A great visit from an old friend.

This past weekend, my friend BD came into town, and we had a grand old time. He was my flatmate here in Ann Arbor back in 2003-2005, and we had a great time together, coming up with interesting design solutions to many of our identified problems. He helped me come up with my cantilevered wall shelving system, which maximized my floor space, while also utilizing the 16" of wall space located on a level above the door-frame and below the 8' ceilings in most rooms. I took his idea and adapted it to the following abodes, but not with the current one, since I have stone walls, and I don't want to bust into them with a hammer drill. He also helped design a weather-proof exhaust-fan system for the outhouse that is used at the caretaker's cottage in Saginaw Forest, thus making the experience in the summer not only bearable, but actually quite peaceful and pleasant, with the added bonus of creating compost in the 'reservoir', thanks to all the air being drawn through (which helps with the aerobic digestion of the 'inputs', thus keeping the amount of methane buildup to a minimum).

Anyway, he drove in to Ann Arbor in his new diesel Smart car, having sold his ancient SAAB once he learned that it would cost him a lot of money to make sure it was up to passing the emissions and safety tests that Canada makes cars pass (unlike in Michigan, where you can drive almost any piece of junk, so long as someone will insure it). The car is actually quite roomy in the passenger area, and I have enough head clearance, so I don't have to slouch. True, it doesn't have a lot of acceleration, but it will definitely get you from point A to point B, if not as quickly as a mid-1980s SAAB, then at least with a lot less fuel consumption. (B told me that his car gets something like 40 miles per gallon in the city). Oh, and parking is a breeze, too.

Our Sunday was filled with sitting, drinking coffee, and talking with lots of people that were B's friends (and my acquaintances), and also making some new connections between people who didn't know each other before; catching up on what had been happening over the last year; talking about the day-to-day of our lives; and just "being". I don't know if the staff at Tomukun (where we had a late lunch) knew what they were in for when our group of six (plus a baby) came in at 1pm... and left about 2.5 hours later. (Still, it wasn't busy, and they weren't hurting for tables.)

The evening finished at about 10PM, after some pizza, beer, and (even more!) good, congenial, conversation around a kitchen table (baby put to bed, and with us looking through the internet). All-in-all a great little time.