The highlight of last month’s spring break staycation was taking a daytrip to Ann Arbor! Thrifting, gaming, shopping, and eating. And walking.
Our first stop was Salvation Army, on our way into town. Connor found a telescope for cheap — all it needs is a bolt and locking washer for one of the tripod legs.
Our next stop was Pinball Pete’s. Connor had never been to an honest-to-goodness arcade before (Chuck E. Cheese doesn’t count). All the machines still take actual money, not tokens or cards, which was refreshing.
Luckily, there’s no visual documentation of me playing DDR Extreme — although it was OMG SO FUN and took me back to my college days, I really don’t need to see what I looked like jumping around to my favorite DDR song. I assure you, I looked nothing like this guy.
After an hour or so at Pinball Pete’s, we walked across the Diag to the other side of campus, for virtually everything else we wanted to do.
I had decided to load up Ye Olde Holgamod for some film photography, and when I saw this crane silhouetted against the bright blue sky, I couldn’t pass that up. I’ve been burned by missing Really Good Pictures when film fails me, though (like the fish Connor caught at his final Cub Day Camp Family Night last summer), so when this construction worker saw me photographing and started to wave, I also pulled out my iPhone to make sure I got it.
It was at this point that I realized I wasn’t hearing/feeling the click of the shutter every time I took a photo, but I didn’t think much of it. It had been a few years since I got it out, after all, and I assumed I was misremembering the action.
We didn’t spend long in the Dawn Treader Bookstore this visit. Connor really wasn’t feeling it, and we rarely have a book agenda, anyway. Usually, what we would come away with would be stuff that we just so happened to see sitting on the top of a stack of unshelved books, or a manga that jumped out at us from the Japanese section, or a sci-fi collection that included an author we recognize.
We knew going in that Connor wouldn’t really enjoy walking through a bookstore, so we told him that we’d get bubble tea across the street at Tea Ninja after we were done.
After waiting a few sweaty minutes at Tea Ninja, we took our pricey but delicious drinks with us on our walk to Encore Records (where, sadly, I didn’t take any photos), followed by Vault of Midnight. Connor really wanted a D&D manual he saw, but it was full MSRP and we just couldn’t justify the price. Instead, I got him a sweet Mewtwo t-shirt (in adult Medium, which fits him fine).
As we were walking from the comic shop to the Blue Nile for dinner, Connor saw a rock and geode shop and asked if we could go inside. He was surprised when we said yes. (Alas, even though they had lots of awesome stuff on display, I was admiring it instead of photographing it.) GeoScape Rock Shop had fascinating wares in a surprising range of prices, and Connor was disappointed when I gave him a price range far below the cost of the geodes he’d had his eye on. Even so, he was able to get a sample of Dragon Tool Amethyst and a Clear Quartz for $17 total.
By the time we arrived at the Blue Nile, they’d been open for maybe a half hour, but we were still the first patrons of the evening. The last time Connor had tried Ethiopian food was when he was a toddler, and he had liked everything except the lentils, which he spat out. This time was similar, except that tween Connor didn’t actually spit out the lentils. The surprise hit was the cabbage, but he still liked everything else he tried.
We had to check our iPhones for how to get to the cupcake shop for dessert. We knew it was on our way back to the car, but we weren’t sure exactly where or on which street.
Side note: it wasn’t until this point that I realized that the film in my Holgamod was getting harder to advance. It finally just straight-up wouldn’t go anymore, which I rightly assumed was due to the cardboard shim under the take-up spool coming loose and jamming.
The cupcake shop was under new ownership from the last time we’d been there, from what we could remember, but the cupcakes were still the bomb. Aaron got a maple bacon, I got a Samoa, and Connor got a salted caramel. Of course, we all took tastes of each other’s selections, and they were all amazing.
This was a really awesome daytrip overall. We all found things to do that we enjoyed, we spent quality time together as a family, we got to walk around outside in the fresh air, and nobody got moody. Connor agreed that he definitely wants to go again sometime, and I count that as a huge win.