Life of Wry

(Can I call it A2? It seems a little presumptuous or precious.. maybe nicknames are reserved for those who live in a place and/or are so familiar they can use place nicknames, but others of us should use the proper name? Is it like somebody from somewhere else calling us Cali, or referring to our gorgeous city to the SW: Frisco. Wince to both.)

(I know they don’t call it AA…but the locals I know do call it A2… )

Regardless… it was nice to be spending time in Peter’s new, if temporary, home. And today, with Peter as a guide, we saw some new parts.

Jim and I started the morning at Argus, the cafe/farm stand around the corner from the Burnt Toast Inn .. and likely to be a regular spot for us on future visits. Peter picked us up at 10:45 to drive to Dexter, a former village, now a city with a population in 2019 of 4,644 just about five miles outside of Ann Arbor. It’s where Lisa and Claire just bought a home. You drive along the Huron River to get there… such a lovely drive: it’s impossibly green and, at this time of year, scattered with purple and white wildflowers.

Here we are! (Photo credit: Jim)

C & L are staying with friends (who own this house) while their house sits — hopefully not for long — on the market. By our next visit, they’ll have sold their downtown house and moved into their new country home (up the road from this one). In the meantime..we had an incredibly wonderful Sunday brunch in this beautiful, artful home, and it was so, so nice to spend a few hours together. They’ve been an incredible support to Peter this past year, taking him in for Thanksgiving and Christmas and keeping him supplied with cookies and leftovers from numerous dinners.

Here are a couple of shots of the hood from our post-brunch walk:

River, lakes, greenery.. it’s gorgeous, serene, peaceful and just a 10-minute drive out of town, if that. And, in winter, you can ice fish in that lake, or ice skate. Sigh…

As we were leaving, it was clouding up. It rained on and off the rest of the afternoon, but Peter gave us a nice tour of his part of town, including his coop and the North Campus.

His coop:

A few of the North Campus, including the bell tower, and a few of the Mechanical Engineering building..

Then we wandered a bit downtown, though it was kinda wet and not so pleasant, so we ducked into Zingerman’s and had an early dinner:

Peter then dropped us at the Burnt Toast so he could return to his paper (his first crack at a real research paper they hope to get published in the Fall… draft due to his professor on Tuesday).