Note to self:

Espresso Royale has the worst, most expensive and possibly smallest chai tea latte of all the coffeeshops in close proximity to West Hall. I don't know why you manage to forget this so often and waste $2.50 on sludge rather than paying $1.95 for something rather nice at Amer's. I don't know either how ERC's chai manages to be so awful when it seems like every place in town just uses Oregon Chai from the carton. Perhaps they blend their own monstrosity rather than trusting the experts.

De toute façon, avoid at all cost. Try to remember it this time, eh?

I live about an hour from the Detroit area. I say "the Detroit area" because I've always considered anywhere covered by Detroit radio stations' traffic coverage to be "Detroit." It always annoyed my Shelby Township-native college roommate that I said she was from Detroit and couldn't see any difference between where she lived, St. Clair Shores or Dearborn, so I have since expanded to calling that whole fuzzy Eastern region "the Detroit area" instead of "Detroit."

I have no family over here and very little reason to come to the Detroit area, so I've never learned my way around or bothered to learn to distinguish one area from another. Wyandotte? Greektown? Royal Oak? 8 Mile? It's all Greece to me.

Well, the first month and a half of my internship will be spent in my employer's Bingham Farms office. I have to make the 40-minute drive each way, once a week through April and thrice a week through May.

It's an interesting drive for someone whose freeway experience consists almost exclusively of the strip of I-94 between Ann Arbor and Albion. "There's a three car pileup on I-696," I remember hearing on Detroit radio stations. "Traffic is at a standstill on I-275." "The southbound Lodge Freeway is backed up to 12 Mile."

I have sometimes ridden on these famous roads, but have never driven them myself. I will finally drive them! With their massive traffic problems! In rush hour!

Great.

Today's temperature: 30°F
Wind: 17 to 23 mph
Feels Like: 18°F

Wind leads to windchill. Windchill leads to coldness. Coldness leads to suffering. I figure I have two options. I can:

a) dig a series of tunnels connecting every building I will have to go to all winter, the bus stop, and all of the residential areas where I have ever managed to find parking OR

b) run away, leaving Michigan altogether. Do they have a Human-Computer Interaction program at Florida State? How about the University of Bermuda? Fiji?

The problem is that my fingers are too cold to hold a shovel or a pen and application form. So I guess I'll have to tough it out. Never fear - you have at least three more months of whinging to go!

I ran late today and had to find parking on central campus rather than parking on north campus and taking the bus in, as I usually do. I ended up parking at a meter, shoving in piles of dimes and quarters in order to pay for the hour I had class, then moving to free on-street parking after class was over.

Unfortunately, class was over at 10:00, so parking was limited by that time. I ended up in a residential area and had to walk thirty miles in the freezing cold, in six feet of snow, uphill both ways to my work. And did I complain? No, because in my day, we did that kind of thing and we liked it, because it taught us to appreciate-- aw, bugger that. It was about fifteen minutes and I bitched and moaned all the way back.

I can hear the difference between my neighborhood and the campus area, but I didn't realize that residential neighborhoods downtown were just as silent. Among the interesting things seen on my sufferable, grumbly walk back to civilization:

(Sometimes I think that I subconsciously make things happen in my life so that I can use the titles I want to use)

I went to buy some lentil soup at Rendez-Vous Café today, because I am dangerously addicted to it. I could, quite possibly, survive for the rest of my life on lentil soup, tea and Junior Mints. And wouldn't that be healthy?

I went in with the intention of buying lentil soup, then realized I was running late, so I would have to settle for potato pie. But they were out of potato pie, so I had to settle-settle for thyme pie. Who makes a pie out of thyme*?

I stood around and got ignored for a while, then Jim** turned to me. Jim likes to wear gloves when he is handling food, which I find admirable from a hygienic point of view. Of course, he also likes to wear the same gloves while handling money, which completely defeats the purpose. But I suppose it keeps his hands clean.

I ordered my thyme pie and Jimbo went to work on the various steps involved in heating it up. Then two attractive - or at least not as frumpy, sleep-deprived and bespectacled as yours truly - girls came in and ordered crêpes and Jim wandered off into the back to make them, ignoring my poor little pie.

