Ann Arbor persisted in being entertaining all the way to the end. On the second night, we hit “Conor O’Neils” for some decent hefewiezen and trivia. Although we knocked it out of the park in the science category, we did pretty poorly on music (other than me recognizing a Portishead track) and the rest was a mixed bag. Some scurvy dogs brought laptops to the trivia challege, which if nothing else made us feel a lot less bad about losing.
The next night we played a bit of poker. It was a blast, $10 buy-in, tons of fun games. I was a big fan of Omaha in particular, maybe because the hands are so dynamic with each turn of the cards. More entertaining than non-stop, no-limit Texas hold’em, which people in Berkeley seem to like to play. Overall, I managed to get zero pictures of the trip… pretty pathetic, actually. How will I tell my grand children about that one time I went to Michigan?
And now I’m back in Berkeley, with my prelim behind me, and nothing in front but a vast expanse of semesters stretching nearly to the end of the decade that stand between me and a Ph.D. I guess you could say at this point I’m far enough in to have a clue, but not so far that I have any idea what I’ve gotten myself into. I mean, really, what could take 4-6 more years to finish?
In fairness, it was your second trip to Michigan. On the first, you took lots of pictures. Plus it was in January, which is much more conducive to stories for your grandchildren (as they can involve walking uphill in the snow).