I am delighted to report that the Battle of the Illuminations continues in full force, this year, and downtown appears to be winning.

The tree lights now encompass five blocks of Main, two of State, and four connecting streets, including the entire connecting length of Liberty. Plus miscellaneous offshoots like the First St parking lot. They were not lit until December 1, this year, presumably so as to stay lit through all of February, but they do seem to be lit 24 hours a day, which is a huge "fuck right off" to the holiday lighting policy.

I am entirely charmed, and my spirits are suitably lifted.

I am increasingly amused by the development of the Great Illuminations War, in this city. I mean, initially they were pretty limited to about five blocks of Main St., and only slowly climbing up the cross-streets.

And then the city passed an anti-light-pollution mandate of “holiday displays can’t be up for more than 90 days” and the response of downtown appears to be along the lines of “Well, if you’re going to be that way about it…”

The illuminations this year reach east and west of Main for about five blocks on Huron, Liberty, and Washington. Liberty goes all the way up to State St. Almost the entire of downtown is now lit up, and about a third of the businesses have put up outside lights or water-fall strings on their front windows, which used to be fairly rare outside of Main itself.

It’s beautiful, and reconciles me considerably to the existence of Michigan Winter with its over-sixteen-hours-of-darkness. I’m just entertained by the extremely Midwest nature of this little contest.

I was about to throw a serious tantrum, because I turned down Main Street this evening and did not see any tree lights. It’s the first of December! Come on! Fortunately for my mood this evening, no sooner had I huffed than the whole street lit up.

*pleased*

So now I’m sitting at a window table in Vinology, with the trees outside lit up with strings and clouds of little white lights, and I have an excellent rosemary-cranberry gimlet, and all is temporarily good with the world. I don’t know if this will be a regular for me or not, but the drink is excellent.

Today’s happy hour happened at Zingerman’s Roadhouse, courtesy of my ‘thank you for helping Fall start without utter catastrophe’ gift certificate. And I need to take a moment to sing the praises of Zingerman’s, because I just spent a hundred bucks on dinner, and it was worth every electronic dime.

First off, the cocktails were strong and delicious. Tequila, mezcal, grapefruit, and lime are a fine combination; I may have to try mixing that one myself.

Next, the cheese flight was heavenly. I love strong cheeses, so aged goat cheddar, a lovely farmhouse, and a /goat Brie/ really hit the spot.

I am thankful I thought to order a cup of the veggie beef soup, because holy wow. Seasonal vegetables and tender, shredded beef in a frankly amazing broth. I was hard-pressed to eat decorously, with an actual spoon, and not just shove my face in the bowl.

The crowning touch was a pimento cheese bacon burger. It was juicy and delicious and perfectly on the edge of well done with that just-grilled taste. The bacon was done just to the point of crisp. The pimento cheese made it so rich I could barely finish half of it. And the fries were so light and crisp I nearly cried.

There is a salted caramel cupcake filled with dulce du leche for when I am able to contemplate eating again. Probably tomorrow evening. And while I was there, the bar tender came and spent ten minutes talking with the couple at the next table in order to re-create a cocktail they remembered having there years ago.

Every now and then I think “is Zingerman’s starting to hype themselves too much?” And then I go buy a loaf of fresh rye, or a reuben-like-god-intended, or a Roadhouse meal, and I have to admit… probably not.

*crawls out of the hell-pit of this week*

Ugh. I mean ugh.

So, yes, hi. This week, Umich finally decided to move classes online. This happened in the form of a message on WEDNESDAY saying that classes were cancelled for the last two days of the week to give faculty time to shift to online. It didn't have a smiley emoji on the end, but you could tell it would have if the uni president knew how to add one.

Umich, and ESPECIALLY the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, which employs me, is a wholly residential school. It prides itself on being a residential school, with the residential experience, and only a smattering of online programs at the graduate level in the professional Colleges. When I say that the university is utterly, abysmally, unspeakably unprepared to do any online teaching whatsoever, I am understating the case by about a thousand percent.

Nevertheless! Four whole days, to prepare to go wholly online!

I should, perhaps, mention that my unit, all seven of us, are the ones who would be responsible for online education at LSA (all 20,000 students and 4,000 instructors worth of LSA), supposing there was any online education, which there isn't. If you think this means there are exactly two of us (one of them me) who are in any way prepared to support the (4,000) faculty in this, you would be correct.

Now, I saw this coming last week, and have been writing webpages of recommendations and resources like a madwoman to get them up in time, and I made it by the skin of my teeth, but of course then the entire goddamn College ignored that advice to attempt to almost ALL hold class by videoconference. Never having done so before. In the middle of the whole rest of the country trying to do the same thing. I'm sure you can imagine how well this is going so far, and we haven't even had actual classes that way yet.

So, my boss is losing her mind, my team is losing their minds, my faculty are losing their minds, and it wasn't until Friday that the uni president finally, finally caved in and said non-essential staff should go remote too.

Non-essential staff only, mind you. The University isn't closing. Oh no. My parent unit is still responsible for assisting all those instructors who want to come in and use their classrooms as usual to lecture to empty seats and be recorded with Lecture Capture, and call it teaching. So, the rest of Technology Services is losing their minds also.

But I and my team, at least, will now be able to do what we can from home, instead of (just for example) taking the bus in every day. *sings hallelujah to the tune of the Loan Ranger theme, which comes out sounding quite suitably unhinged*

So, yeah, that was my week. How was yours?