Yesterday was my last day of freedom before the start of my internship. Linsey's internship coordinator somehow broke her wrist over the weekend and wouldn't be in today so Linsey will start on Tuesday instead. It was a fairly busy last free day. We slept in until 9 or 10 and started our day with some laundry. Our studioish apartment doesn't have a washer or dryer so we have to do it in the basement of the neighbors house owned by the same landlord. It's a ratty, musty smelling basement that's used mainly as a storage area by all of the nearby residents and has a single coin operated washer and dryer with a small folding table set back in one of it's cramped corners. After doing a few loads we realized that we were quickly running out of quarters and went to a nearby carwash on Liberty Street to exchange some paper Washingtons for the metal Washingtons. (I have this thing for getting quarters at car washes.)
     While the last load of laundry was busy doing its thing in the dryer, Linsey and I decided to jog northeast of town to a place I found on Google Maps called Nichols Arboretum. I was looking for some nearby parks that I could run through in order to avoid some of the heavy traffic in the city. It's hard to run through downtown Ann Arbor and get in a good workout since there are streetlights at almost every corner that somehow pop up with that damn red hand as soon as you get to them. Nichols Arboretum or the "Arb" as referred to by the locals, turned out to be a great place to run. Linsey and I jogged the 1.4 miles from our apartment to the Arb and spent the next hour or two walking around all of the trails. The Arb turned out to be a hodgepodge of gardens and trails that twist and turn through steep wooded hillsides and level valley pathways. It's set upon 123 acres of land owned by the University of Michigan and has a huge variety of native and foreign flowers and trees lining the pathways. Many of the plants we passed had little nameplates near them that identify their non biological and biological names for the biology minded people who care about that sort of thing.
     Later that afternoon we made a trip to Target so I could pickup some black polos for my internship, Meijer's for groceries and then Whole Foods to scope out their wares. That's one place I could probably spend my entire fortune. The produce was fresh and they had 5X the variety of cheese, wine, beer and bread that you would find at a normal grocery store. Foodie paradise.
     I woke up at 6:45 this morning and left for Novi at 7:20. Unfortunately I hit a traffic jam just after the 8 Mile exit on 275 and ended up being thirty minutes late to Botsford. Going to have to wake up super early the rest of the semester. First day went well, mainly just observed the whole day. I participated in two fitness classes, "Young At Heart" and "Sit and Be Fit", geared toward Botsfords elderly population, also watched a fitness eval and took a bunch of blood pressures.
     When I arrived back in Ann Arbor, Linsey and I walked down to the Washtenaw County Administration Building where Linsey had to pickup her name badge. They were having trouble with some of their software, so while we waited for it to clear up we went down the next block to 'The People's Co-op," a Co-op that sells organic, local and fair trade wares. We had some coffee and managed to take a picture of this Mike Johnson look-a-like.

0 comments