flyga

More Ann Arbor houses:

I am OBSESSED with this one on Ashley Street. It is a little out of our price range, and it's in a slightly sketchy neighborhood, but oh my. Look at the virtual tour. This place is SICK.

Wildwood. More affordable, also may not be in the nicest micro-neighborhood. But all neighborhoods are basically nice in Ann Arbor.

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I am flying (flyga) back to Stockholm tomorrow, after a miraclous flight extension. I got a cold the day before I was supposed to fly last week - or, as Boss said, "the sniffles," and did not want to have searing sinus pains for twelve hours. Also, there were all sorts of wedding planning things that it was very good for me to stay and help with. Also, I just couldn't bear leaving.

It was another excellent week. Some days it rained hard all day, other days, like today, it was sixty degrees and sunny and beautiful. I heard that Stockholm had its first real snow the other day, so it looks like I will be flying from summer to winter wonderland. Last night we cooked a truly delicious meal: lightly fried salmon cakes with corn & heirloom tomato salsa, an endive & watercress salad with blue cheese, toasted pecans, and grapes, and gooey lemon bars with a brown butter crust.

Now, I am drinking english breakfast tea, taking a break from packing, and watching the primary returns trickle in on CNN. I voted for Obama this morning but had a pang of sadness about Hillary while I was filling out my ballot. I am returning to Sweden with way more than I left with, due primarily to:

+the 45 minutes I spent at the Barney's sale before my Columbia interview
+the 8 DVDs I bought at "Busterblock" because I require a high level of entertainment in Sweden and DVDs there cost FIFTY DOLLARS.
+new running shoes, wicking socks for running, and a couple boxes of GU packets, which I am obsessed with and find to be simultaneously indispensable and repulsive.

I was able to get quite a bit of work done on my birth weight and depression project this week, at least, and I have many fun articles about things like the neurobiology of depression to read on my flights tomorrow. I'm actually looking forward to my flight in a sick sort of way. I fly straight from San Francisco to Amsterdam, in a whopping 11 hours, then a short flight on to Stockholm. I think this is way better than having a six hour flight to the East Coast, then having to switch in a hell-hole like Heathrow, then a third bloody flight to Sweden. Also the flight doesn't leave until 3:30 pm, so I don't have to get up at the crack of dawn.

I will probably bust into tears when Jake drops me off at SFO tomorrow because I won't see him until he flies out for the Zurich marathon at the end of April, but I'm actually really excited about going back for my final four-something months. I love the two projects that I've finally developed, I get to dog-sit for Luna at the end of February, we have a fully-funded Fulbright trip to Berlin in early April, I'm going to try to get to Dublin in March, and I'm coming up with plans for places in Sweden like Gotland and Umeå. It is slightly unbearable to leave Berkeley this time, though, because when I finally come back at the very end of May, there will only be about six weeks left of California for me.