring Yet

I was just getting excited about spring after 3 or 4 days of beautiful weather last week.  It got up to 49º and I didn't wear my winter coat or a hat for 2 days!  Didn't put on my boots at all!  All of our mountains of snow melted, leaving messy mud puddles everywhere, but that was okay because you could see the grass. 

And then last night Mother Nature decided to dump 7 inches of fresh snow on Ann Arbor, with another 1-3 expected tonight.  Sigh.  I'm so tired of winter!