People Take Pictures of the Winter

Last night Ann Arbor got dumped on. By snow. Lots of it. Nevertheless, I still had to head over to school at 10:00 a.m. to take one last test (a placement test to waive my German diction requirement - I passed). I've lived in Ann Arbor for about a year and a half now and it seems to me that no one has ever told the city that if you plow the road, it will be driveable. I'm just sayin'. When I got to the music building the parking lot had not been plowed, and the snow on the ground came up to the bottom of the car door:

Let's just say I'm glad I'm not still in my walking boot (I just returned it to the Student Health Center -hooray!). I've taken other random pictures of winter stuff recently. It's like The Kinks once said: "People take pictures of the summer [or in this case, winter] just in case someone thought they had missed it, and to prove that it really existed." If you liked the picture above, here are some other winter pictures you might enjoy - but you don't have to take my word for it:

This is the pond outside the music building. I've been really fascinated by it this winter I've taken one picture of it each day to chart it's progress as it has frozen over. On this particular day, someone slid a picnic table out onto the ice.

As my friend Mike McMurtrey pointed out, aren't geese supposed to fly south? If you're favorite hangout has frozen over, I think that's a good time to think about migrating.

Sometimes when you've been shut up in the library for a long time and you're a little burned out, it's nice to look out and see a little Norman Rockwell-type scene.

I mentioned the ward mingle on Sunday in a previous post, and this handsome Yule Log cake was definitely the star of the show. It arrived at the mingle via Martha, who had gotten it from Phil, who had gotten it from a friend, who had gotten it from Zingerman's, a famous gourmet bakery in Ann Arbor. A bunch of people went straight for it, and as they started eating it (I won't name any names) they started making faces and noticed that it had a peculiar flavor to it. Long story short, it had a pretty good amount of rum in it. Elizabeth Downie quickly swooped in and took it back into the kitchen so no one would mistakenly (or not mistakenly) eat any more of it. A few days later I was at the institute and popped in the kitchen and it was still on the counter. I promptly threw it in the trash. I just hope Brother Elms hadn't grabbed a piece in the meantime.

My parents mailed me this fantastic Utah Jazz Santa hat a few weeks ago and I've been wearing it steadily ever since. However, tonight it will make it's most important appearance of all: at the Palace of Auburn Hills as the Jazz face the Detroit Pistons. The Jazz play in Detroit but once a year and believe me, I've had this date circled on my calendar since the day they first posted the NBA season schedule. I need to show my Jazz pride, but at the same time I need to be judicious about it, since I am going to the site of the worst brawl in the history of professional sports. Thankfully, Ron Artest isn't playing tonight and we're way up in the nosebleed section ($9 tickets, baby!) so if a riot breaks out I'll probably not be in the fray.

GO JAZZ!!!!!