I waited and waited for Jim to return. He did. Then he went back into the back. Then he came back out. Then he returned to the crêpes. All the while, my pie was sitting at the end of the conveyor belt of the pie-heating-machine. It was a bit darker than I would have liked, because Jim couldn't be arsed to change the settings for my poor darling pie (this is how I was referring to the pie in my head. Damn, I was hungry). And now it was burnt and cold.

Finally, when Jim disappeared into the back again, I started staring at the other employee. After helping everyone in line, refilling the coffee containers and checking on Jim's crêpe-making progress, she noticed me trying to get her attention.

"Is that my pie?" I whimpered, pointing. She found the poor little pastry, forgotten and forlorn at the end of the conveyor belt, and made me a new one, which was golden brown and warm when it finally came to me.

The moral of the story is: Even short people get pie. It just takes longer. Or something***.

* Actually, it was quite tasty and ground up, sort of like a pesto-consistency. But it does sound weird.
** So called because I think that's his name and even if it isn't, I don't care.
*** Don't tell anyone, but the real moral of the story is: Tell a pointless story about pie and maybe people will stop talking about Borders.

What is the point of a strike if you're only going to strike at one store in a chain? I understand that the downtown Ann Arbor Borders store is the original and the largest in the world and therefore a good target for picketing, but it really confuses me that it's life as usual at the much better, convenient-to-parking store across town. Is it okay to shop there, then? Is it the downtown Borders or the corporation itself that's trying to screw over its workers? Why aren't they complaining on Washtenaw?

I bet the downtownies have to pay for parking while they work. Damned Ann Arbor parking prices. I would picket too.

Bubble Tea is the greatest thing ever. Her Cariness introduced me to it at a trip to the local bubble tea joint during one of our ever-productive User Interface Design group meetings and it fascinated me. It's sweet, milky tea with squishy tapioca "bubbles" at the bottom, which you suck up while you drink the tea.

While doing my Network Computing homework in the computer lab today, I had a terrible craving for bubble tea. I decided I would have some when I finished my homework and the desire for the squishy sweetness almost drove me to stay on task. Almost. There were a few distractions that prevented this, of course, but I got my tea eventually.

I highly recommend the hot almond-cream milk tea. It is my New Best Friend.

Have you ever pet-sat for a friend or neighbor? Did they give you something in return? I don't want to seem ungrateful or anything, but when we go on vacation and our neighbors look after our mail, we bring them back a token of appreciation.

I looked after our neighbors' cats for a week this summer while they were on vacation. I fed them twice a day, petted and brushed them, cleaned the litterbox, let them in and out of the house and gave them medication. I never would have thought of being monetarily compensated (although I wouldn't have said no), but I did hope they might thank me in some way.

They came home and called my house.

"Would you like me to bring your key over?" I asked.
"That's alright - you can hold onto it in case we ever get locked out." And that was that.

They called again last week.

"Do you still have the key to our house?"
"Yes, do you need it back?"
"No, I just wondered if you could feed the cats again this weekend."

I'm doing it again, because I'm a nice person and kitties need feeding. Meh. Maybe they'll surprise me.

NOT a few flakes - many many flakes. And the kind of wind that blows people's hands into their faces with nosebreaking force. It's a bleeeeeeeeeeeezzard, folks.

I am not going to survive November.

Enrolling at U-M has turned me into some kind of schizophrenic mutant. All of my other friends got this out of their system during the undergraduate years, I assume, so they aren't very sympathetic to my confusion and observations.

I've spent my whole life avoiding campus for fear of hitting pedestrian students with my car and now I am one of them. I'm a townie but I'm a student. I'm running myself over and telling myself to go back to where I came from, sneering at myself and blocking myself in traffic by crossing against the light.

I am constantly amazed by the side of Ann Arbor that I never knew. Since I went to a small college and never spent much time on U-M's campus, particularly during the school day, I didn't really know what it's like on a large university campus. At Albion, you can tell when the hour strikes because the empty campus fills with people going from one class to another, from class to their dorm, or vice versa. During the hour, there are only a few scattered people running errands or doing other things. Here at Michigan, there are hundreds of people everywhere you go at any time of the day.

I don't know if it's good or bad - I'm just struck by how different it is and by the fact that I never knew that all of this was going on in my own town.

In case anyone wondered, I'm fine and back online! I have been having a rich and adventurous life these past 24 hours, but my neighborhood is one of the few areas around whose electricity has returned. I'll be back to blog the details later.

