Last Saturday was a fun day. I had saved up some money, and I took Mer and two friends out to hear some good music. A fellow CVCA teacher (like most of out friends) loves music, and Eric and his wife Shanna are the founders of the band Bethesda – the band we went to see a few weeks ago. Anyway, Eric is a ton of fun, and I very much enjoyed getting to meet Shanna at the CD release party a few weeks ago. So, when I found out that an artist (John Gorka) whom I like very much was playing at the Happy Days Visitors’ Center in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, I thought it would be fun to invite Eric and Shanna. They are game souls, and so they jumped in.

Eric and Shanna met us at our house, and were kind enough to wait two minutes or so for me to wrap up watching an Olympic cross country race that was very close (yes, I am the ever-gracious host). We piled into our car, and headed up to Hudson to go to the Old Whedon Grille. Eric had never been there before, and Shanna had only been once, so it seemed like a good choice.

Dinner was excellent – good food and great conversation. We found out that Shanna had studied in England for a time, and had a quick trip over to Ireland. Eric and Shanna had traveled together in Italy. They’d spent their vacation two summers ago in Vegas with their family (Eric was offered the CVCA job while leaving the Vegas airport!), and last summer toured around Maine. I knew I liked these two! We found out that their wedding had had many rough spots, including a DJ who managed to botch a pre-made mp3 playlist. We laughed an awful lot. We did have to skip dessert since we had to get to the concert, but we could fix that later.

We got to the Happy Days Visitors’ Center about 30 minutes before the concert started. It was open seating, so we were about 3/4 of the way back, around 60 feet back from the stage. They were still fine seats. We chatted to pass the time, although as I have approached 40, I have had a harder time hearing people when there is a crowd around, especially when there is piped-in music (which there was). I followed some of the conversation, but I was still content in looking forward to the concert.

John Gorka did two sets, of about 45-50 minutes each. His music was very fine, two pieces on the keyboard, and the rest with him on guitar. He mixed up the pacing and topics of the songs very well, and his stage persona is downright wacky. I laughed quite a bit, and I do like his music. Eric and Shanna seemed to enjoy it as well, although Shanna was wiped out since she works as a teacher and is working on her Master’s at the same time, so she was a little sleepy through some of the slower songs.

After the concert, we headed back to our house, where we offered Eric and Shanna a brownie/ice cream dessert. They accepted, and we talked for another hour or so, touching often on teaching since we are all in education. Eric and Shanna finally had to go around midnight. They both claim to be game people, so I hope to see them soon over a game board or at another concert. They are fun folks.

Last Friday was the second Fools show of the year. The Royal Fools is the name of the improv group that I coach at CVCA. I was a little anxious about this show because so much was going on at CVCA last Friday. It was supposed to be a home basketball game – that helps us because people can go from our show to the game. However, because of all the snow last week, games got moved around and the home game turned into an away game. On top of that, the Talking Royals speech and debate team was at districts, which is a two-day competition on Friday and Saturday. That took away one of my Fools, and a good number of my potential student audience members.

The show was supposed to start at 7:00, and at 6:55, there were only about 20 people in the auditorium/chapel. Since the chapel can hold about 300 people even with the wings shut off, that was going to feel pretty barren. Still, we were going to press on, and so the show started at about 7:05. Happily, the audience had filled in quite a bit by then, and within a few minutes of the show starting, we had an estimated 80-100 people. It is possible we may have had over 100, but it is hard to tell since I did not count (I was a bit busy running the show).

The kids had a good show. I don’t think it was our best show ever, but it was a very good one. The fun part of this show was the audience – they were really, really into the show. They were lively, had great suggestions, laughed a lot, and in general gave us a ton of energy. If this was not our biggest audience and our best show ever, it sure felt as if it was our biggest audience and our best show. What a great feeling.

We always end our shows with a game called “Audience Participation Freeze,” where audience members can run up on stage and join us in doing some improv. Usually I consider myself lucky if I get two people to jump up, but last Friday we had at least four, and they were good scenes as well. What a fun time.

Some of the things that happened on stage:

– A “Showdown at the Improv Corral” that was based off of the lines “What page are you on?” and “No, I will not duct tape you to the chair.” That game, which is based on making things bigger and funnier, went off really well.

