Dom Bakeries in Ypsilanti

Down the street from Eastern Michigan's campus on Washtenaw Avenue is Dom Bakeries.  Although I think it is just one bakery now.  I seem to remember there was another one in Ann Arbor on Main Street but that is now something else.

 I'm not sure when this place was establish but I do know that it has been here for as long as I have.   Various Eastern Michigan student groups would sell donuts from here to raise money.  I suspect that it has been here much longer than that.

 Based on the building, I would say that it probably opened sometime in the 50's or 60's.  I do know that it is under different ownership now but I think they kept the same recipes because it doesn't taste any different.

 Dom's is a classic bakery.  Their donuts are pretty awesome but they also have bagels, muffins and cookies.  The cookies are pretty good and if I recall the bagels aren't bad.  The coffee is pretty good too.

 I'm not sure when they make the donuts but they are always pretty fresh when I pick them up in the morning.  They have the traditional fry cakes.

 They also have custard filled, cream filled and jelly filled.  No donuts with bacon or stuff like that though.

I think the fritters are the best though.

Another Cold Morning in Ypsilanti

So it was another morning where the temperature was below 0 Fahrenheit again.  I'm not sure how many this has been this winter but it is one too many.  After it was fairly warm last weekend, I was hoping that we saw the last of the below 0 days.  Of course the nice thing about a temperature like that is when it gets to the upper teens or low 20's, it feels like a heat wave.  Well enough bitching about the weather.

 Another nice thing about being this cold is that it makes for nice pictures of the water.  I love it when the mist is hanging above the dam.  I really love it when the sun is shining just right.

 I was able to get to the spot where I could get a slightly different angle.  I like the lines in this picture.

 Looking up the river.  Well as well as I could.  I liked the way the frost was formed on the trees.  It's almost as cool as when we had the fog a couple weeks ago.

 I kind of liked the way this plant looked.

 So I tried a different angle.

 Trying to get some of the mist against the building.

 Without the trees.

And one more shot.

Eastern Michigan Basketball Vs. Central Michigan

So I went to the Eastern Michigan basketball game last night.  It is getting pretty close to crunch time for the Eagles and it appears that they need to win the rest of their games to even have a chance at a favorable seed in the MAC tournament.  That plus the fact that the game was against our hated rival from Mount Pleasant made it a key game to go to.

For the first half of the game I decided to shoot from up in the stands.  For the most part I was not happy with the pictures I took from there.

 Mike Talley dishing the ball for a dunk...

 ....but not this one.  But I did like this one.

 For the second half, I was back to my normal spot.  I think I'm much happier with the pictures from there.  Da'Shonte Riley blocking a shot.

 J.R. Sims going for the basket.

 Karrington Ward in the process of getting fouled.

 Glenn Bryant III dunking.

 And putting the exclamation point on it.

 Mike Talley working towards the basket.

 Glenn Bryant heading for the bench.

 Mike Talley making his way around the defense.

 Da'Shonte had every reason to be happy.

 Mike Talley heading to the bench.

 Anthony Strickland taking a layup.

J.R. Sims putting the exclamation point on the game.  Eastern would end up winning 64-42.

Ann Arbor's Cobblestone House

I felt like I had to do some photography tonight but I didn't want to do anything that would take too long because it was cold outside again.  I decided that I would stop at the cobblestone house again, since it is kind of neat.

 Behind the cobblestone house, there is an old log cabin.  It's hard to imagine that a family would actually live in something like this.  Even if you compare to the size of a modest home these days, it is still pretty small but I guess when you are building something yourself, you're not going to go too overboard.

 I could almost imagine Laura and Pa Ingalls coming out of this one.

 A shot of the house and a small garden to the left of it.  I like the scarecrows.

The cobblestone house makes a nice comparison to the log cabin I think.  It is a little bigger for one thing.

 And alot more ornate.  I really like the pattern of the cobblestones.

 An oblique angle.

 I was trying to somewhat frame the house with the trees.  Not sure how it worked.

 Behind the cobblestone house, there is a barn with some animals.  The goat came right up to me.

 Because of the goat, it was difficult to get a picture of just the horse.  So I'll have to be content with a shot of his head.

 The barn itself.

 Another barn that they use for receptions and what not.

A side shot of the house.  One of these days, I will have to check it out when it is open and I can go inside.

Pinball Pete's

I came of age in the 1980's.  As a product of white suburban America at the time, it means that I spent quite a bit of time in the video arcade.  Every mall in America had an arcade.  In some towns, there were even purpose built arcades.  As home computers and consoles got better, the arcade became a dying breed.  By the mid 90's, the arcade had all but disappeared.

 I am not sure when Pinball Pete's started but I know its existence predates my time in the Ann Arbor area.  My first roommate in college was from Ann Arbor, so one night he took me to the Pinball Pete's that used to be on South William Street.  The one in this picture used to be across the street but that location burnt down.

 It has been a while since I've visited here but I decided to feature it in today's post.  So in I ventured.

 I do like the neon lights though.

 It is almost like stepping inside of a time capsule.  If you didn't pay attention to the names on the pinball machines you would think you were back in the 80's.

 A row of video machines that wouldn't look too much out of place in the 80's.  What is really amazing is how this is a representation of how technology has changed.  If you wanted to play good games, you to go to an arcade.  The console games of that era weren't that great.  But as home computers and consoles improved, this quickly changed.

 The Star Wars trilogy game there is one of my favorite games that came out of the mid-90's.  It was an improvement on another Star Wars game from the mid-80's.  Sadly, they don't have that game anymore.   This game is pretty fun though, you get to go through different scenes from the Star Wars trilogy.

 This is probably an example of one of the earlier first person shooters.  You were representing some sort of Green Beret going through a non-descript third world country.  It was kind of fun in the day but it doesn't compare to Call of Duty though.

 Another bank of video games that wouldn't look out of place in the 80's.

 I decided to play Miss Pac Man.  It was fun.  I used to know the pattern on Pac Man where I could get to about the 20th level or so.  That was one aspect of the old games, if you could figure out the pattern, you could play forever.

I remember as a kid, it was a big thing to get the high score.  It's not quite as impressive these days as there aren't quite as many people that play games like this.  If you ever needed a reason for a screen saver, this is it.  You can see the maze burned into the screen.

So there is a little bit of reminiscing.