Praise be to spring!

Work

State theater

Hockeytown

Hamtramck

Inside a Polish restaurant.

DIA

D-tour

Taking a tour of the D today.

A toast to three-day weekends...

Let the evening begin!

Look, listen and learn...

Don't say you don't like the symphony because you just might love it! Here's what we saw...



I must say that Bronfman was so passionate that he was also very fun to watch. The music had him jumping out of his chair at points. Bravo!

DSO

Wow! We had great seats at the DSO. (Look above.) It was our first time on the main floor. My only complaint was that we could not see the speed-of-light hands of Yefim Bronfman as he played Rachmaninoff.

Again, what an absolute gift to have gotten those inexpensive symphony tickets on a whim. Bronfman, though I'm sorry to say I'd never heard of him before, is considered "one of the most talented virtuoso pianists performing today," according to the Vancouver Symphony. All that for $10. Crazy!

The best $10 ever spent

Tonight is our last visit (of about 5) to Detroit Symphony's Orchestra Hall as part of the terrific deal we got to see almost any show for $10 a ticket. (This was a deal offered to people new to the DSO, you probably recall, and we bought tickets for several productions.)

Here's a synopsis of the show (of Rachmaninoff) from the Symphony's web site:

The Grammy Award-winning Bronfman, called “…a marvel of digital dexterity, warmly romantic sentiment and jaw-dropping bravura…” by the Chicago Tribune, performs the mighty Rach 3, featured in the movie Shine.

I feel so lucky we read about this $10 ticket deal in Detroit News all those months ago because I think I'll be a lifelong symphony-goer.

Detroit: The Paris of the West?

Wikipedia claims the D was once known as the Paris of the West. When you drive down some of the grand boulevards and see the once-stately homes, you can see why.

But I get a taste of its French connection several times a week when I try to drive the few blocks from my office building to the Y and back and somehow end up halfway across town. As mentioned in my earlier post, downtown D is built on a spoke.

Downtown Detroit historic map





And a Paris map from Place Charles de Gaulle (which was originally called Place de l'Etoile or star square).

Adopted planter before...

Adopted planter after!

Healthy living...

I think I've become a better, happier person thanks to eating more fruit. No joke. Try it! (Thanks, mom.)

Downtown D -- a retrospective

Did you have a concept of what the "D" looked like? Was this it?


This is a view of Campus Martius Park, the center of the spoke off which the city is built.


Anyone familiar with Detroit knows of Six Mile Road and Seven Mile Road. Eminem fans know of the now-infamous Eight Mile Road. Well, the "mile" roads derive their number from how far they are from Campus Martius (which is essentially zero mile).



Wikipedia says: Campus Martius Park is a re-established park in downtown Detroit, Michigan. After the fire of 1805, Campus Martius (from the Latin for Field of Mars, where Roman heroes walked) was the focal point of judge Augustus Woodward's plans to rebuild the city.


Also from Wikipedia: The new Campus Martius Park was dedicated on November 19, 2004. It includes two stages, sculptures, public spaces and a seasonal ice skating rink.


More: Compuware World Headquarters (above), located at One Campus Martius, was constructed in 2000 and finished in 2003. The high-rise is used as an office building, a restaurant, retail space for Compuware, and has a fitness center inside, as well as an atrium. It's constructed in the late-modernist architectural style, using glass, granite, and limestone as its main materials.




I hope you enjoyed your little tour of the D. Now come visit!

All aboard!

We're about to take a train trip to Ann Arbor (on another train, though.)

Big day at Flower Day!

Wow. We had a Big Day already with a stop at historic Eastern Market's Flower Day in Detroit. The one-time-a-year event draws thousands to the market to see the thousands of flats of flowers.

Mom, Dad, Patrick and I all piled in the Vue and spent a good two hours checking out the zinnias, wild flowers, spikes, impatiens, gazanias and more.

I read that people come towing all sorts of creatively-crafted red wagons and wheelbarrows to carry their flowers.

And it's true. They even build towering shelves on their wagons so they can stack the flats. (We had just eight arms and had to make two trips to haul all the flowers we bought.)

