August 14

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We've admired this hibiscus near the farmers' market before.

We buy Harnois eggs.

I don't know that I've spoken to Nic, but John is a character, and fun to talk to.  What do you want to bet their eggs are gluten-free, too??

More humor in the farmers' market neighborhood.

My daughter dropped me at the University's Graduate Library, so I could get a book I wanted for Maps and the Geospatial Revolution -- Designing Better Maps.

A person by the rear entrance/exit, who was trying to be helpful, sent me up to the sixth floor, where lots of other GA (Library of Congress cataloging system) books are supposed to be.



Ooooh.  I always forget how much I love the Graduate Library.

Look!  Hundreds (thousands?) of shelves.  Really tall, really long shelves.  With millions and billions of books!

This is less than half of one floor, and I think there are 8 floors.  In this part of the library.  And more, in the older part.......

All along the outsides of this part of the building are study carrels. 



At this time of year, the carrels are (almost) empty.  I saw one (1) other person on this floor, during the 15 minutes or so I was up here.

Here's the inside of a carrel.  I may need to bring a novel up here and just spend some time.

Soon, very soon, before all the students come back.............

Looking north from another carrel, farther east than that first one.  I would go out to the end of the building, with my novel............

Ok, enough messing around.  Let's find the book.  I'd looked it up on-line the day before, and was told it was on the shelf.....

Hmmm.  It would have been on the top shelf.  I didn't see anything up there (WAY up there!) that looked promising, given the pic of the book in the catalog, but I hunted up a wheely step-ladder thing, brought it here, and climbed up.  Nope, not up there.  HUMPH.

Ok, before we leave the sixth floor, let's look out the south-facing windows.

This is southeast.

I don't know if there's anyone in the audience who went to college here, 30 or 40 years ago.....  The UGLI (Undergraduate Library) has been gentrified, there's a new Ed School, and there are ***LOTS*** of new apartment buildings.

You still don't have to be too high, in Ann Arbor, to have an excellent view.  (Though the mayor and his cronies are working as hard as they can to change that.....)

Looking southwest.  The olde-fashioned buildings are the law school (built to resemble something Oxbridge-ian).  If you click on the next pic to see a bigger version, you can see a block M on the horizon, near the right side of the image.  That's the stadium.

I tore myself away from the windows, and went downstairs to attempt to complete my next task -- getting myself set up to be able to put books on reserve.  As retired staff, I am entitled to check books out of the U's library system, and, having signed up, I should be able to put them on hold, too.  Yet another excellent benefit of having worked for the U....................

I found a helpful person who could get me set up to be able to reserve stuff, and I asked her about Designing Better Maps.  She told me it was on the second floor (not the sixth!), in a special maps collection.  I thanked her profusely, and went back up to the second floor.



Oooooh!  I am charmed by the collection of globes!

Love maps.  Love globes!

Look!  Many, many, many drawers, full of maps!

Designing Better Maps was on the shelf in this room, just like it was supposed to be.  Hooray!  I took it back downstairs, and checked it out.

How totally excellent.  The University of Michigan Graduate Library has open stacks.  Anyone can walk in and use the resources.  Anyone.  And I can check stuff out ("Due December 1st").  How cool is that.  Happy sigh.



The next part of my agenda was to try to lay eyes on the guy who taught my first Coursera class.  His office (or, I guess, ONE of his officeS) is very near the Grad.

Coursera recently opened up a shop (something I suggested to them months ago!).  I bought a tshirt, only to discover that it was 65% plastic rather than 100% cotton as advertised.  I complained, and when they discovered that all of the shirts they were selling were 65/35, they offered me one of the cotton samples they had received from a different manufacturer when they began to contemplate selling logo merchandise.

I said, "yes, please, send me a cotton tshirt."  I did NOT say "which is what you should have sent me in the first place, you twits!"

With the second tshirt, they sent some pens, some post-it-type notes, a frisbee-type object, and a teeny weeny flashlight.  Yay.

I thought the guy who taught my first Coursera class might be amused to have a pen, so I brought one with me, on the 14th, to offer him if I managed to track him down.  I wore my Coursera tshirt, too!

I did find his office, but the lights were off and no one was home.

Oh well.



Next on the schedule was lunch with my work buddies.



Walking across the Diag toward State Street, looking north toward Rackham.

I enjoyed lunch with my buddies, as always.  The last time I ate with them, I went to the U's archaeology museum after lunch, and then got SOAKED on my way home.

This time the weather stayed beautiful and blue.  After lunch, my buddies wanted gelato, so we went into a gelato place.  The young woman scooping the gelato said she'd heard of Coursera!  She made my day -- she was the only person who reacted to the tshirt.  She said one of her friends took the guitar class.



Walking home, looking east over West Park.

Hibiscus.

The 14th was a busy day.

Walking to yoga.

I think these are waterlily leaves, pining for the fjords.  I was surprised that they were orange.

Love the shapes (green stuff, too, esp. upper right curvy leaf) and shadows, as well as the orange triangles.

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