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Three Days Was Not Enough
May 27, 2008
I’m coming off a three-day weekend that felt way too short, possibly because I had planned to do enough for about four or five days. I didn’t manage to fit it all in, but my tiredness today shows I did make an effort.
The highlight of Saturday was getting together with Melissa. We both like exploring old cemeteries, so we targeted a couple that neither of us had seen and headed off into the wilds of Detroit’s northern suburbs. The first cemetery we visited was quite small; many of the headstones were too worn to make out dates and names, but there was still plenty to see and wonder about. The second cemetery looked interesting as well, but it was surrounded by a high chain link fence with a locked gate. Boo to that. Surely a cemetery should be open on Memorial Day weekend of all weekends, right? Evidently not. Unlike the first one, this cemetery had a sign, but there wasn’t any particularly helpful information on it, like when it might be open to visitors. Ah well, it was a beautiful day for a drive anyway, and we didn’t lack for things to talk about. We wrapped up our outing with a late lunch on the way back to where we’d left one of our cars. It was a fun afternoon, and I hope we get a chance to do it again before too long.
Sunday’s special event was going to the Detroit Institute of Arts with Rooey and Dave, something we’d first talked about back in January when we’d gone to dinner and Cirque du Soleil. (Mr. Karen wasn’t able to join us on this outing, having found whitewater to kayak and friends to kayak it with, which is always a possibility in April and May unlike January). I hadn’t been to the DIA since they finished the major renovation last fall, so I was curious to see how it had changed. The ladies at the information desk recommended we start with the virtual banquet on the third floor, but it took a while to find it; based on their description of holographic waiters I was looking for something like the dinner party scene in the Haunted Mansion attraction, but it was much more low key than that—interesting, yes, but not quite as big a deal as the buildup had led me to believe. The collection didseem more engaging than I remember, with labels and explanations that put the art in context and highlighted things I might have overlooked. It also seemed larger; maybe that was because I was paying closer attention so it felt like there was more to see.
Besides my two fun outings, I did a bit of work in the office on Saturday, ran a bunch of errands, jogged twice (3.5 miles on Saturday and 2.5 yesterday), took a long walk, admired the suburban wildlife (I ran by a deer Saturday morning, walked by a baby bunny on Sunday, and had the usual squirrel, bird, and groundhog visitors in the backyard, plus two rabbits), finished a knitting project, ripped out the last eighteen thousand or so stitches of that project when I decided I just couldn’t live with my mistakes in that section, redid about twelve thousand of the stitches, ironed a bunch of fabric and cut patches for a quilt’s worth of blocks, did loads and loads of laundry and some other boring household tasks, and can’t quite figure out where all the time went since there’s still quite a lot left on my to do list.