Thursday my parents arrived from DC, picked us up after work, and took us to Madras Masala. I satisfied long-standing curiosity by ordering the chili cheese dosa. The chili in question was hot green peppers. There wasn't anything wrong with it, but I didn't like it particularly either--back to the masala dosa next time.
Afterwards we went to north campus to the music school for a couple student recitals--we split up, so my mom and I saw a pianist and my dad and Sara a basoonist.
Friday I did a half day at work, then we had lunch at Jefferson Market, filled our afternoon with a tour of Motawi Tileworks--well worth the trip and the $5 a person--and then had dinner at Pilar's. I was feeling a little run down by the end of the day, so I stayed home, napped, and did some minor chores, while Sara and my folks did a shopping trip to Meijer's.
Saturday we walked around Park Lyndon, northwest of Ann Arbor. The most interesting thing we saw was these little bundles of sticks--at first we thought that's all they were, but after seeing too many, and moving in ways that couldn't be explained by the current, it was obvious there was something living in them. Every now and then you could see it point a little insect-like head out. Presumably it's something like a hermit crab, that builds a little twig-based body around itself and lives in lakes. I'd love to know what it was. How do you google for something like that?
Sara recently discovered that the Bloomfield Hills house her grandfather built, and her mother grew up in, is for sale. It's out of our range. But she wanted to go take a look, so we did. We knocked on the door, and the couple living there were delighted to show us around--it turns out he's a carpenter, had made a hobby out of some impressive additions to the house over the years, and both were interested in the house's history.
We had a huge dinner at Cederland in Dearborn, then browsed the impressive pastry selection at Shatila, before returning home by way of Randazzo Joe's, which is just like the produce section at your local supermarket, at about 4 times the scale. The selection wasn't even all that great, given the size, but the quality and prices seemed good.
Sunday my folks took off in the early afternoon, and we stayed home, except for another brief grocery expedition (this time, to Hiller's). It was a lovely day out, but Sara was coming down with something, and I wasn't feeling too energetic myself. In the evening we tried executing a big freezer-stuffing plan of Sara's that involved doing the prep for 20 meals at once. It turned out to be more involved than expected, so we probably won't try it again. But we sure do have huge quantities of food now.
Work has been very busy. I'm frustrated by all of the things I'm having to put off.