Comin' at Ya from Ypsi!

…and within a single month we jump from the height of Summer to its death throes. Three weeks ago we pulled up stakes and moved 10 miles down the road to Ypsilanti. It's a hobby to compare the poor place unfavorably to Ann Arbor, which isn't fair; there are more outward signs of trouble, true—more homeless scouring the neighborhood for glass bottles, empty storefronts all in a row, more broken glass in the street—but the rent's cheaper, local brew is $2.50 for 22 oz, Ian has a lovely bike commute under broad trees, and it's been scientifically proven that Ypsi is 85% less completely full of itself than AA. So the trade-off is closer to fair than not.
Ian has started to get serious about putting together the materials he'll need for the job market. As with most things, he should have gotten serious about this a good deal earlier, but he'll be none the worse for it. To the casual observer nothing has changed; he still spends long stretches at his computer, still tries his best to produce good prose about Aristotle day after day—but now he's a product and has to think about the packaging.

This kind of thinking is not foreign to him; he has an ideal advisor who has at every chance ushered him toward presentability, and the lessons will serve him well. Ian has an ambitious plan for drafting and redrafting the chapters of his dissertation and the numerous documents that philosophy departments across the nation will want to see from him (teaching dossier, writing samples, CV; it's not so different from applying to any other job that requires one to show something for the time one has spent preparing to apply for it)—ambitious and perhaps a bit insane, but he's only ever done what's expected of him, and the key to his success was always his unreasonable demands.

Today to celebrate our three months of marriage, we cleaned! Well, actually we cleaned before we rewarded ourself with a fun day. We traversed to Ann Arbor to eat at Zingerman's Road House for a late lunch. We've been talking about doing BBQ there for ages, and really, after such a yummy lunch, we shouldn't have put it off so long! After lunch we ran a few errands, then went on a lovely long bike ride on the patch between Ypsi and Ann Arbor. And how nice to come home to a lovely, sparkling apartment—with the cat lolling on the rug by the door—to some refreshing iced tea.

Anyone wishing to see our new place: your long and frustrating wait is over!

The Office, Where Ian Spends Much of His Time

Our Lovely Little Kitchen

Rachel's Chaise, Just to the Left of Ian's Desk

Our New Dining Table

Our Bedroom

Two months married, here we are!
It's been a crazy month.

The highlights:

1. Ian finished his first draft of his dissertation. Yay Ian!
2. Rachel was accepted into a masters program at Eastern University in the Womens and Gender Studies Program. Yay Rachel!
3. We've had crazy housing issues. See below.

Crazy Housing Situation
As few of you are aware, the home we are renting an apartment in was foreclosed on last December. While this was surprising, ...oh wait, no it wasn't, let's see, lack of maintenance, more than an average amount of house inspections, collection/settlement letters...

Anyways, after the six month redemption period ended in late June, we received a letter from a broker representing the new owner (the BANK) telling us NOT to pay our rent moving forward and offering a rather large settlement offer if we were out by July 16th.

We panicked!
We paced!
We went to an attorney.

Turns out the offer was legit, but gosh, we weren't ready to move so suddenly, Ian was in the final hours of finishing his first draft of his dissertation, and our new place wasn't available until August first. Luckily, after much back and forth between us and the broker's voice-mail, they finally agreed to give us the full Cash for Keys settlement offer for an August 2nd move out date. So, now we get an extra 2.5 months rent, essentially, for moving when were originally were planning to.

Last Saturday, I woke up to a large truck pulling into the driveway and a crew of men mulling about the house, knocking on doors and peeking in windows. I was trying to get our barfy cat to the vet, I myself wasn't feeling so hot, we had to pick up our food share, and Ian had literally worked all night and had only been asleep for a few hours. The men had been hired by the new owner, per their work order, to remove anyone/anything remaining in our building, even though legally we all had a right to be there until the end of September! As Ian and I were home and our place was clearly "occupied," we were spared their wrath (Process: If tenants are there, they cannot take anything from apartment, must file response to owner of property and try again another day). We were informed if a Sheriff drove by though, they could essentially take all of our stuff to the dump(!) and we couldn't prove we had a right to be there. I'm super glad we were home.

Our downstairs neighbor, poor-dispossessed-law-student-man, has been in Vienna for a few months. They got into his apartment and took everything. We were unable to stop them, had no one we could call that was "on our side" because it was the weekend, and were too scared to call the police, worried that we would then be forcibly removed.