– A “Political Debate” debating the pros and cons of Pez dispensers and the pros and cons of short people.

– A “Dating Game” with Dora the Explorer, The Kool-Aid Man, and LeBron James.

– A “Musical Chairs” based on a faulty velcro sticky wall, and the resulting anger of the god of velcro.

– A “New Choice” based on the facial features of a man from Budapest, and his desire to build an explosive factory in the U.S.

– A “Blind Line” based on messages flashing from bicycle tires, and how pet dinosaurs hate the sunlight.

– An “Audience Participation Freeze” skit based on pick-up lines, and one based on cheerleaders that threw a man up in the air – and he was a loooooong time in coming down.

– Much more – the show went about an hour and twenty minutes.

I am very grateful for Mer’s support – she pulls for me, and has made every Fool show for all six years. I was worried about her attendance last Friday – she had to stay home to let a furnace repair man into the house since we had no heat. It turns out we had a bad exhaust motor, and the furnace shut down as a safety measure. The furnace guy was able to get it running overnight (and replaced the motor the next day), and did so so quickly that Mer was able to get to the show just before 7:00. I was a very happy man.

Fun side note about the audience – word about the Fools must be getting out in our community. One family came who does not have any relationship to any of the Fools on stage – they may have come with their student daughter, but were not there to see a son or daughter on stage. Moreover, they invited their neighbors to come, and the neighbors did come, even though they have not had a student at CVCA for twenty years (their children went to CVCA during Mer’s time at school). So, people are coming to actually see us and to have a good time. And with the energy they provide, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Our colleague Jennifer is the CVCA choral music teacher. Somehow, in addition to being in charge of five choirs, Jennifer still finds time to be part of her own group, the Singers Companye. Last Wednesday, the Singers Companye had a concert at CVCA, and Jennifer was kind enough to give us tickets. Mer and I love music, and we love free tickets, so we were very excited to go.

We left CVCA to go home for supper around 6:00 so we could be back for the concert at 8:00. When we got home, we smelled something slightly odd, but couldn’t figure out what it was, until I turned on a light in the living room. We had water all over the place – our bay window was leaking badly, and the water was causing a musty smell.

After some investigation, it turns out that the ice had backed up on the roof (we had 10+ inches of snow and ice on the roof), and while the new roof was not leaking in the house, water had somehow worked its way up under the eaves, where I could see icicles coming out of vent holes. This was not a great situation, but I would not have worried too much about it, except that the top of the bay window comes out from the house and is joined to the bottom side of the eaves. This is where the water was coming in. Happily, there was no water coming in through the actual ceiling, but there was plenty of water coming in through the top of the window.

After supper (and much thought about what to do), I made some phone calls, and found another teacher friend who had a roof snow-scoop (a sort of overgrown garden hoe on the end of a 25-foot pole). Dave agreed to run the scoop over, and Mer headed back to school for the concert (with my urging for her to go since there was no need for both of us to miss the concert). Dave came through with the scoop, and I spent about 20 minutes clearing all the snow off of the roof. Just as I was finishing up, Zach Churchill pulled up with his snow scoop (I had left him a message). He had come over just to see if I could still use the scoop, even though I had not picked up the phone when he called, since I was outside at the time. Zach is a great guy, and I appreciated his willingness to help. Since I was done, I checked on the leak, and it had already slowed down. So, with nothing more that I could do, I headed over to the concert.

I got there in time for the last half of the show. There was no intermission, so I waited for a break in the music and let myself in quietly. I did not want to make a distraction for anyone, so I did not try to sit with Meredith, who was halfway down the aisle; I sat by myself in the back.

To be honest, it was a little hard to focus on the music because my mind was racing with working through the leak situation. Still, I heard about 30 minutes of music total, and after about 15 minutes, I started to hear the music well. The Companye was quite large, made up of over 30 singers. They had a good sound, and finished the evening off with multi-part harmony arrangements of folk music songs, which I really enjoyed. There was a slight distraction, even then – one of the singers must have felt ill, and he left the stage, sat down in the auditorium, and then fell over. Two people quickly checked on him, and he was fine. Still, it took a few minutes to refocus on the music after that as well.

