For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

[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.]

‘More of our first days in AA …

‘Ann Arbor: day four

‘We went out to dinner with Scott tonight at Gourmet Garden, a Chinese restaurant on the west side of town. Other than that, the day was mostly recovering from the long weekend. I was still stiff and sore all day long, but not nearly as immobile as I was yesterday. The repair man from the complex came and fixed our air conditioning, a greatly welcome development on a day that saw the humidity hit 100%. I got in the bathtub to soak and was wetter when I got out than when I was in the tub. The beagle got re-acquainted with his couch.

‘We met Scott in front of the Shapiro Undergraduate Library and it was impossible to escape the fact that students were back on campus and in town in force. Steve pointed out that I was old enough to be the dad of many of these kids, which was something I had been thinking myself but did not necessarily love having pointed out.

‘We walked the beagle around the immediate vicinity of the complex and he got to poop and pee and sniff around and explore without running into a single other dog, let alone a leashless one.

‘We will most likely be traveling up to the Traverse City area this weekend to visit Linda, who lives up there with her husband and two excitable Lab mixes, so that we can have a respite from the high jinks that are likely to ensue Saturday morning when the first Wolverine game gets played at the Stadium against the Central Michigan University (Mount Pleasant) Chippewas (and which the Wolverines, which are currently ranked number four in the nation, will probably win handily).

‘Things are slowly coming into focus. I will feel a lot more grounded once I have a greater familiarity with the town and its layout—knowing where everything is geographically is very important to me. I will also feel more secure once orientation is done with. A thunderstorm just erupted out of, literally, nowhere. This is going to take some getting used to, that’s for sure.

‘—Posted by Frank at 23:45:51 | 25-Aug-03’