Saturday, March 22, 2008

Earlier this week I had the flu. Fairly unusual; I probably get a cold once a year, but I can't remember the last time I had the flu. Luckily it came and went pretty fast, so I was only out of it for 2 days. I must have slept 15-20 hours each of those days.

I noticed something: Tylenol has stopped making all of their Tylenol Flu products. In fact, if you look on their website, there is a "how to distinguish between cold and flu" page, and on that page, it says "if you have a cold, take these products..." and says nothing about if you have the flu. And if you go to your local drugstore or grocery store, you won't find any Tylenol flu products (at least I didn't in the 2 places I looked). Strange. Actually, they do make one flu product: some children's flu syrup.

Anyway, other than that, here's what's been happening in the past month. A fair amount of stuff, actually.

Jenny had her back surgery about a month ago. By now she is doing pretty well. Not 100%, but she's back to school and work. Her surgeon is a U of M alum, and he sang the fight song to me at the hospital. Haha.

I went snowboarding twice with labmates, both times to local places in southeast Michigan. Since there are no mountains here, these places sort of sucked compared to real ski resorts, but they were relatively cheap, and fun times were had by all. Unfortunately I have no photos.

The weather had been getting progressively warmer and all the snow melted, and then last night, we had a big storm which brought about 10 inches of snow. That's quite a lot considering it's technically spring. We usually get one last snowstorm in early spring, but usually without much accumulation... this time there was plenty. Also, a week ago we had a barbeque on the back porch because the temperature went over 50 for the first time... and now the porch is covered in snow.

I've lived in Ann Arbor for almost 6 years now, and today I went to the farmer's market in Kerrytown for the first time. Yep, there's been a farmer's market 1 mile away from my house twice a week for the past 6 years and I've never been to it until now. Although it was actually kind of a letdown because there were only like 3 vendors. Probably something to do with the big snowstorm last night which I just mentioned.

I went to a Foo Fighters concert back in February. It was great. It was at the Joe Louis Arena (where the Red Wings play) so there was a huge number of people. I was surprised to find out that I recognized almost all of the songs. Anyway the concert itself was pretty fancy, they had both an end stage and a center stage. Depending on the song, the size of the band varied from up to 7 people (including a cellist/violinist and a triangle player) down to just Dave Grohl playing Everlong by himself.

I also went to a James Blunt concert in February. It was good, although I didn't know any of his songs. Actually, the crowd was more interesting to watch than the performer. Some funny observations:

• A girl ran on stage, shook James Blunt's hand, and tried (unsuccessfully) to kiss him
• I heard the voice of a middle-aged man yelling "TAKE IT OFF!"
• There are a surprising number of middle-aged women who are fans of James Blunt. And the middle-aged women in the crowd were more rowdy than the teenagers. Who knew?

I was going through the photos on my phone and came across this one, which is from when we tried to go to a Norm's over winter break:

The lower sign says "Open Christmas and New Year's. WE NEVER CLOSE." The upper sign says "WE ARE CLOSED." Haha.

March Madness is in full swing. I screwed up my bracket. What happened was, I was filling out my bracket last week, but it wasn't saving my choice for overall champion for some reason, so I gave up and figured I'd fix it later. Then I got sick and forgot about it, and then yesterday I realized I didn't pick a winner. So my bracket looks weird because it actually did save my guess for the final score, but not which team gets which score. And I think the overall champion is worth a big chunk of the total points, so I have no chance of winning unless everyone else gets theirs wrong too. Oh well.

Oh yeah, one last thing. I got a ScanGauge for my car. It's pretty cool, shows all sorts of info. One thing it can show (if you tell it how much you paid for gas) is cost per trip, so it's like having a running taxi meter, heheh. Last weekend I mounted it into one of the DIN spaces in the center console (replacing one of my pockets). Eventually I should post a picture of it and update my Maxima page.