As I said, I did really enjoy the concert once I started focusing on the music. There were a piano and oboe that accompanied the singers, and I especially liked the oboe. I was sad that I’d missed a performance of the main music from the film The Mission, which features oboe, and is one of the prettiest pieces of music.

After the concert, I caught up with Mer, and she had sat with Michelle (the artist and Founding Fool and former CVCA student), whose mom is also in the Singers Companye. Mer and I had a nice visit with Michelle and her mom, and then headed home. Happily, by the time we got home, the leak had stopped. We work with great people, and that was displayed multiple ways last Wednesday.

Last Thursday, Mer and I headed up to Actors’ Summit Theater (as part of our subscription that friends gave to us). We got to see a play that was new to both of us – The Last Train to Nibroc.

The play is very simple and intimate – it is in three acts that are three days in the lives of a young man who was turned away from joining WW2 because he has epilepsy, and a young woman who is considering becoming a missionary. They meet on a train coming back from California, and it turns out they are both from Kentucky. The play is a study in how their relationship grows from that meeting. It is a patient play, and takes its time telling the tale. Both of the young characters are charming in their own way, and they were played very well by the actors playing the roles. I liked both of them very much.

There was almost no set to speak of – a bench, a stump in one corner of the stage, and for the last act there was a set of steps leading up to a kitchen door. It worked – the point of the play was to focus on the two characters, and the set was the minimum that was needed to make the play function.

On the whole, I liked the play. If I had one complaint, it would be that the characters repeated themselves a lot. It could be that that was how people from rural Kentucky during the 1940s talked, but to my ears, it was just repetitive. The dialogue could have been tightened up probably by 5-10 minutes of the 90 minute play. Still, the characters were interesting, and it was fun to see a play about ordinary people in ordinary circumstances – there were no mystic forces or great kingdoms or huge moral dilemmas. It was a play about the bumpy road to falling in love, and that makes for a good story.

Last Monday was a special event – it was an art show by a former CVCA student and a founding member of the Royal Fools (my school improv group). Michelle is a wonderfully creative person, so I was very much looking forward to her show, entitled “Wanderer.”

Michelle has gone to the University of Akron, so that is where her show was (and is – it runs for a month). Mer and I are familiar with the University from Mer’s grad school days, so we had no real trouble parking and finding the building. What we did have trouble with was getting in the place – the exhibit was in a hall in the lower level of the Honors Dorm, which meant that you needed a swipe card to get in. Happily, we wandered around enough to find access through the administrative offices in the building.

Michelle and her parents greeted us most warmly. Michelle had most (all but one display case) of her works on the wall of the hall. The works were pencil drawings, watercolors, and oils, and were very impressive in detail and composition.

The works are all illustrations for a book Michelle has written, called Wanderer. Michelle was kind enough to spend a good amount of time with us, so I know some of the details of the book. It is a fantasy book that takes place on another world. In this world, the people are focused on rational advancement of the main race. The heroine of the book goes looking for more, looking for the appearance of The Prince who walks among the people, but is more and more ignored. Michelle has thought out the work in great detail – she has invented a language and an alphabet. Many of her drawings are studies of the animals of the world. Her paintings are full of details of patterns on the clothing, and the significance of the tattoos each family member wears. She has worked out a creation narrative of the world, where the creator brought the world into existence by a dance, where canyons were formed wherever the Creator dragged his foot. Nifty!

The works were wonderful (and yes, I am biased). One of my favorite pieces was a watercolor of the heroine, hunching in a doorway looking scared. The detail on the painting was amazing – at first I had thought it was a sketch made by colored pencils – some of the specifics were that fine (my apologies for the poor photo).

There was a steady stream of people who came to see the opening, and quite a crowd. There were Mer and I from CVCA, friends of Michelle’s from U. Akron, colleagues of her mother who teaches at the university, and even students from the school where Michelle is student teaching. It was a festive time.

Michelle is one of those young folk who make me so happy to be in education. I think constant exposure to the energy and ideas of younguns keeps me from being too old-fogey and cranky. Michelle has a clear vision of a very cool world, and I am happy that I could see a glimpse into it.

