Welcome to the Blogosphere/Happy Groundhog Day!

I blog. I am a blogger. Look at me blog.

I'd like to give a shout out to my sisters Amy and Emily for blazing the trail and convincing me to start this blog. I love looking at their blogs - it immediately makes me feel like I know what what's going on in their lives. Their blogs are a chronicle of some of the major events that they are going through, but to me they are even more valuable for the entries about the small things that happen every day and might otherwise be not shared with others and ultimately forgotten. I feel like it's the tiny details and anecdotes that reveal what a person's life is actually like, revealing how they think and feel about the world around them.

I already have a Facebook page, but like the homepage says, it is a 'social utility' useful for planning events and sending messages (and I love it for that), but I have long felt that my Facebook page doesn't actually say anything about who I am. It gives no insight into how I feel and what is important to me and what my daily life is like. So when I talked to Emily on the phone the other day and she applied a little bit of pressure on me to start a blog, I had already warmed up to the idea and she just gave me the necessary nudge to just do it.

To kick off my blog I wanted to write about one of my favorite things here in Ann Arbor: the mural on the fence by my apartment.

I love this mural so much. It stretches the entire length of the block and is just a riot of color, imagination, and life - especially now that it is winter. I've got to admit that one of the many reasons I picked the apartment where I now live was its proximity to this mural (okay, I picked my apartment mostly due to the awesome location, great price, and cool roommates, but the mural is what clinched the deal). At the end of the wall, the creator has labeled the work "The Story of a Million Flowers: A mural by Erica and her beautiful friends." I'd like to thank Erica and all her beautiful friends for this wonderful sight that never fails to make me happy when I see it each day.

P.S. - This post got all bloated because I wrote all that 'statement of purpose' stuff at the beginning. I promise future posts will be shorter and pithier.