Ann Arbor is aflame and no one cares. The blaze:

I went to Art Fair this morning with Robin, and I think I may have actually gotten a tan. Yes, I can definitely see a bit of color there...

Oh wait, no. That was dirt. I am as white as ever. Never mind.

There is an astonishing amount of child labor at the Art Fair. It's summer, so I suppose the parents can't leave them at home, and Cute Sells, so there they are, hawking their lemonade and butterfly fries while the grown-ups cook them.

My dad and I bought some sweet potato butterfly fries last night, and although they were rather tasty, a nice pool of grease collected at the bottom of the plate. The man behind us in line asked the twelve-year-old vendor if there was any way he could get some cheese on them things. The TYOV told him no, although there was a vat o' cheese right behind him for some other food. I think it just didn't occur to the TYOV that cheese from one food could be applied to another, but I like to think that he was denying the man the right to be disgusting. You go, young person!

"Jewelry is out in booths," said a co-worker at TPTIBLOT, "Paintings are hanging on canvas walls. It's going to start pouring any second."

The scene is set and the weather has taken its annual sudden mid-July turn for the worse. Art Fair, annual second scourge of Annarborites*, has indeed arrived. For the next four days, Ann Arbor will be crawling with insane tourists from out of town who like to waste money on hand-woven caftans, wooden flamingoes wearing shoes, and bright pink paintings of nothing with little bits of things glued to them.

I will, like all of the other Annarborites, make grumbling excursions into the madness. "Might as well get out there, since we can't drive anywhere," say the Annarborites, secretly liking the opportunity to people-watch and buy things at sidewalk sales. I will buy greasy, overpriced food on the Union's courtyard and laugh at people who actually buy things from the fair.

Art Fair would be a lot more fun without all the art.

* U-M students being the first.

'My name was down for Eton, you know, I can't tell you how glad I am I came here instead. Of course, mother was slightly disappointed, but since I made her read Lockhart's books I think she's begun to see how useful it'll be to have a fully trained wizard in the family..."
-Justin Finch-Fletchley, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

My parents and I have had this conversation: If I had been accepted to Eton (which would have been surprising since I'm a girl) and Hogwarts (which would have been surprising because, as far as I'm aware, it doesn't actually exist), I would have been sent to Eton. What would drive a Muggle parent to send their child to Hogwarts?

How would Justin Finch-Fletchley's parents explain to their obviously upper-crust friends that while Justin had been accepted at Eton, he had instead been sent to a school in Scotland that no one had heard of, and that they couldn't tell their friends anything about?

Why would the Grangers send their obviously gifted daughter to Hogwarts? Why would they send her to a school they know nothing about, preparing her for a life they know nothing about? Would she have the opportunities in the Magic world that she could have in the Muggle one? How would they know that? What the heck is in the Hogwarts orientation packet that manages to convince Muggle parents to send their children off into this unknown world?

Mummy suggests that maybe the parents realize that there is something strange and magical about their children and that this is the place to best nurture those gifts. Eleven seems to me an early age to be determining that your child will live in another world for the rest of its life.

Is the world populated with Muggle-borns whose parents refused to send them to Hogwarts? My parents think that they probably would have done so.

srah: So if you had the choice between Hogwarts and Huron, you would pick Huron?
Dad: Yes. Huron.
srah: Actually, Harry starts at 11, so I guess it would be Hogwarts and Scarlett.
Dad: Ah. Hogwarts, then.

Yeah. Si + imparfait... conditionnel. I like the "si" rules. They make sense to me.

Why can't you get a decent baguette in the United States? Is there something in the baguette-making process that is not up to American hygiene standards? Are the ingredients different? Are there ingredients in a baguette that are too expensive over here to make it economically feasible? Do they think it's not worth the bother to make bread that won't last more than one day?

American baguettes, sometimes also known as "French bread", are not baguettes. They are a loaf of Wonder bread that somehow got stretched out. They're not bad when making garlic bread, but are useless for anything else. I can't get a real baguette here (even in the hippie/yuppie/soccermom paradise that is Ann Arbor), and I demand to know why.

If you see someone slinking guiltily around central campus, feeling like they don't belong there (especially during working hours), and wincing in this strange new thing called sunlight, come on up and say hi! Chances are, it's either me or a psycho killer who lives in a basement and emerges only to find new victims. And hey, with odds like that, why not give it a try?

