Fascinating (and welcome) ghost-town feel to Ann Arbor today (the grim Scandinavian weather added to that feel). The center of town was completely deserted. Liberty Street was like a graveyard. Ambrosia, which has more and more become almost impossible to find an empty seat in, was blessedly empty except for a couple of students and an employer interviewing an earnest applicant and telling him that he wouldn’t be able to offer him health benefits (“I don’t get sick a lot” was the applicant’s response). Campus, likewise, was eerily quiet. I wandered into Angell Hall to use the color printer and there were so many empty computer stations I scarcely knew where to sit. Work at GovDocs was quiet until about 1.00, when everybody seemed to descend on the room at once. I went to Michigan Book & Supply and the art department upstairs was so dead that the clerk had NPR’s “All Things Considered” on (tuned to Bush blathering about what a “national security risk” Kerry is) and took, oh, a good ten minutes to count up the 30-odd pieces of card stock I was buying (she was so bored she lost count and had to start over). The only un-tomblike place was the drivethrough at the Michigan Credit Union office on William next door to the District Library, which, like every other day, was a miniature version of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

I know for a fact that ASquared wasn’t ever this dead during the summer. I don’t think it was even this dead last year, though come to think of it we may have been out of town ourselves last “fall study break,” I don’t recall for sure.

I wonder where all the students go on their “fall study breaks”? Florida? Mexico?