Weeknotes: September 21–25, 2026
Monday, September 21
"I'm turning on the heat!" My upstairs neighbor and I share a thermostat; domestic climate control is achieved through texts.
Technically, it's the last day of summer, but the weather is giving off late-October vibes. I take a break from work to mow the lawn, shifting from vertical stripes to an angled pattern midway through, just to shake things up. I feel like I don't have enough spontaneity in my life right now.
At 4 p.m., I stop by a meet-and-greet happy hour at the Observer. I'm greeted at the back door by Bug, the editor-in-chief's Boston terrier. Staff and freelancers mingle and drink kombucha spiked with tequila (TK). There is pizza, and someone brought pimento cheese, which I spread on my leftover crusts, a delicious combo I've somehow never tried before.
After extracting myself, I navigate rush hour traffic, and arrive home just in time to log in to my 6 p.m. history class. We learn about the French-Indian War, which I am reminded was not between French colonizers and Indians, but between European rivals France and England.
Last Known Address (Liberty Station)
Back in Weeknotes #1, I mentioned a new song I’d written about my post office box in Ann Arbor. It’s called “Last Known Address” and will come out later this year as part of a project of the same name. As rental prices have gone up, I’ve considered abandoning my long-held, but underused mailbox. Now that I’ve sung about it and listed my address in lyric form, I guess I’ll have to keep up the rent. In that same post, I suggested that readers might “lobby for its continued existence” by sending me a hand-written letter or postcard to counterbalance the trickle of catalogs and junk mail I usually receive.