Mer and I slept in on the Friday of spring break, but we actually had weekend plans! We were going to Mom’s place in Michigan, and along the way we were going to go swoop up our friend Ellen from her home in Hillsdale.

We had good weather going to Hillsdale this time. We had been out to Hillsdale last December, and the weather had not been good. It was nice to be able to get to Ellen’s in a reasonable (3.5-4 hours) this time.

Ellen is probably our most “together” friend, at least when it comes to home decorating. She bought a house last summer, and she has spent the last year redecorating it to good effect. When we were last there, the house was in some disarray as she was painting and moving furniture and so on. No more! Ellen had painted all the rooms in the downstairs (and the bathroom and hallway upstairs). We toured her new handiwork and were impressed at how classy the place looked. Ellen had even used a stencil on her dining room wall, which is waaayyyyy off the Riordan radar.

Ellen is most hospitable, and she had decided to make a late lunch for us (we got there about 2:00). She had nice table settings out, and everything matched and looked nice. We sat down at the table (an extreme rarity for the Riordans), and had a delightful meal of good food and a healthy dose of laughter.

After lunch, we hit the highway again. It was about a 2-2.5-hour drive to Mom’s from Ellen’s. The drive itself was uneventful, but the conversation was excellent. Ellen is working on her doctorate, and she spent a good chunk of the drive trying to explain her topic to me and Meredith (upon my request! Ellen does not volunteer this information unsolicited). If I recall, her dissertation is looking at a 14th-century religious debate on a subject called nominalism. Nominalism turns out to be fairly complicated and a little hard to nail down, so I had a hard time grasping it. Ellen was looking at a Chaucer poem (not the Canterbury Tales) to show that Chaucer was against nominalism (some academics have tried to show the opposite).

Lest you think we spend all of our driving time discussing matters of academic weight, we also add real weight. Along the way we needed a bathroom break, and Ellen had mentioned a Michigan fast food restaurant called Culver’s that has excellent custard. Custard is a midwestern version of soft serve ice cream, but adds more fat. So, we carried our nominalism conversation into Culver’s and munched on ice cream. It was a most worthwhile pit stop.

We continued on to Mom’s place. Mom was spending the Easter weekend with my sister and her family, but Shannon and Jo were at Mom’s, at least through Saturday afternoon. We unloaded the car and greeted them. We grabbed some supper from a local Italian restaurant, and we spent the evening chatting and, importantly, playing a literary game.

Shannon and I took on Mer, Jo, and Ellen in a game called Dark and Stormy. It is a game where the game gives you the first line or first few lines from a work of literature, and you have to guess the title of the work or the name of the author who wrote it. Note that Mer and Ellen are professional English folks, and Jo is quite well read. But the male Riordans were undaunted! I did have an ace up my sleeve – Shannon is super well-read in science fiction, and that is one of the categories in the game, and he used to work at a Borders years ago and still can recall some of the books he helped people find. He proved most useful (including an impressive 4-5-minute sweat-it-out recall of a book that had been made into a movie). We sprang out to an early lead on some fairly easy questions, and we actually got to 7 books to 4 (you need 8 books to win). Sadly, we kept getting books along the lines of Obscure 16th-Century Topics by Unknown Authors  -or- While Riordan Males Lose while the ladies kept getting Dr. Seuss books. They even got a Vonnegut book question, which is something I had been waiting for (I was a huge Vonnegut fan in high school and read all of his stuff). We lost 8-7. Sigh.

Despite the loss in the game, it was still a weekend “away,” and with fun people.

Ha! I’m back. The ol’ blog has suffered mightily at the past six weeks’ worth of home improvement projects and graduation parties, but I’m going to try to get back on the blogging wagon.

To pick up where I left off….

Thursday, April 9th, was the last day of the Diakonos Habitat for Humanity trip. If you recall, Wednesday had been a very physical day for me, and I awoke on Thursday tired and with a very sore back. I went into the common room, and after everyone had breakfasted and assembled, I found out that I would be going with Ombudsman (Craig) and a team of students to a teen shelter in Akron. Craig was to take a vanload of kids with him, and I was to take four students in my car. Fair enough.

I got “my” students together, and Craig gave me directions. We piled in to my car, and we waited for Craig to lead the way in his van. We pulled out following Craig, but after just a mile or so, Craig went straight, while I was sure going right was quicker. After all, that was how I had been going to Dunkin’ Donuts for the last few days. So, we zoomed off to the right and went the Dunkin’ Donuts way. It was not until I got to Dunkin’ Donuts about 15 minutes later that I realized that my shortcut was great to get to town, but was not near the entrance to the highway that would take us to Akron. No matter! I figured if I headed west all would be well. At 25 mph. Through a stop-light-ridden town. Needless to say, progress was slow.

