The weather has been great most days (although a little humid) so I've been having lunch near the Grand Rapids Art Museum.

Here is a shot of the typical scene. Lunch, bags, Kindle.

     

Yesterday was Tuesday and the Wealthy Theatre was playing a classic - The Princess Bride.

Since the story holds a special place for both Daniel and Sherry we all decided to go out to see the movie together.

We had dinner at Brick Road Pizza, which is just down the street from Wealthy Theatre.

It was a pretty full house tonight.  Nearly every seat was taken and the line to buy tickets was longer than usual.

There was even a small presentation by a representative of the Grand Rapids Public Library who had some trivia and information regarding the movie and the public library.  It's the first time I've seen Wealthy Theatre do something like this and it didnt bother me at all.

Anyway, as you can see - I took much more photos today to make up for yesterday!

No...this is not about a singing crab and a mermaid.It's about me having forgotten to take a photo for the day.  So here's a cover of an older edition of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Verne I've been reading on the Kindle.

It's been slow going but finally about 8 chapters in (they're very short chapters) it's getting interesting.

I'm looking forward to reading more of it.  Especially since I'm really not all that familiar with this story, having never read it and never watched any of the movies.

So that was on my mind Monday (outside of work, and class).

Sunday was pretty low key. Since Chris and I had spent the majority of Saturday walking around or driving around on the east side of the state we decided to relax for the remainder of the weekend.  So I tested a brownie recipes which seems alright (maybe too sweet).  I also did some homework and studying for the upcoming finals next month.

Chris showed me Logan’s Run, which was interesting enough. I enjoyed it, and was delighted to find out the strange old rambling man was Peter Ustinov, whom I loved as a kid in Blackbeard’s Ghost (1968). As I usually do – I checked online to see if there were large differences between the movie and the actual book. There were. So I plan on tackling that after a few other books I have lined up.

In late afternoon we walked over to Cold Stone Creamery, which is a little over a mile one way, and ended up just having that for dinner. One of the benefits of the weekend – more free time to take a few hours out of the day for a trip to the ice cream shop and relaxing.


Today marks the last day for the annual Ann Arbor Street Art Fair. It's a huge art fair, larger than any one I'd been to growing up.  And there were an amazing number of people when we first arrived, despite the rain.

Of course with rain and heat comes humidity, and today was no exception.  The humidity was really high, as was the temperature (90ish).  So we wandered around for a few yours, being sure to hit Vault of Midnight, which is a comic shop Chris used to frequent when was in town.   We even stopped in at Wizzywig, which had moved from downtown Ann Arbor and is apparently much smaller (and very disappointing).

Next was IKEA.  I'm not sure when it was built, but it's not that old of a location in Canton.  And I know lots of people who it's a big deal to.  So Chris took me over there so I could get a taste.  It feels very Disneyworld  but with none of the awesome rides. I can definitely see the appeal though. Entire rooms laid out and all you have to do is write down the numbers and grab everything down below. No real hassle of figuring out how to decorate and coordinate things.

The problem for me is everything in IKEA is in a very modernism (or is it post-modernism?) style. I'm not a fan of the style.  So most things there don't appeal to me.  Anyway, Chris has some pretty amusing video of my reaction to seeing the whole place for the first time. If you know me, you know I'm not a huge shopper and it's a huge store....

After IKEA Chris took me to his old stomping grounds, and showed me his old neighborhoods and favorite hangouts.

All in all, great day!

A while back Woot! had a nice deal on Cuisinart panini grills. This thing does more than I need (it's a panini press, grill, and griddle) but for $40 bucks I'll take it all just to get the panini grill.

It arrived yesterday and I looked it over but waited till today to give it a serious go.

Since we had some chicken that needed cooking I decided to try a chicken pesto panini for me and a chicken and cheese panini for Chris.

Since it's a grill as well I used it to make grilled chicken.  Those got done pretty quickly so I cleaned off the plates and got the sandwiches ready.

The sandwiches were tasty, though I've been condtioned to receive potato chips with paninis for some reason, so I felt like something was missing.

I'm excited to try my hand at making tasty tomato and mozzarella paninis, which Panera sells and I love.


I had lunch today with an old co-worker from a temp job we both worked last year.

It was good to catch up with her and the food was tasty.  She works downtown as well, which is pretty convenient for mid-week lunch meet-ups!

As you can see, lunch was massive.


The room where my Wednesday class is normally held had some maintenance that needed to be done.  So we all piled up on the top floor of the building (5th, to be exact).

I swear the room was even colder than the one we normally sit in...but the view outside was nice because it was slightly different.