Half and Half [2022]

This year in Ann Arbor and New England, I started the year in Michigan and ended it back in the northeast. In January, I got my Covid booster, biked the Border to Border trail to see the geese and ducks (and a pair of hooded mergansers) wintering on the Huron River, made a belated gingerbread dinosaur nativity scene, celebrated National Peanut Butter Day with my daily lunch PBJ, and hemmed some pants. I also watched Addams Family Values and took a second stab at the Discworld with the Ankh-Morpock City Watch in Guards! Guards!. Perhaps most importantly, I submitted my thesis, had it accepted, and received official permission to graduate.

February began with a balmy 40 F day that once again saw me on the B2B. After spending five and a half years running simulations of surfactants, I finally put some surfactant solutions on the rheometer and produced some of my own experimental data. The Winter Olympics were held, and the New England Revolution kicked off their season with a semi-promising 2-2 tie in Portland. Other activities included baking banana pecan chocolate chip muffins, finishing a cross stitch project, starting the X-Wing books, and observing Twosday (22:22:22 on 2/22/22, which was a Tuesday).

Snow soccer happened not once, but twice for the Revolution in March. It was a rough season from then on. I baked rocky road cookies and cranberry orange muffins, and attended (what I referred to as) ChE’s State of the Department Address to hear about what was going on in the department. Our research group celebrated a defense by going out for lab lunch, and a few of us took a day trip one weekend for dim sum, cake, and stops at a couple parks.

I continued wrapping things up in Ann Arbor in April, starting the month off with a couple labmates at the house of another friend from a different lab for cocktails, snacks, and dessert. On the research front, I resubmitted my second manuscript a couple weeks later. Otherwise, it was more or less business as usual with group meeting, filing taxes, hiking my standard trails in search of birds and spring wildflowers, watching the Revolution ping pong between winning and losing, and baking double chocolate cookies and peanut butter cookies.

May was a busy month, my last in Ann Arbor. Before leaving, I made sure to meet up with a couple friends I hadn’t gotten to see much because of the pandemic, once spending an evening at Pinball Pete’s playing pinball and other games, then drinking a pitcher of sangria down the street. The lab had a cookout/potluck at our advisor’s house since a few of us were leaving Ann Arbor around the same time, and I invited the lab and a couple ChemE friends for one final happy hour at our favorite North Campus bar (it’s the only bar on North Campus). And then as the month came to an end, my parents arrived in Ann Arbor to collect me and all my things. Before cramming my belongings into the car, we drove to Sleeping Bear Dunes for a family vacation with my brother and his girlfriend. We spent a couple days hiking around the dunes, then returned to Ann Arbor. In my final days in Ann Arbor, we paid quick visits to the art and natural history museums while I also returned keys and spent an MDen gift card, and attended church so I could say my farewells. On the way back home, we stopped by Cuyahoga Valley National Park, and then I arrived back in New England.

Upon my return to the land of Wegmans, throughout June I unpacked some of my things and packed other things that had been sitting in my room for the past decade. I attended the last of our lab’s four dissertation defenses in the span of six months from home. After finishing the very, very good Star Trek: Deep Space Nine the month before, I began working my way through my next medical drama, Scrubs, and started a cross stitch birth announcement for nobody in particular.

I spent July working on a final (supposedly quick) manuscript while also doing jigsaw puzzles, watching the Revolution stumble their way through the hot, long middle of the season, and reading for my local library’s summer reading bingo. We went hiking a few times, once at a nearby state park, and another time at a nature preserve in town that was also holding an outdoor art exhibit.

August included more reading, more puzzles, and more Revolution-induced high blood pressure. We painted most of the deck. I tried baking focaccia for the first time. We borrowed a telescope from the library and spent a couple weeks observing the moon as it went through its phases. At long last, the lab started getting its code in order and put up all its open source code on a lab Github.

In September, when the weather went from hot and humid to nice for a few weeks, we hiked at Minute Man National Historic Park and the Parker River Wildlife Refuge and went apple picking (we got honeycrisp, gala, smitten, empire, and fuji, plus apple cider donuts). At the end of the month, I took a business trip to see collaborators in Cincinnati and visited the Cincinnati Zoo and art museum.

The yearly raking commenced in October, but before the leaves all fell, we took a few local hikes to enjoy the fall colors and weather. I finished my Singapore cross stitch, baked a Boston cream pie and a Swiss roll, and helped dig a hole so the septic tank could get accessed.

For the first time, I participated in NaNoWriMo in November and won, writing 50,072 words in thirty days. MLS cup was exciting, as was the USMNT making it out of the group stage at the World Cup. I baked pumpkin things and tried a recipe for ginger cookies (good, but could have used even more ginger), and we celebrated fake Thanksgiving a couple weeks early with stuffing, cranberry sauce, and some other Thanksgiving-ish foods.

To close out the year, in December I watched the USMNT get knocked out of the World Cup, then picked up watching again in the quarterfinals, leading to an absolutely crazy World Cup final that saw Argentina and France trade goals in regular time, then overtime, and go to penalty kicks to give Messi a World Cup. I finally started a dragon cross stitch for a friend, read The Sandman, watched pretty bad Christmas movies, and ended the year with roast lamb and wine.