I have a new project where I have to go to Central Campus every afternoon for the rest of the summer. Maybe you can't sense, in reading this, the great levels of joy this brings me. I understand completely, as it can sometimes be hard to pick up on negative joy.

As I crossed the Diag, I suddenly had flashbacks to every time I had jumped up and down on the block M. If you are not aware, there is a superstition that a U-M student who steps on the block M in the pavement on the Diag will fail his/her first exam. For six or seven years now, I've been stomping on the M when I pass it, triumphantly proclaiming my immunity because I was not a U-M student. For years before that, there was just the stomping, without the triumphant proclamations.

Now I am suddenly concerned... are those stomps cumulative?

I've always hated being in a situation where I know more than my teacher. It makes me feel uncomfortable, confused, and frustrated. More than that, it scares me a little. If I know the teacher's wrong, that doesn't mean that the rest of the class does. Do I correct the teacher for their sake, or do I let it slide and save the teacher from embarrassment and myself from a potential argument? Using the word "stealthy" to reply to my dad's daughter-swapping comments brought back a memory of one of these situations.

She was one of my stupider teachers, and that's saying a lot. I'm not sure if she had any pedagogical training, but if she did, she must have figured they were just suggestions. Not only was she not a good teacher of English, she was not a good student of English. At thirteen years old, we recognized that we knew more about English than she did. It scares me.

The moment that sticks out in my mind (and unfortunately pops up every time I hear any word based on the root "stealth"), was when we went to the U-M ROTC's ropes course as a class. I remember nothing of the outing, but I do remember coming back to class and having to write a summary of what happened.

Jamie M. wrote in his paper something to the effect of, "The ROTC members snuck up on us stealthily." When he asked, she corrected him, saying that the word should be stealthy. I can see my eighth-grade self there, hearing this, a confused and disgusted look on my face.

"No it's not," I told Jamie, "it's stealthily. Stealthy is an adjective."

"That's what I thought," Jamie replied, writing stealthily back in. Then this horror-teacher took the example and actually wrote "The ROTC members snuck up on us stealthy" on the board. I raised my hand and corrected her, and she tried to claim that stealthy was the correct word in this situation. She argued and I argued and finally I had to give in because she was the teacher and I was the student.

She's no longer teaching at my middle school. Surprisingly, I think she left to be a stay-at-home mom, rather than being fired for incompetence. Every once in a while I see a flyer around town where she's offering English tutoring, and I never know whether to deface it or tear it down.

I went back to my high school today to visit my former French teacher. As I walked in the building, the first thing that hit me was the smell. Not that it was a bad smell, but smell has a way of triggering memories more than the other senses, I think. All of a sudden, I felt like I was back in that period of 1994-98 where I actually belonged there.

But I didn't, and because I am a Suspicious Outsider, I had to go to the main office and sign in as a visitor. We didn't have any of that crap when I was in high school. Back in my day, we... anyway. I knew I could pass for a student, but that students weren't supposed to be in the hallways between classes. Rather than risk getting detention, I went to the main office and started filling out the sign-in sheet.

"Who are you? Who do you want to see? What are you here for?" the office-woman asked me, accusingly.
"I'm here to see Isabelle C--," I replied, "I'm a former student."
"Is she expecting you?"
"Well, not today specifically, but I knew that this was her free hour, so--"
"Well I'll have to see if I can get ahold of her so that she can tell me if you can go."
"Well, I--"
"I can't just let you go up there. What does she teach?"
"French. But I--"
"I'll call her."
"She doesn't know I'm coming today, specifically, but she does expect me."
Quizzical look.
"I've been emailing with her."
"Well then, okay."

She gave me an enormous neon-green Visitor sticker to fill out with my name and the date and to stick on myself. I crammed it into my pocket and went upstairs.

Ann Arbor is a fun place to be.

It takes great skill to manage to drive your car into two apartment buildings, one after another. Especially nude and probably drunk at 4pm. We will be following this local story with great interest, young Skywalker.

My high school is the 685th best high school in this great Satan nation of ours.

Cant u tel from it's alumnis?

When they closed the United Artists cinema at the mall, I was not terribly upset because it was kind of skanky and I never went there anyway. It did, however, seem like a waste to have a big movie theatre there and nothing playing. I decided that if I suddenly became rich, I would buy the theatre and show old, foreign, and art-house movies there (with free parking!).