Last Sunday was also an eventful day. We started the day off by going to Aunt Mary’s church, which had the welcome advantage of allowing us to sleep until almost 9:00. We attended the service while Aunt Mary was helping out in the church kitchen, and then we hooked up with Aunt Mary for her church’s annual “Souper Bowl” party. It is a fund raiser for the youth program. The congregation members bring in various crockpots of soups and then the teens make subs. You get a sub and then can help yourself to as many soups as you like. I think there were about 20 kinds. It was quite tasty, and it was a good time to chat with Aunt Mary.

We finished munching around 1:00, and then we all piled into Aunt Mary’s car to go see her new condo. Aunt Mary decided she had had enough of a three-floor condo, and kicked around the idea of moving into one that had no stairs. She visited one two weeks ago, and this last week she got things rolling to buy it. We were very excited to see it, and so Aunt Mary took us there – only a 2-mile drive from the church.

The condo garage faces the development’s street, and we entered through it. The garage is quite large – I think the builder (who was there) said it is two feet wider than a standard two-car garage. There is storage above the garage ceiling, and the furnace is up there as well. While slightly odd, it makes sense to me. The furnace is up and out of the way and not taking up valuable floor or storage space.

The garage opens into the kitchen, which is really part of an enormous great room. The cabinets are beautiful, and the entire space has a very open feel. All the ceilings in the condo are cathedral ceilings, which makes it feel really open. There are skylights in the great room, and lots of windows in the place, so even on a cloudy day the place was quite bright.

The condo has two bedrooms and two bathrooms, and tons and tons of storage space. Aunt Mary’s room has the biggest walk-in closet I have ever seen. The den/sun room is a delightful space with lots of light and a cozy feeling. As much as we like, well, both of our houses, Mer and I were slightly jealous of how nice the condo is. Aunt Mary has done very well for herself, and I am looking forward to seeing the place once she has moved in (probably in March).

Mer and I then headed home, where I spent a good chunk of time making chocolate-peanut butter bars. We were to head over to the Churchills’ place around 6:00 for their first Super Bowl party in their new home. This was only the second time I had made these bars, and the peanut butter part of the bars came out very sticky for some reason. They tasted fine, but I’m not sure what happened there.

The Churchills are wonderful people anyway, and they had gone all-out with tons of food. Their TV room is great for this type of event – a 54-inch TV, two couches, an overstuffed chair, and lots of carpet space allowed for a good crowd to see the game. There were Mer and I, Zach and Londa, Dubbs, another CVCA teacher – Mindy, and then three people that I had never met before who were friends of Zach and Londa’s.

Zach had a quiz about the Super Bowl that he had taken from the internet. The winner was to get a $5 gift card to Starbucks. I’m very pleased to say that I got 19 out of 21 questions and I won one of the two cards. The other card went to Mindy for being the closest predictor of the combined half-time score.

I’m pretty sure that Mer and I were the most interested in the game. I do enjoy football, and this was only the 4th weekend of football I was able to see all year (we have no TV reception ever since the signals went digital). Everyone seemed to be pretty interested in the commercials. It was an entertaining game, and that made me glad – I would have been okay with either team winning (I had a slight leaning toward New Orleans), as long as the game was good.

So, all in all, the evening was a grand success. Good entertainment, good friends, and good food. It’s what makes a house (or a condo) a home.

Saturday was Mer’s date day, but it got off to a late start because of the ten inches of snow we had in our driveway. I went out and shoveled about half the driveway when a neighbor came over to help me with his snow blower. It was much appreciated. I checked with Mer, and she said she had no immediate plans, so I wandered down the road to a friend’s house to help him dig out. I figured since someone helped me, I should help someone else. It was a good time helping Jerry dig out – we’d shovel and talk, and it was a pretty good time.

Once that was wrapped up, I went home, and dug out the end of our driveway since the plow had been by. Once we were able to get out, Mer and I ran an errand up in Hudson, and then we went home. We had lunch, and Mer went to get groceries while I napped. I woke up about an hour-and-a-half later to the doorbell. It turned out to be my neighbor and his very cute daughters – they had made cookies and brought them over to me. They were quite good.

Once Mer got home, we ate supper and listened to Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! via the internet, which is a favorite pastime. Mer then told me to get ready to go out, and out we went.

We headed to Akron, where the roads were a bit snowy still, but we made it to my old stomping grounds (from back in 1995!), where we went to the Coach House Theater. The Coach House is a very small theater that can hold about 90 people. It is a community theater, but it tends to put on quite good plays. In fact, several of the members of this production had been actors in major theaters around the U.S., and they were doing community theater simply because they love theater.

