Tuesday was a mini date-day; Mer took me to Chick-fil-A. Our girls’ basketball team was having a fund raiser at the restaurant that night. We like Chick-fil-A, and then we would get to support one of our teams as well. It was a win-win.

It was fun – we were cheered into the parking lot by a group of students, and the restaurant was bursting with CVCA folks. It was a casual evening, and we ate some good food. It was a nice example of community.

Wednesday Mer and I headed out to the Hibernian Club to go dancing with the CVCA Ceili Club. We danced for about an hour, and we had a good time. The only down side was that two of the students got sick to their stomachs after swinging a lot in one particular dance (the Rakes of Mallow). They had eaten heavily in Amish country on a field trip that afternoon, and their stomachs did not respond well to the dancing. Even with that, they thought it was a fun evening. It really is great to dance to live music.

Okay, okay…so my blog has suffered mightily over the last month. I went away for 10 days in the first week of April, and I have not caught back up. I’ll try to rectify that over the next week or so.

Saturday (March 29th) was “my” day as far as date days went. We had a leisurely late breakfast at Yasoo (which is also the Hamburger Station for lunch and dinner – never been to another restaurant that changes its name during the day). I had the granola French toast, which was tasty, but it was odd to have crunchy French toast.

I tend to have rough ideas of what I want to do on “my” days, but sometimes I lack the specifics. This Saturday was a nice day, so I knew I wanted to go for a hike/walk. We went back home and I jumped on line and went to the Metro Parks website for our area, and I found a trail very close by called Hampton Hills. It was only about 4 miles away and it was rated as “one of the park district’s most demanding hikes.” That made the choice quite easy. It was off to Hampton Hills, to the Adam Run trail, about 3 miles long.

There were no leaves on the trees, and so the park still had a wintery look to it. There were also some sections of the trail that were still quite muddy. Despite that, it was a nice day and the trail was a windy, up-and-down trail that was quite to my liking. There were small ravines and staircases cut in the trail, and the leafless trees had a stark beauty that was very pleasant. We had a grand time tromping around.

For evening fun, I took Mer to Aladdin’s, a Mediterranean restaurant we both quite enjoy. One of Mer’s former students was back home on break and was working at Aladdin’s for some extra money. That gave us the excuse to go, and it was good to see Cara again (and good to eat at Aladdin’s again!).

Mer had a gift certificate to Blockbuster that had been given to her by a student, so we went there to get a movie. After some aimless wandering looking at the dearth of good movies, I found a movie called Priceless. It was a French (in French) movie about a man who falls in love with a girl who likes to be a kept woman. In order to be close to her, the man becomes a kept man of a rich, older woman. It was morally sketchy, but it still had its charms, and we both enjoyed it.

After the movie, we were talking about kept people, and made the observation that you rarely see anyone who is rich (athlete, actor, etc.) with anyone who is unattractive. To that, Mer replied, “I’d settle for someone average!” I really was not sure how to take that – we had a good laugh when Mer realized the object of her proclamation could easily be taken for me (as opposed to “I’d settle for [seeing someone famous with] someone [who’s just] average” ). It’s nice to see Mer can screw up linguistically once in a blue moon (to make up for my weekly faux pas).