At some point while I was gone, someone did just that, freeing me up from investing in the potentially risky scheme of putting an art-house cinema in a place frequented by brainless 15-year-olds. It plays harder-to-find things, but some of the mainstream films as well. Alex and I are going to see the Chilean film Te Amo (Made in Chile) tonight, and L'Auberge espagnole comes out next week, so I will be moving in there then. I am happy to discover that someone has made Ann Arbor suck just a little bit less.

"You can't find herbes de Provence in the US," said an unidentified person named Renata who shall not be named, "and if you do, they're super-expensive."

I just want to make the observation that not only did I find reasonably-priced herbes de Provence in every grocery store I went to today, but I have also managed to locate Salers, Fourme d'ambert, Bleu d'Auvergne, St-Nectaire, and Tomme. Strangely enough, no Cantal so far, but Salers is close enough for now.

Boo-yeah. Thank you, Ann Arbor, for being a weirdy-beardy hippie-town full of people who eat things like imported cheeses and organic alfalfa.

One thing I will not miss about Vichy is Sunday afternoons. It reminds me of Art Fair in Ann Arbor. Suddenly the town is invaded by hordes of shoppers who descend upon it, much to the chagrin of the natives who can't get anywhere because of the crowds. Strangely enough, both cases involve Andean pipe bands playing on street corners and selling their discs.

Vichy, as a heavily touristic town, is one of the few places in France where shops open on Sundays. Thus people come from all over the region to shop, to see, to be seen, and to walk slowly down the sidewalk, seeing and being seen, while Sarah just wants to get past them, go the ATM and get home.

"The women looked like I would have if I'd stayed in Ann Arbor. They wore their hairy legs and underarms as a badge signifying their higher power of reasoning and their disinterest in conventional standards of beauty."
- A Map of the World, Jane Hamilton

As I was reading this book, it suddenly struck me that I knew what was going to happen next. I got excited about my new-found psychic abilities until I realized that I had already seen the made-for-TV-movie-esque film based on it.

I was speaking English to Andrés at the party when he told me my accent in English made him think of "Old MacDonald Had a Farm". The idea was, I understand, that I am rather nasal with my E-I-E-I-Os in particular. I am never speaking English again.

Later, when I was drunkish and singing loudly along with "The Real Slim Shady", I noticed how nasal Eminem is, too. It's not something I had previously noticed in the Michigan accent - not to that extent, anyway.

So anyway, now I'm really looking forward to "Eminem Sings Children's Songs" so I can send it to Andrés.

To get to Stonehenge from Andover, you have to take a bus that goes through the military base housing area. We saw helicopters and such all around, then while waiting at Amesbury for the bus to Stonehenge, we saw tanks driving down the street in one direction, and trucks carrying tanks in the other.

It reminded Mummy of the canoe livery in Ann Arbor - you can rent a canoe, paddle from one stop to the other, then they drive them back upriver. So we assumed, naturally, that we were witnessing tank rental. I thought it would be a good idea for us, as American tourists frightened by left-side driving. We could drive on any side we wanted, because we would be a tank!

On a related note, my dad's college housemate thought he drove a tank. He put a gun rack in his car and thought that made it a tank and therefore impervious to traffic laws. He also stole things from the other housemates and sold them. I hope he's well-medicated now, as he's a well-known Ann Arbor lawyer and also a member of the City Council or School Board or something.

The more I hang around the teachers here and listen to them talk and complain about the students, the more I wonder what my high school teachers had to say about me.

Probably not much - I don't think I was very remarkable or memorable. At one point during high school I went back to Scarlett with Robin to visit teachers and my 8th grade US History teacher asked Robin who her friend was.

The students have returned. Already I hate them.

Ann Arbor has a delightful love-hate relationship with the U-M. Lots of us work for the university or are alumni, but the prevailing attitude seems to be that it would be a much better school if they didn't allow any students in it.

Yesterday was move-in day. Unfortunately, it was also the day we had to go to Bed, Bath and Beyond to exchange Becky's damaged lamp. As we pushed our way through the crowded store, full of dopey parents and their equally dopey offspring, I behaved as a true Annarborite, muttering curses at them under my breath. "Go home," I said to Annoying Woman Running Into People With Cart. "Go home," I said, to Father Blocking Aisle While Talking On Cell Phone. "Go home," I said to Ditzy Incoming Freshman In Capri Pants. "Go home," I said to Car In Parking Lot With Ohio Bicentennial License Plate.