I was not recognizing anything, but we were going west, so I kept going. After a very long while, I saw a sign that pointed to the highway, so I turned that way. After a mile or two, I recognized that we were near Kent State University, which, while not way out of the way of getting to Akron, certainly was in the “scenic” category. Anyway, for those familiar with the area, we came out next to the restaurant Mike’s Place, and we stopped for a group photo in front of the X-wing fighter.

We did finally get on the highway, and I had one of the kids call Craig’s number so he would not think we were in an accident. We got his voicemail, and so left a message, and we drove on to Akron. We got off the highway, and then could not find the street we needed. We went right for about two miles with no luck, so we turned around. We went back to the off-ramp and kept going for a couple of miles, and had no luck. So, we went back to the off-ramp and took the last option – going on what looked to be an on-ramp to the highway, but turned out to be the road we were looking for. So, with no further adventure, we got to the teen shelter about an hour or more later than we had planned.

The teen shelter had just acquired the property, so our team was there to haul out old scrap metal and other debris from the basement (where there was going to be a nursery for pregnant teens), and then to do some painting. Craig laughed at my compromised sense of direction, and then asked if I had any ear protection. One of the projects was to use a saws-all to cut down old pipes out of a very small closet space, and the noise was terrific. I did not have any hearing protection with me, but I offered to go get some. Craig gave me some money and I went and asked some workers upstairs where there might be a hardware store. They indicated that if I went down the road out front and then turned once, I would come to a hardware store. Thus prepared, I went on my way.

I first knew it was not going to be my day (in a directional sense of the word) when the road I had been told the hardware store was on suddenly ended in a “T” crossing. I picked a way that looked promising and drove on. And on. And on. I stopped at a Walgreen’s and asked the clerk if she could point me toward a hardware store. She gave me directions that got me way on the northwest side of Akron, but I finally got to a Home Depot. Heady with my success, I asked a clerk to point me to the ear protection. He showed me the way, and I got there to find they were sold out. Apparently, early April is the start-up time for lawn care companies, and they buy hearing protection in bulk. Sigh. I bought a few packages of the squishy in-ear kind of ear protectors, and made my long trip back to the center. I think I was gone about an hour and a half.

When I did get back, I took some pictures of the students doing their thing. They had been doing a good job, and it looked as if we were going to run out of work by early afternoon. Craig was kind enough to put me on a detail paining job that was around an air-intake for the furnace; that way I would not have a  totally useless day. We broke for lunch and had a good time in fellowship (including Craig and me telling the students how we met and wooed our wives); it was quite relaxed and fun. After lunch, I finished up my small paint job and helped do some small amounts of clean-up (there was not much clean-up left to do), and we all loaded up to head back to Camp Carl around 2:00 or so.

Needless to say, it was not my finest day of service ever, but I think in some ways God was being merciful to me. My body was a wreck from the work on Wednesday, and all of my efforts were in good faith, but resulted in my not having to further abuse my back.

We got back to the camp to find that all the other students were back from their projects, and that the final packing was underway. I packed up my stuff and got it all into the car, and then I asked Craig if it would be okay if I took off. It was not yet 4:00, and if I was efficient, I could get to my chiropractor and get my back taken care of. Craig understood and let me go, and I was most happy to find that Dr. Knop could take me quickly. My back was not perfect after he was done, but at least I could move properly again.

I drove home and puttered around the house, waiting for the time I could go pick up Meredith at the airport. As the time approached, I went to a Giant Eagle grocery store and picked up a dozen roses. I almost never buy flowers for Mer anymore because of financial concerns, and I wanted her to know that I had missed her. I got up to the airport fairly early, but I was able to pass some time chatting with a CVCA teacher whom I ran into (the video teacher, Eric). Eric was there to pick up his college-aged daughter. Her flight was a bit late, and Mer’s flight was early, so my wait by myself was fairly short. I stood outside the gate area, and as people started streaming out, I put on my sunglasses. Now, I know it is dumb to have sunglasses inside, but Mer finds them attractive, and I wanted to look as good as possible for her. She came around the corner and saw me and was all smiles, and I gave her a kiss and her flowers (zeugma). I’m pretty sure the group of three women were “awww-ing” behind me. It was great to see Meredith again. Even after almost 11 years of marriage, I really do not like being away from her.

We got Mer’s things from the baggage area and headed away from the airport. I wanted to take Mer out for some food (I can’t remember now if it was dinner and dessert or just dessert), and after a few tries of finding closed restaurants, we found an open Friday’s. It was a nice end to a busy few days.