We also went through the fruit and vegetable sheds to check out the prices and picked up some fresh carrots (with the leaves still on) and oranges.

I ducked in one of the meat markets and the wine shop, too, and plan to return. The selection is so much better at the market.

We had so many flowers that we filled up the back of the Vue (and our laps).

Worms, be wary. Dirt, look out. We've got our garden gloves, and we're coming for YOU!

Can a person be in love with a fruit market?

If so, I'm in love with Westborn Fruit Market, which I visited Friday after work.

I love all the towering rows of oranges, blocks of blue cheese, shelves of red wine and glass cases of chocolate French pastries.

I love the black olives, yellow ears of corn, red and yellow apples and green leaf lettuce.

I love the fig jellies and chocolate peanut butter spread and the baguettes and pitas.

I brought home some delicious Saint Andre cheese, a triple creme cheese that has a buttery texture much like a Brie, and we accompanied it with a (too-sweet) Michigan Riseling that was fun to try.

Lovely day, after all.

This is not frost.

Bell's...

Bell's...How I did miss thee!

We had Bell's and threw darts at the Detroiter bar after work. Patrick got off just a tad early and it was so nice... not just because I killed the first game.

Anybody who knows Patrick's dart-throwing abilities knows that my win was really a superhuman feat. Let's just say he picks off the numbers during Cricket in descending order -- three 20s, three 19s, three 18s, etc. until he gets three bull's eyes.


But I had a stunning victory that included scoring about 153 points on him. Ha!

And of course, there was also the Bell's Oberon. I cut my teeth on Bell's in college. The Kalamazoo brewery was just steps away from my alma mater, Kalamazoo College. Lucky me.

If the beer wasn't so yummy, I'd say you should buy Bell's just for the labels. Enjoy the labels, but buy it for the beer instead.

Spring?

I love Michigan, but I don't know about the patchy frost that's expected!

Our future path?

This is a photo we took several weeks ago when it was still pretty cold, but we took the same walk today, so I figured it was legit if I posted it now.

It's near the area where we want to live (if we ever sell our house).

I absolutely love the neighborhood and salivate when I think of all the walks we will eventually have there, the flowers I will plant in my garden there, the softball we will play on the fields there, the picnics we'll share in the parks there, and on and on.

Yeah, I could focus on all the problems of living in the basement, just waiting for our house to sell. But I have to remind myself that it will sell eventually, and I know when it does, I'll miss these days.

After all, I'll never again have these mornings and evenings with my parents, sharing something I just read on the Internet, or bounding up the stairs after just trying my dad's potato dish and giving him my full report on his new recipe. I'll miss all the lunches my mom makes and the creative notes she writes me every day. I'll even miss coming home and having them "shush" us during Dancing with the Stars. Mostly, I'll miss all the little, regular, random conversations we share.

So while I love the walks Patrick and I take on our future path near our future house, I still love coming back to this place -- our home now.

Belated mom's day post

I think my mom really enjoyed her mom's day outing with me, which included an afternoon opera, two splits of champagne, fruit, cheese, olives, lemon cake and assorted other pastries at Small Plates in downtown Detroit.


She totally deserved the girls' outing, but it doesn't even equate to all the fruit salads, new buttons, mended sweaters and homemade suppers that I get day after day.

Happy mother's day, Mom. I am so lucky to have you.

Hee hee.

We probably should've bought one of these, too.

What a blast!

Saturday was such a fun day -- and not just because we bought a terrific cat tent from IKEA.

In fact, we never would've gone to IKEA this weekend if not for crazy Gina and Paul, who made it up for a whirlwind trip. I was soooooo tempted to overwhelm them with all sorts of hotspots in the D, but I'll save it for their real trip.

Instead, we met them at IKEA, bought a few unnecessary things (isn't that what always happens in IKEA? I doubt Paul really needed that vegetable chopper) and had a lovely dinner at a Thai joint named Thai Bistro in sprawling, suburban Canton, Mich.

What fun! Just like old times -- except in Cincinnati we'd be buying unnecessary things at Jungle Jim's.

Oh, and Taz was also very happy with Gina and Paul's visit -- as evidenced by the accompanying photo.