Mer had brought me to the Coach House to see Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution. I had never seen nor read anything by Agatha Christie, so I was pretty excited. Mer had never seen this particular play, so we were well prepared to be surprised by the ending, which we both were. That was fun.

I won’t give the play away, but it centered on a young man who is accused of murdering an old lady for her money. His wife is his alibi, but she is a cold foreign woman. The play unfolds in the offices of the Queen’s Council lawyer (the defense lawyer) and in the courtroom itself.

The acting was much fun. The only thing I was not sure on was the young man – his mannerisms and accent made me think he was American, but there were a few things mentioned that made that unlikely. The two main lawyers had enough accent and formal air to pull off respected British lawyers. The cold wife was well acted as well.

The play was fun – there was a good amount of humor, and I did not see the ending coming at all. It was a well done show, and now I have a little Agatha Christie background if I need it.

We really do live in a theater-rich area. We have been to a theater in Canton, two in Akron, two in Hudson, and two in Cleveland in just the last year. The added bonus is that the community theaters tend to be very affordable. Good theater at a good price is hard to beat for a date day.

Last Friday, Mer and I went to the annual CVCA Choir Spaghetti Dinner fund raiser. Every year, the choir raises funds by serving a simple but good pasta supper, and the various choral groups perform, rotating in every half hour or so. This year, soloists performed until 5:30, and then the groups took over. We got there about 5:00, ate, and then cleared out of the table area to allow for more people to sit and eat. There were chairs set up in front of the performing area, so Mer and I moved to those. We got to see two choirs sing, but we had to leave at about 6:15 or so because I was taking Mer on a date.

There was one little hitch, though. In the late afternoon, a storm moved in. This was the back side of the storm that dumped all over the east coast, and I was worried we would have trouble driving in it. I decided that if the roads were too bad, we would turn around. We headed off south, heading to Canton, which is normally a 35-40-minute drive. I had allotted about an hour to get there. Through Cuyahoga Falls and Akron, there was snow on the roads, but it was manageable. I decided to press on. Once south of Akron, in the part of the interstate that the state takes care of, the roads got quite a bit worse, and visibility was poor at times. It was a bit tense, but we made it to the Canton exit and got off, only to discover that the main roads were not plowed. We actually looked as if we were going to slide into an intersection at a red light. I honked and got other people’s attention, but happily we stopped just at the edge of the intersection.

We did make it to the Canton Cultural Center, where the Canton Players Guild performs. It was not clear where we should park, so I parked in a handicapped space and left Mer in the car so I could go to the box office to see what we should do. While I was on my way to the door, a van pulled into the parking lot, and a woman rolled down a window and yelled at me for parking in a handicapped spot. I explained that Mer was in the car and went inside. I was a bit miffed that she would yell at me, but I also admired that she would call me out on parking in a handicapped spot. That is, until I came out and saw that the van had moved to the drive of a pay-for parking lot. It would seem the concern of the woman was that she wanted her $5. Happily, I got in the car and pulled across the street and parked there for free.

We were at the Cultural Center to see Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, by Tennessee Williams. Neither Mer nor I knew anything about the play at all, except that Williams wrote it and he is well respected. It was a very rare “pure viewing” for both of us.

The stage was set up very simply with a bed, a couple of door frames, two couches, and a small make-up table. The entire (what turned out to be) three-hour play took place in this one bedroom. The set worked well – it was functional without distracting from the characters who were jaw-droppingly intense.

What a magnificent play and a great production of it. I told Mer at one point that Williams stomps on the gas pedal and never lets up. The play focuses on one very dysfunctional family, especially a husband/wife team where the husband loathes his wife, but she loves him deeply. Why this is the case takes up most of the first two acts (out of three). The reasoning is slowly and masterfully revealed. The husband/wife plot takes place in the bigger plot where the father, Big Daddy, is trying to find out what is going on with his favorite son, while rejoicing that he has been told he is cancer free. Big Daddy is rich, and a major issue is how he will eventually leave his wealth. Big Daddy despises his wife and has no respect for the less-loved older son and his wife, and they only want Big Daddy’s money. The entire family is very screwed up.

