Socially Distanced Summer

We are well into summer around these parts. Temperatures in the 80s, humidity anywhere from 40-90%, depending on the time of day and weather. The backs of my hands are happy, my palms not so much. This will reverse in about six months. Michigan kicked off the month by reclosing indoor bars after a coronavirus outbreak was traced to an East Lansing bar known for its college-age clientele. Nationally, the number of cases continued its steady climb upwards, taxing medical staff and facilities in multiple states. But let’s all go to Disney World and get ready to send the kids back to school, why don’t we?

I started the month of July by finishing a fairly typical work week with research, Netflix, and lying around dehydrating from the palms and soles. On Friday, July 3, I snuck out early to bike the Border to Border trail for the first time this year. I’d been avoiding it for coronavirus crowding reasons, but I was hopeful that early on a Friday morning of a holiday weekend would not be a popular time to be physically exerting oneself. I was right, and the people who were out were the people who tend to be more intentional about walking/running/biking and generally have better trail etiquette, as opposed to the family of six who spreads out across the whole path and lets little Timmy zigzag along the trail as he likes or shirtless jogger guy with headphones blasting who wouldn’t hear you if you were dragging a string of cowbells behind you.

Saturday, July 4 was grocery day. I hid out in my apartment for the rest of the day and finished Community, which I would recommend, though the first three seasons are better than the last three. To replace it in my Netflix rotation, I started Parks and Recreation since people say if you like The Office you’ll like Parks and Rec. Full judgement forthcoming. I headed back out on my bike on Sunday, July 5 to check off the parks in northwest Ann Arbor. I might have gotten back a little late for the start of church, but I did not miss the Facebook sermon.

Monday, July 6 began another week. I started editing changes in my code into the official version and running test simulations. Long live Fortran. While the apartment was still a nice cool 79 F at 7:30 in the morning, I baked a batch of orange cranberry muffins on Tuesday, July 7, except I didn’t want to eat an orange so I didn’t get an orange for orange zest when I went grocery shopping so the muffins didn’t taste very much like orange. On Wednesday, July 8, I finally returned the library books and DVDs I’d had since March so someone else could enjoy Spider-Man: Far From Home.

The big news for Thursday, July 9 was that the Revolution played their first soccer game in four months at the MLS Returnament and won. I finished off the research week and ventured (on bike) to the downtown area for the first time since March on Saturday, July 11. I was lured in not by the prospects of specialty boutiques or exotic bistros but library summer game points¹ and my self-inflicted checklist of parks, which overlap in a major way thanks to a series of badges featuring the Ann Arbor parks. The main streets downtown were more crowded than I expected, but I mostly avoided them on my journey to visit no less than 18 summer game sites in one trip.

Huron River, Barton Nature Area

It was back to work on Monday, July 13, but by Thursday, July 16, I got fed up enough with the banshee-screeching children outside my window to go for an afternoon bike ride and get some more parks off the list. I tried another morning bike ride to the west side of Ann Arbor on Friday, July 17, but spent most of the first half of it playing leapfrog with the compost truck. The Revolution’s second group game in the Returnament was Saturday, July 18, which they tied thanks to an atrocious back pass gone wrong. They finished group play on Tuesday, July 21 with a scoreless draw, which was enough to get them into the knockout rounds.

I spent the rest of the week mostly doing what I’ve been doing for the past 4 months. In other exciting news for the week, Jeopardy! opened their vault and showed episodes from the first decade of Alex Trebek hosting. We got to see the first game of its current syndicated run, buzzing in before the clue was read, really bad final Jeopardy! betting, his and hers tennis racket prizes, a maximum cash winnings cap, and more. A couple more bike rides over the week leaves me with mostly parks along the southern reaches of Ann Arbor. At the very least I can say that I didn’t get less fit because of coronavirus. Saturday, July 25 was groceries in the morning, my longest bike ride of the year so far (~17 miles) in the afternoon, then I had a video call with friends from Cornell at night and I stayed up to watch the Revolution lose to the Philadelphia Union in a late-night MLS in Florida during a pandemic special 10:30 pm match. Why do I keep doing this to myself? Why did I come to grad school? Why do you always plug the USB in the wrong way the first time?

I finished out July spending until midnight on Tuesday, July 28 making a birthday card, which required taking out my colored pencils for the first time in months. It was just like being back at Cornell working on problem sets at absurd hours. And on Thursday, July 30, my turn to give virtual group meeting came around again, so I talked about my micelles and computational simulations.

Heading into August, the coronavirus numbers aren’t great – cases have been slowly but steadily rising, though hospital usage, at least in Washtenaw County, has remained low. The university is planning for some in-person classes, so students should start coming in next month, but we’ll see how long we make it before something goes wrong. I hope we get to Thanksgiving as planned, because that would mean people are behaving responsibly and thoughtfully, but I wouldn’t be surprised if things go pear-shaped by/in September.

Blue jay feather

¹The library puts on a combination summer reading program/scavenger hunt/events spectacular where you earn points for reading, writing reviews, attending events, searching the catalog, and visiting certain locations. In the catalog and at locations you either get a code to enter directly for points or have to find specific signs/objects to assemble the code (e.g. if you’re at a park the code might be “color of the slide + number of swings” and you’d enter something like “orange5”). Some of the codes are grouped together in badges and completing badges gets you more points. The points can then be traded for a finite number of objects in the summer game store.