If I go to graduate school at U-M, I will be sure to tell myself to go home, too.

I was reading through old letters I had typed up on the computer. It's the closest thing I have to a journal from that time. They are just as boring and pointless as my blog. Let's clip out some of the fun lines and see what I was up to four years ago...

June 7, 1998

Humanities Graduation: Dan Zaret did our speech. Actually, he sang a song. It was about how he had the Leaving Humanities Blues or something. Like:
“We all should have gotten A’s in Vogel’s class,
but we didn’t, because he’s got a stick up his --- Jon Wenk, did you write this?”

and

“Mr. Wolff has a really strong larynx
But we wish he’d stop bitching about his parents.”

August 22, 1998

I think I have a headache, but I'm not sure. It doesn't feel like it's my head.

SLeicher has a roommate with a self-esteem problem. I don't know the details. "I like to get to know people, but they don't like to know me" or something like that. Oh boy!

At the Io, I saw several of the guys I'd seen earlier…Doogie Howser; the Mysterious Kurt, who I've seen somewhere before but I don't know where; Lewis, who Doogie and a yucky guy named Tom (Jim?) had to pick up during one of our activities; Carl, my RA, who is cute in a red-headed sort of way; The Guy in the Orange Shirt; The Guy in the Green Shirt [Neither is related to The Man in the Iron Mask]; Rusty-with-the-interesting-socks-who-isn't-at-all-attractive-but-I-am-attracted-to-his-socks; and of course, the beauteous David C0mfort Look-Alike.

I need to bring a stepstool. This room is teeming with short people (2).

So we had this thing last night called Playfair where we played all these getting-to-know-as-many-people-as-you-can-in-as-short-a-time-as-you-can games. I'm sure you're looking forward to these sorts of things. So I came in with Stephanie and they divided all the people into two lines, but we ended up right next to each other in the same line. Then the lines went running and snaking all around the gym. Then we sat down and played games where you talked to the two people closest to you…Stephanie and some girl I forgot. Then they had us divide up by birth month. Stephanie and I were still together. We were together, like the whole night and completely missed the point: "you won't stay with the people you came in with." I kept trying to get into groups with the guy in the green shirt, but it was not to be. [Hi, this is 2002 srah popping in for a moment here... I have no idea who the guy in the green shirt is. Wish I did.] My favorite game was when he had our 12-person groups break into 3s where the 3s had never met before today. I was with Doogie Howser (whose name is Ian, but it doesn't matter because he looks like DH) and that Tom/Jim guy. I think it's Tom. I'm almost positive. I must've met someone else named Jim. I'm so confused. Anyway, so these groups of 3 were a submarine, sailing ship, and ocean liner. I was the sailing ship. Each ship had to take turns being the Admiral. The Admiral sent his/her 2 first mates out to do things to make people smile. Tom/Jim liked to have us pick people up. DH went first and had no idea what he was doing. I made them give people hi-fives and shake hands and pat people on the head. It was fun. Even when I had to pat tall people on the head and give complete strangers back rubs.

August 23, 1998

Every time I wash my hands, I remember Mr. Van talking about how people get sick a lot in college and how when you wash your hands, you should wash long enough to sing "Yankee Doodle." EVERY TIME. Every time I wash my hands, I get Yankee Doodle in my head. Help me God.

So far, it's been really boring. I actually put all the transactions in my checkbook into Microsoft Money today, just to have something to do. I also alphabetized my reference books, then reordered them in terms of usefulness, and put my books in chronological order by when my first class is, then each book in a class in alphabetical order. Isn't this fascinating?

I just want to go to sleep. But I can't sleep, because it's too hot. AAAAAAAAAAAAH! I gotta find a nice big refrigerator to sleep in. Or go down to the basement "The Pit" where it's cool(er) and sleep with a football player. Or not.

Anyway, French or Foe? is really cool. It's about how the French are different culturally - like French people don't smile unless they have a reason to smile. They don't just smile at you on the street or if they're selling you something like Americans do. We read about smiling so far. French people find it hard to go back to France from the U.S. because it just feels less friendly and open. If you go around smiling at French people in France, they think you're retarded. I love this book!

