I always through grade school - or not always, but I think through, like, junior high and high school when, like, you get most, maybe, conscious of your appearance, I never liked the picture that would be taken. And of course, you didn't really have any choice in the matter. You kinda had one shot at it. You could only do a retake if, like, your eyes were closed or something and you wouldn't really see, you know, what your photo was until weeks later. And I just never looked as good as I wanted to. So, when it came time to - as my senior year approached, I was actually really psyched about having an opportunity to have a session with a professional photographer because I knew there were gonna be a bunch of different poses, I could change my clothes and at the end of the process they would do some, like, retouching, you know, if I had a blemish or something, and I just I felt much more confident that through that process I was gonna end up with a couple of photos of myself that I really liked. So, I mean, it pretty much worked out that way. I had my little photography session and then I got to pick out my poses and was really happy. And then, I don't know, some months later, I was recognized for a, I dunno, scholarship or award or something. And I lived in a small town, so they tend to put those kinds of things in the paper. So, you know, there I am in the paper, and the picture that they used was a picture from my professional photography session, and it was a pose I didn't choose. It was a photo that I did not like. So here I was right back in the same position I'd always been in where like this, you know, the photo they're using to represent me is not the one I would have chosen. And I was so… I was completely mystified. I was like, "How do they... how do they have this picture? Why is this picture even out there?" So I think I went to my - I don't know. I was trying to track down how that happened, and I don't know if they got it from the school office and the school office reached out to…

There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio. I went to my mother about getting photos taken of my grandchildren. It was gonna cost $250 and I asked my mother if she'd go halfsies with me. And she said, "No. No, I will not, because you can take pictures just as well as anybody else." And I said, “Well, I guess I'll try it.” And I had a little red tricycle and some suitcases and a few little odds and ends that I could use for photo props. And I took my kids next door to a field and I put the bicycle - little trike down there. And they had... all had - the girls had matching dresses, and [NAME] he had matching clothes to the girls. And I took photos of them sitting on the bike, sitting on the suitcases, sitting on the ground. And they turned out spectacular. And I was like, “Well d***, I can be a photographer.” And since then, I've made a couple of those pictures into canvases. They're my absolutely favorite pictures of my grandchildren. And there's one picture of my mother… I called her up and made her - since it was her idea to do the photos, I made her dress appropriately for the photos and come over and be in them. And I got one picture of my baby granddaughter and my mother that I adore and I blew it up into a canvas. But hot d***, my mother turned me into a photographer. Since then I've done weddings, I've done senior photos, I've done baptismals, I've done baby shots, I've done pregnant shots. People like my photography and it just blows my mind. So yeah, I have photos that are priceless to me.

The one building of note that I recall being able to visit that felt, like, extra special was Burton Tower. The sort of - if you see any kind of, like, skyline picture of Ann Arbor or painting, you can almost always see Burton Tower in there somewhere. And at the top of Burton Tower, they have a carillon and just before Covid, probably around 2018 actually, they opened it up to the public for one day in the middle of the winter, leading up to Christmas. I think it was like a weekday at like 1. Not really the most accessible time, which was maybe by design to limit the number of people who gave it a shot. But yeah, I was able to work my way over there, climb the steps, and then I actually got a chance to play the carillon at the top. I made a crucial mistake of not planning anything with any true sense of - I should have, like, practiced, you know, playing a Christmas carol of some kind, that could have just rung out to the city. But honestly, it was almost enough to just, like, act like a toddler and, you know, press just buttons at random, and knowing that you are basically subjecting the entire city of Ann Arbor to whatever sound you choose to strike with the bells. So yeah, that was pretty rad. I really enjoyed that.

Something I've noticed now as a 26 year old. It's been a while since I've been out of high school and I regularly dream about band, and it's so stressful for me. It was generally a stressful experience, for a lot of reasons, but yeah, I often in - I dream that I'm like in the middle of a performance and having to remember all my spots on the field, which is really terrifying ‘cause, yeah, I mean it's all directional, it’s all like taking up space, and if you run into somebody, you mess up the picture, you trip, you fall, whatever have you. There was one time in our Starlight show, where we'd like lay down and pretend we were like looking at the stars, and I was so exhausted that day during this competition performance that when we laid down, I got up like probably, and realistically, it doesn't sound like it's much, but like I got up like a beat or two behind and ended up having to like a hurry and stand up and make up that difference in the time, so that the judges and the audience wouldn't notice it and I felt so embarrassed. It's a good memory to look back on though.

Talking about feeling like a statue, I recently learned in working with my new therapist that I struggle with social anxiety. I originally thought this was because of my introversion, but she explained to me that introversion is more so about the fact of, like, where you recharge and you recharge alone, and social anxiety explains the stress that I feel in social situations, especially in large groups. And I was out at our teeny tiny little local bar with my partner two or three weeks ago and there was an older woman there. She's probably like, I don't know, pushing 60? I don't know, 60, 65, and I know her casually, she lives down the - ooh, lives down the street, but, yeah, she was saying like some kind of inappropriate things all night, like subtly raunchy things, innuendos, and trying to get a reaction out of me. Which was weird.  She had explained to us a few times throughout the night that whenever her husband agreed to go to the bar with her, he said they would not be dancing that night and I told her, you know, "You are grown independent woman. You don't need your husband's permission to dance if you want to dance. So go dance," and later on in the night, we're literally getting ready to leave. Like, I've got my jacket in my lap and I'm, like, mentally preparing for the transition to go home. She pulls my jacket out of my lap and then immediately grabs onto my wrists and pulls me out onto the dance floor, tries to get me to dance, and as somebody who's introverted with social anxiety, I really don't enjoy dancing outside of my own privacy. It really, really, really stresses me out and definitely kind of puts me into a fight or flight mode. So initially, I tried to fight and get away, and she had such a grip on my wrist that I could not get away from her, like, and this is an old woman so, yeah, it was really stressful for me. I really didn't appreciate it, and she had me out there for probably a solid, like, minute to two minutes, in front of all these people, you know, which just made it worse for me.  And I, like, wasn't dancing at all. She was dancing while holding on to my wrist, and I was just standing there and trying so hard to keep my arms…