random bits

Too distracted to write anything coherent, so I'll give some general updates.

• Yesterday, came home to discover a bee box on the front porch. A present? A warning? A sign from the heavens? Could it be that someone just left the thing at the wrong house, that the box was meant for a beekeeping neighbor but ended up on our stoop accidentally? No, turns out that some bee person in nearby Royal Oak borrowed it from Anna who gave the person our address so that the Royal Oak person didn't have to drive all the way down to Anna's to return it. Mystery solved. But it would have been quite a coincidence to end up with a random bee box? "Here you go, Mazin, we found a bee box for you on our front stoop."
• This weekend, my friend Lew is visiting from Youngstown and we are seeing not one but two Tigers games. I definitely anticipate some hiking too. Can't wait.
• Last night Nicole and saw Rhoda Janzen give a reading at Borders. We picked up her memoir afterward and I look forward to reading it. Janzen, a "worldly" college prof and poet and ex-model, goes home to her Mennonite family after a traumatic year. The memoir narrates her homecoming as well as the traumatic events that led up to the homecoming. Reading was funny.
• Preparing for the Fulbright is as hectic as it is exciting. While I'm away next year, my Dean's office is going to supplement my "stipend," thank goodness. Good to feel supported. Even better to avoid defaulting on one's mortgage. Still working out details about my work within my host school's English Department, as well as about housing and transportation and such. Details forthcoming. Eventually, I'll probably switch over to a "Year in Lebanon"-type blog and put this one to rest after six years.