Still sorting it out

When John and I visited Michigan in December, we organized a few big group events -- we'll be at the Earle at 6 p.m. Tuesday, stop by if you can, that sort of thing.

The upside was that we got to see lots of people. The downside was that on our few nights in Ann Arbor, we basically said hello and good bye to many of those people. We were blessed with having maybe 20 people or so come by one night, over a dozen another time, and while festive and celebratory, it's not really conducive to real conversations. You just sit down to talk to one person and someone else is coming or going.

This time we decided to try a different approach. We aimed for more quality, less quantity. We thought about the people we missed most and the people who've made the most effort to stay in touch. We thought out who we wished we'd had more time with last time, and how much we could realistically do without feeling overwhelmed.

So this summer visit was much more about us hanging out with another couple or two than about big come-one-come-all gatherings. It was mellower. We even purposely had a few nights of us just dining by ourselves, because we wanted some private time.

In the course of the two weeks we were in the Midwest, we spent a few days in Saginaw, a couple days in Chicago, I worked three days remotely, and we were committed to two weddings. (sadly, one's been rescheduled, but that's a story for another day)
Once you do that math, you find that we had just a few open evenings in A2, and in choosing to spend them in a much mellower way, we missed seeing lots of people we think of often.

It's all part of the tradeoff and of learning how to be a tourist in a place we used to call home.

Maybe we'll be back in September for a quickie visit? Details TBD.