Hello September!

It's so sad when amazing four-day weekends come to an end. The good news, summer is also coming to an end! And all of you know how I feel about fall. :) Oh yes...I am in love with fall. You would be, too, if your house didn't have air-conditioning. But it's not just the crisp, cool weather that I love. It's everything -- fall clothes, fall food, falling leaves, Halloween, Thanksgiving. I would have said bonfires in the past, but there will be NO bonfires this year! I get all nostalgic and romantic in the fall, especially October, which is my favorite month of all time. Brad and I first kissed (2002), got engaged (2005) and got married (2006) in October. I need to move to a place where fall lasts all year. Any suggestions?

This weekend started on Friday morning, since I had the day off. I got up early to do some schoolwork and met up with my brother and my mom for shopping and lunch. (My brother came into town from Maryland Thursday night.) After a satisfying, productive day, I crashed for two hours at home and woke up to Brad asking me if I wanted to go to Vinology -- my current favorite restaurant in town -- for drinks. Um, hell yes? I'd already eaten dinner, so I had two glasses of Starry Night Zinfandel, which I'd first tried when I dined there with some co-workers last month.

Saturday, I took Michael mountain biking at Olson Park, which is a little-known trail in northeast Ann Arbor I used to ride every Thursday night. We did three loops of the main trail and explored some of the side trails. I always forget how much I love this trail -- it's easy enough for a novice like me to ride the whole thing without getting off, but difficult enough that it gets my heart rate up (both from exertion and the rush of making it through a few challenging spots). We came home, had lunch, napped, and headed out with Brad to the last German Park Picnic of the season. One of us had a few too many beers (to protect the innocent, I won't say who :) so it ended up being an early night.

Sunday we hung around for most of the day and did house stuff, including the putting-together of my new office! The whole schoolwork at the kitchen table with the TV blaring thing wasn't working out -- I definitely needed a quiet place of my own with a door that closed. So we got a new desk for the office and moved the old desk into MY office, which is also the spare bedroom. It has everything I need (a desk with a drawer, a bookshelf, file cabinets, wireless internet, a phone jack and NO TV!). It will definitely help out on days I work from home, too. We're supposed to get all of our fire damage fixed in September, so there will probably be quite a few work-from-home days.


Our "old" office, with a brand-new desk!


My "new" office

After a day of moving furniture, we grabbed dinner with my parents at Szechuan West, which was delicious but unfortunately gave one of our party a serious case of the poops (again, to protect the innocent...:) so it was once again an early night.

And finally, today, I got up early, finished my assignment (one day early!) and went for an early-morning bike ride by myself. Tonight I need to stay in and catch up on some major work (job work, not schoolwork) so I'm not completely behind next week. But at least I get to do it in my new office!

All in all, it was the PERFECT weekend. It was productive but not crazy, and long enough that I actually feel like I got some relaxing done. Man I wish there were more four-day weekends to go around. Goodbye summer, hello fall!