What I Did Last Fall

Back in Ann Arbor at the end of summer, I prepared 1) for the undergrads returning en masse and 2) to get ready to graduate. I think I’ve been in school long enough. In between deciding to hold my dissertation defense before the winter break and subsequently having to track down my committee, submit a paper, fill out all manner of paperwork, hold a data meeting, and NaNoWriMo¹ my thesis, here are some things I did during my last fall in Ann Arbor as a grad student.

Looked out the window at the right time for a random sunrise.

Good morning, Ann Arbor

Took an early fall bike ride out to the Barton Nature Area in the late afternoon of a warm, sunny Friday. I knew it was too early for fall colors, which are never spectacular in Ann Arbor anyway, but the weather was too nice to miss out on inside.

Clockwise from top left: tree, Barton Dam, kayakers on the Huron River, Barton Pond

More fungus hunting while on mini hikes closer to my apartment. It was overall a very damp summer and a great year for mushrooms, at least the very probably poisonous and at best un-nutritious varieties I’ve been spotting.

Clockwise from top left: yellow lasagna fungus, red bracket/shelf fungus, shiny orange mushrooms, brown bracket/shelf fungus²

Saw a Michigan volleyball game with some coworkers. Like a lot of things at this university, it was a spectacle, and not entirely in a good way. (Nothing against the players themselves or volleyball, more so how the university treats many things Michigan related as a Big Deal that you should be #blessed to have the privilege of witnessing.) Michigan lost to Ohio State in straight sets; the only good thing about that was that they didn’t drag out the ordeal too long.

Crisler Center

Took a later fall bike ride out to the Matthaei Botanical Garden past peak fall colors mainly to enjoy the bike ride, which can normally be done almost completely on recreational shared-use paths. At this time, a portion of the Border to Border trail was closed for repaving, so I took a detour that’s shorter than the B2B but less pleasant, on account of the traffic roaring past you at 9485 “40” mph. I also spent part of an afternoon at the Arboretum and some afternoons/evenings rotating through my usual parks.

Clockwise from top left: lone tree across a pond, high water at Fleming Creek at the Botanical Garden, yellow tree at the Arboretum, Dhu Varren Woods

Also caught up on all of Grey’s Anatomy on Netflix and finished Star Trek: The Original Series before it left Netflix; watched the New England Revolution win their first ever Supporters Shield; worked on cross stitch projects; took a trip to the Upper Peninsula (posts to come); read about light and darkness (Light: Science & Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting and The Left Hand of Darkness); celebrated Thanksgiving with cranberry sauce; and baked snickerdoodles, banana muffins, double chocolate cookies, molasses cookies, sugar cookies, and cranberry orange scones; besides various research activities and other actions necessary to sustain life.

¹Short for National Novel Writing Month, in which participants try and write 50,000 words of a novel during the month of November. I wasn’t writing a novel, but I did have a thesis to put together in about a month.

²Bracket/shelf fungus is an actual identification, I couldn’t find what the orange mushrooms might be, and I’m pretty sure lasagna fungus isn’t an actual thing.