You come home from winter break to your house of nine grad students to find everyone abuzz about the Iowa caucuses. You all take a break from watching the cable news channels, because it’s too early to determine who the victor will be, and you head over as a group to the local indie movie theater to see the latest indie movie (Juno — excellent film, by the way). Because you’re there early, one member of your group whips out his iPhone to check in on the caucus returns and announces that Huckabee and Obama have won. After the movie, you all sit around the living room watching more cable news channels and make plans to carpool to the grocery store tomorrow and bring tote bags to help save the planet. Then you mock Wolf Blitzer and Rush Limbaugh, debate whether or not the country and the planet are really going to pot, and decide that having a house colloquium in which you all teach each other about your respective research is a really good idea.
And then you go to bed, thinking that your housemates are awesome and Ann Arbor is not so terrible after all.