On the Ann Arbor Art Fair and Finding Bats in Strange Places

I think Kelsey and I both agree that one of our favorite things last summer was the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair. It happens for about a week each summer. The city of Ann Arbor blocks off several city blocks around campus and artists and artisans from all over come and set up in white tents along the street. There are paintings, sculptures, jewelry, pottery, woodwork, clothing, photographs, as well as concerts by local artists and food from local eateries. It's kind of like a cross between an art museum, a block party, and a craft fair. Most of what is being sold at the art fair is much to expensive for my budget. I saw some necklaces that I absolutely loved the other day when I was wandering past the tents right outside the school of education, and I was awfully tempted until I saw the $75+ price tags. There are prints and knick-knacks that are more affordable, and Kelsey and I agreed that if we were to come back the next year we would both buy something. Last year was just for looking. Unfortunately, Kelsey made other, arguably better plans for the summer :), and I have accumulated I won't say how many hundreds of dollars in car expenses in the last two months, so this may be yet another looking year.

I'm not entirely sure why I get so excited about the Art Fair. For some reason, more than anything else in Ann Arbor, I equate the art fair with summer. It seems to happen right when summer finally turns hot, and there are kids at lemonade stands taking advantage of the influx of people, and tourists in shorts and flip-flops and sunglasses. When the art fair comes to Ann Arbor, I think now it is summer, and yet this is also about the time of year when summer begins winding down. We have passed the summer solstice and the days are getting shorter again. The semester at the community college is nearing an end and my students are beginning to get antsy to be finished. I am starting to realize how much I have left to do and how little time there is to do it. August is like a non-month. It is where everyone is moving back to town, or back home, or taking last-minute vacations, or getting married (Kelsey...), and then suddenly it is September and the summer I anticipated is just a memory, and I am once again back to eight months of getting through life until summer hits again.

That's kind of depressing.

So I will end this blog on an up note (sort of) that has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the post, because I wanted to share one of the strangest news stories I heard this last week on the radio. It was about a young woman in the UK who felt a strange vibrating that she thought was her cell phone. After more than four hours, though, she finally checked and discovered that it was not actually her cell phone. It was a bat. And the bat was in her bra.

I am completely baffled by how you can not notice a bat in your bra for four hours (although I am not particularly, er, well-endowed, so perhaps my perspective is slightly skewed). Go look it up - it's great fun to think up terms to put in your Google search bar for this one ("woman bat bra cell phone"...).