In the Midwest, sunny days are generally punctuated by an ever-so-slight polka-dotting of the sky by tiny, puffy, ultrahigh clouds that scroll from horizon to horizon in a lazy progression of sun and shade. During 'the Florida years' I got totally used to the constant sun of cloudless days, but being back around a Midwestern summer makes me realize the beauty of the occasional cloud and the blessing of an occasional sunshadow.
Lots of weekend activity to post, starting with a killer al fresco meal that hearkened back to last fall's pre-football feasts: spicy venison brats (thanks Bill!) and corn on the cob. Saturday we chose an ad hoc trip to Lansing's Potter Park Zoo. Local zoos are what they are, but Potter Park is pretty impressive. We saw three baby Amur (Siberian) Tiger cubs, snow leopards, a lion, two wolves howling at the tornado whistle, and many a monkey, oryx, peacock, and so on. After the zoo, we headed back to Woodbridge to hit the pool, forage for some lunch, and get ready for the evening's MSU Library Circulation Department (are you ready for this?) Bar Crawl. Basically, we met about a dozen other 'brarians and took in the festivities around the great city of East Lansing...Crunchy's, Harper's, Lou & Harry's, and B-dubs. Sunday was meant to be an outing to the park, but the park was slammed, so we used the lawn at Jenelle's and then made a foray to Meijer for ingredients for a day-early birthday feast for Robin that included Italian bread with balsamic vinegar and olive oil, hot bacon dressing over spinach greens tossed with hard-boiled egg, spanikopita, and rhubarb cobbler a la mode. We also enjoyed a fine white wine from Leelanau Cellars with the meal, a fine complement to a hot summer day if I don't say so myself. Afterwards we hit Cold Stone and then The Post, where we met Robin's formerly imaginary friend Sarah.
Robin's birthday (today, #22, well done, rah rah sis-boom-bah!) is a fine time to advertise the launch of Robin @ Thailand. This new blog will help Robin keep all of the friendly and familial readers of BrownCow up to speed on the shape of her world. (And, please note, a quick and easy link to Robin @ Thailand appears in the "Intranet Reference" menu to the left.)
Monday, June 06, 2005