Bear with me as I indulge in some sentimentality …

What’s interesting to me about glancing back at the retro posts from last year at this time is how new this all was to me: not just Ann Arbor, although that was certainly a big part of it, but the whole adventure, from going back to grad school at a time in life when most of my undergraduate cohorts have all had two or three kids and become partners at their law firms or vice-presidents of marketing or seat-of-the-pants entrepreneurs (not a life I envy); to leaving and severing all my connections to a region where I’d felt comfortable, if increasingly insecure and simultaneously predictable, for much of the previous 20 years; to driving through, seeing, and sleeping in towns and states I’d never dreamed I’d encounter except in movies or books; to adjusting to life and people in a very different part of the nation. I feel proud of myself, and us, for having gone through this incredible ride and come through it wiser and better (and, I think, happier), and I am forever grateful to Steve and Bayley for putting up with me through the journey (and for agreeing to uproot their lives to start to put together the building blocks to start an entire new life of our own).

There’s something to be said for risk and leaping into the unknown. There’s also something to be said for the familiarity of having lived someplace for 365+ days.

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.]

The calm before the grad school storm …

Ann Arbor: day five

Today was a bumpy one. We went out to get some supplies and victuals. I bought a few new short-sleeved shirts but I don’t know how much longer they’ll be wearable here. The traffic around Ann Arbor right now is not much better than traffic during a typical weekday rush hour in the Bay Area, and the drivers are aggressive and careless. We went to Target and Meijer, right next door, which is a huge shopping center that is sort of a combination of a supermarket and a department store. Today it is was like a combination of the busiest Safeway and the busiest Macy’s rolled up in one. The crowds were incredible, and it was not even 4.00 yet.

We dealt with it for about 45 minutes and then (having found most of what we needed) gave up when some voice started annoyingly announcing, over and over again, insistently, a contest for some useless merchandise over the PA system and egging shoppers to race to the other end of the store as quickly as possible to get a prize, hardly a wise thing to be doing in what was already a zoo. We drove back to the house and cleaned up some more, unpacked a few things, but mostly rested.

On the positive side, we walked the dog again around the complex around 10.00 and I saw what I think must have been Mars up in the heavens, looking bright and beautiful in its approach to the closest it has been to Earth in 60,000 years. The horizon is so flat here that you can see the heavenly bodies quite clearly, a definite plus.

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day for me. Have to be at Michigan Union around 8.30, then it will be a full day of welcome-wagon stuff and, later in the afternoon, evidently, registration. It is scheduled to last until 6.00, though I doubt it will last straight through to that.

More tomorrow.

—Posted by Frank at 23:59:00 | 26-Aug-03