Of course when we shared all of this with our broker on Monday she was horrified. Apparently the request that bank made was to change one set of locks on one of the tenants that had already moved out. Whoops! A stressful day, to say the least. Vixen and I eventually both received appropriate medical care during the day; we're both on antibiotics. Ian eventually calmed down.

The Future Masters Student
I was elated to finally get notification of acceptance to Eastern Michigan University (EMU). The plan is to get all of my classes finished in 3 semesters and graduate Summer 2011. If I'm unable to do this and Ian and I end up moving next summer, I will the ability to write my thesis long distance. I'm also completing an emphasis in Psychological Statistics, which will hopefully gear me up as a great graduate program candidate, or help if I go straight into a research or teaching position after graduation from EMU.

With all of this, I will transition to a part-time position at GreenPath, Inc. I will still work in the housing and debt counseling department while I go to school, because I would miss the long commute. Just kidding. It's for the money.

On May 22nd, 2010, Ian and I "tied the knot." Officially. Like, super-officially. Now we've been married a whole month and I had the idea of checking in once a month, on our lunaversaries, to update our families and friends on our life together.

So, it's been a month, and here we are.

Ian and I spent the first five days of our marriage in Acapulco on our honeymoon. When we realized that the hotel was round the bay and far away from anything remotely urban, we got a two-day rental and spent it driving along the scenic route and becoming steadily less terrified of Mexican traffic (best drivers Ian ever encountered, by the way, way better than in America). During our wanderings, we found several little restaurants, some with excellent seafood, one with tables right on the beach, and Ian's favorite, a taco restaurant that just brought you 5 fresh tortillas, a big pile of meat, and salsas arranged in order of whether a Gringo should even bother. Yum.

The rest of the time we spent lounging about on the beach, getting lost on walks around the beach, and in our hotel room (gasp!). We only got a little pink, a major feat for me, and both worked through several books.

After our honeymoon, we flew to Minnesota to be with my family. We had our second wedding reception at one of my favorite places, Peninsula, a fabulous Malaysian restaurant. Everyone took pictures in silly hats, we ate lots of coconut shrimp and drank lots of Malaysian tea - a good time overall.

Then it was back to Ann Arbor and real life. We asked ourselves, "What will we do with all of our free time now that we no longer have a wedding to plan and activities to organize?" Spoiler Alert: Work. Eat. Sleep. Relax.

The first week we were back in Ann Arbor we signed a lease for our new apartment in Ypsilanti. For those of you not in the area, it's one city over from Ann Arbor. It's not quite as wealthy a city, but is also a University town of sorts, with lots of fun restaurants and ethnic neighborhoods and grocery stores, in which Ann Arbor is seriously lacking. It's also a whole lot cheaper, and our new landlords are a sweet  married couple who also own the properties and maintain them impeccably (unlike our current apartment with its ceiling leak, drafty windows, and ever-growing spider population, not to mention the absentee owner and the foreclosure notice we received last winter.

So Ian and I will be moving the first weekend of August. The new place is a little smaller, but it's a beautiful, sweet little place with two bedrooms, hardwood floors, and, most exciting of all, washer and drier in the unit! Wahoo (we write this currently sitting in the laundromat, which must be at least 90 degrees and more humid than Ian's Vibrams after 8 miles in the Summer sun).

Beth McCready (my wonderful mother) and Matthais (younger brother) came to visit us and bring us our wedding gifts. We spent the couple of days cooking some great food, walking around Ann Arbor, and having a wonderful time. My mom also brought us the quilt she made by hand as a wedding gift. Below is a picture - it's beautiful! (Vixen, our kitty, has adopted the quilt as her own. How very thoughtful she is).

Ian (typing now) closes in rapidly on the academic job hunt, trying day in and day out to bring down the dissertation a few hundred words at a time. His prospects are as good as anyone's, but anyone's is terrible so that's no cause for excitement. He'll pay his money, take his chances and do what it takes.

 We also finally at long last got the first installment of our Community Support Agriculture (hereafter CSA) share through Frog Holler Organic Farm. Garlic scapes, kale, salad mix, strawberries and more, and that's just the first salvo. We weren't good locavores (a word Ian personally hates on a personal and etymological level, but he does not control language) last Summer so we're making up for it. It's also bought and paid for so that frees up money for the grass-fed beef and muscato wine that we so crave. The share will give us a chance to work through our new cookbook season by season. Nice.

That's about all, until another moon's turning...