My Anthropology professor smiles a lot. She smiles all hour. All I could think about was how French people would think she was retarded. Ha ha! But I like her.

Will you go, or have you gone to your high school reunion? I got a thingy in the mail about a week ago, asking what kind of 5-year reunion we should have. Hmm, good question. How about an imaginary one?

When I see people I went to high school with, I walk quickly in the other direction and hope they didn't see me. Why would I inflict hundreds of high school people on myself? Is there anyone from high school I would want to see? If I could come up with anyone, I would contact them myself.

When I was in high school, I thought it was weird that my mom never wanted to go to her high school reunions. I thought that my high school friends would be my friends for life. Some of them are, but most of them aren't.

So I don't believe I shall be at the Huron High School class of 1998 reunion next year. Sorry. If you really wanted to see me, you can find me yourself.

Last night, Robin and I were looking through old elementary and middle school yearbooks. Robin knows what everyone's doing these days. I don't know how. We looked at the Mitchell Elementary School graduating class of 1991 (43 students) and counted at most 9 people among them who had or were working towards a college degree.

Doesn't that seem extraordinarily low? It makes me feel lucky to be where I am. When I was in elementary school, it never occurred to me that these people wouldn't go to college. My parents both have Master's degrees and I just assumed that I would go to college myself. There was never a question about it. And since I was going, I assumed everyone else was going. College was just another automatic step on the educational ladder.

Robin had a story about almost everyone in the class - how they'd gotten into drugs or having babies or worked at Krogers. It's quite disappointing, actually. These people were my friends when I was ten. How did we end up in such different places?

What are your educational origins? Are you where you wanted to be? Are your friends and classmates where you expected them to be?

Hey Ann Arbor people: If you're interested, 1997 Ann Arbor Huron High School graduate Jordan Lopez is playing at Kerrytown this Thursday and Friday night. His mommy told us that we should go, so I'm telling you.

Davezilla posted a link to Found Magazine, which is very interesting. What I find most interesting is that the contact address is three streets away from my house. I hope they don't find my stuff.

Yeah, south-east si-eeed!

(Did I really just say that?)

Here's the link to A Prairie Home Companion's Ann Arbor episode this Saturday. My favorite part is when he talks about Ann Arbor.

I hate Ann Arbor. Pretty soon, everyone in the town will be required to have a Blue parking permit because there will be no pay parking in town. The structure I wanted to park in has become Permit Only so I had to park waaay across town in the oddest structure ever.

Rather than the take-a-ticket system most Ann Arbor structures have, this structure had a pay-in-advance thing. It was a $2 flat rate for the whole day (which *was* a better bargain than $1.05 an hour for the three hours or so I was at Cheryl's graduation party - but still) and you had to pay in a machine. Unfortunately, the smallest I had was a $10 bill. So I put it in the machine and what did it give me in change? SEVEN SACAGAEWEA DOLLARS AND A SUSAN B. ANTHONY. I probably spelled Sacagaewea wrong. So anyway, I've been trying to get rid of them all day.

I bought Becky and myself some candy and got rid of two of them. I used five of them to pay for parking at the hockey game tonight (and boy was the attendant happy to see them! Especially since they probably looked like quarters in the dark). Then we went to Cosi with Bob'n'Robin and their friends and I payed Robin back for my s'mores with the last one.

I don't like having dollar coins - they're a pain to carry around and they make me want to spend spend spend to get rid of them. That's what they should do to get us out of this recession - mint more golden dollars.

By the way, I don't really hate Ann Arbor. Garrison Keillor was there tonight and he had a lot of fun and very true things to say about the town... something about people wearing expensive hippie-looking clothing and talking like socialists while eating in a nice restaurant? I'll have to write down the exact quote when it comes online. Boyfriend went to high school with one of the musical guests.

"I don't want to be a dead whore."
- Ligia

Ligia and Marian came to Ann Arbor to visit us last night. We went to see Shallow Hal, which was much better than expected, then went out to Steak & Shake. We stayed out way too late considering I had to work today, but all in all, it was a good experience.

We decided the boys were lost foreigners we picked up at the airport and we were going to pimp them off into a life of male prostitution in exchange for feeding them hamburgers.