Weekend Scampering Locations

Breanne visited this week! She rolled in on Tuesday night with Jeff Thomas and we ate downtown and then had bountiful amounts of various beers and sangrias back at the apartment before throwing all our chairs in the pool and going for a midnight-ish swim. Wednesday we spent shopping mostly at Somerset where Breanne bought some cool jeans with a houndstooth top, and for me a nice suit jacket at the Levi's Store. Poor Amateis was rather ill from Tuesday night so unfortunately she was out of commission until later in the day. The day pretty much ended when we tried to watch a particularly painful episode of MST3K that Netflix had shipped us. Amateis and I vowed as we always do to Actually Do Something This Weekend!

Friday night started on an altogether un-party note (Joel Walkowski's going-away party) and we were left aimless and deceptively dressed like we had destinations. In order to pick one which would provide the beverages the going-away party would have needed in order to be celebratory, OnStar recommended calling Shawn & Diallo, who have sixth sense radar beam laser eyes for good beers. They were happy to go out after skillfully adjusting their wardrobes and we all booked it in the direction of Ferndale.

The find of the night was definitely The Emory, which is just about the classiest looking bar ever. It's the sort of place that you'll frequent just because it looks good on you. In addition to being so well designed, The Emory features an excellent selection of tasty beers. We sampled a few, I accidentally flipped over half a pint of Guinness on the table and tried to tell the waitress it had cursed at me. On the second round an incredible discovery was made: Wittekerke. It's a light-colored wheat beer like Hoegaarden, but I've never been that impressed with Hoegaarden and even less after trying Wittekerke. Completely delicious with a twist of lemon.

Most of us having been put in quite an easygoing mood by our beers, we decided to walk around downtown Ferndale some more and try to top The Emory. We should have known, but the extremely loud overcrowded Budweiser-powered Beyoncefest on the patio at Como's was something we should have passed by and not through. After Escape From Sweaty Island we went across Woodward, through a door, abruptly down some stairs, and into Gracie's Underground. Their DJ was decent and played a few interesting hip-hop songs none of us had heard. I'd like to try the one in Royal Oak as it's supposed to be more of a jazz martini bar.

On Saturday Amateis and I played a game of disc golf at Wagner Park, which is much nicer and more varied in terrain than Star-Jaycee. We also checked out the Detroit Urban Craft Fair where some really impressive stuffed animal-like things and rubber garments were on display. If they do it again I'd love to get a table there and sell some tickpods. An opressive boredom set in after we came back home and as a product of our frenzied brainstorming we ended up on the freeway headed for Chicago at 11:00PM to visit David Posigian. Unfortunately, not 40 miles away from home we realized that we had plans to go out for my sister's birthday and since my family is generally scattered around the globe by various aircrafts and vehicles, we keep the few dining engagements we have together. Amateis stopped at the next exit, we scarfed down some Denny's food, and sleepily drove back to Royal Oak.

Just as one final plan-foiling, we were thwarted in our attempt to catch an egg-sized baby rabbit outside of some apartment complex when an old man came by and stood in our way spewing all his (uncalled for) infinite rabbit knowledge at us. I mean I was running around on their lawn apparently trying to catch ghosts by using a black hoodie as a net, but come on. I know all about rabbits. We left, but realized that the baby rabbit is totally going to get eaten and we were pretty much super furious at that old sumbitxch for the rest of the night.

Today all I've done is barely woken up, gone out, bought a present, drank this pomagranate lemonade they sell at the Nordstrom café, eaten too much food, and tried not to fall asleep. Could getting up at 5:30AM be any less appealing please? In any case, there might be a few funny photos and movies from our almost-a-trip-to-Chicago coming if Amateis knocks them down from Class A Security Clearance materials to something a little more accessible.