The characters of the play are all people who should not be emulated – they are selfish and destructive. Still, the play was extremely captivating. It ended up being three hours long (including intermissions), but never dragged. I was blown away by the play. It was fantastic, and is among the best theater I have seen in a long time.

Part of this was carried by the three main characters. Canton Players Guild is a community theater, and so you might expect good amateur theater. The three main characters – the husband, his wife, and the father – were all amazing. The father was black and the son was white, but the father was so good, you forgot the improbability of that casting (in the 1950s South). Within just a few minutes, the father ceased being a black father of a white child, and simply became Big Daddy, trying to forcefully draw out his son and to understand his son’s sudden alcoholism. The wife carries the entire first act, almost making it a monologue (her husband does not want to talk to her). All three were just amazing. What a cast.

As an added bonus, the first Friday of a month (like last Friday) is “Chocolate Dream Friday,” where chocolates are served during the intermissions. Nice, indeed.

After a marvelous theater time, Mer and I came out to a winter wonderland. It had continued to snow pretty heavily, and was still snowing. I figured we would be okay since it was 11:00, but I was wrong. For a sloppy late night, there turned out to be a lot of people on the roads. Go figure. The major highway home had not been plowed, and there were no more lanes – you just followed the car in front of you and muttered at the aggressive drivers who passed you in the “lane” next to you. It was a very tense hour to get home, and we slid slightly once, causing my heart to jump, but with much prayer and taking it slowly, we got home a little after midnight. I was very relieved to get home safely (with much thanksgiving to God). I’m glad I did not know how bad the roads were going to get, or we would not have gone to the play. That would have been a shame, because it was really well done. Bravo (and lots of snow)!

Last Sunday was a nice and mellow day. We went to church and then came home and slept a good chunk of the afternoon. Then we headed southward to North Canton to meet Aunt Mary at Cheeseburger in Paradise for supper. We had not seen Aunt Mary in a bit, and she wanted to treat us to supper for our joint birthdays, so that was most agreeable. We had good food and a good time getting caught up, and we even got a couple of Christmas gifts that had not made their way to Maine at the time.

After supper, we headed over to Aunt Mary’s church. They were having a concert by a classical guitarist. To be honest, I thought it would be okay – my mind tends to wander during classical music, so while I was sure it would be a nice concert, I did not know hoe engaged I would be. Turns out, quite a bit. The guitarist is going to the University of Akron, finishing up his Master’s degree in performance. He was a quiet but engaging stage personality. He kept his introductions to the songs and longer works short and focused, and that was helpful. He had an understated sense of humor, which I liked very much.

The actual music was pretty amazing to see him play. The pieces were mostly difficult, including some by Bach, who did not write for guitar, making his works hard to play on the guitar. We sat up front, probably only 10 feet away from the artist (Jonathan Crissman), and it was amazing to watch both of his hands. What a performance. He played for about two 45-minute sets, and mixed in classical pieces with his own arrangements of hymns, including a wonderful New Orleans-style blues-influenced “Amazing Grace.” Quite wonderful.

One of the things I like about small concerts is that you usually get access to the musician. Mer and I chatted with Jonathan for about 10 minutes after the concert, and then Jonathan sat with us at our table as we went to the fellowship hall to eat cookies and drink punch. We continued to chat with him for another 20 minutes or more. I like talking to people who are good at what they do – I find it intriguing. As an aside, the pastor prayed that the food we would eat would give us strength; the food was cookies and bars. I like a church that prays for desserts!

I told Mer that I figured that we were pretty special for having heard metal/screamo music on Thursday, having done Shrew on Saturday, and then hearing Bach on the guitar on Sunday. It was an artistically diverse weekend!

Saturday was my day, and I decided to spend much of it cooking. I made four loaves of bread, two pizzas, and a pan of chocolate-peanut butter bars. I had invited a slew of people over for 6:00 for “Supper and Shakespeare,” or “Breaking Bread with the Bard.” We were to have dinner and then do our Shakespeare in a Box: Taming of the Shrew party game. It’s Taming of the Shrew edited down to be done by a small group of people in 45 minutes to an hour. It’s a really good time, and we had not done it in about 3 years. It was time.

I have a lot of game and wacky friends who thought doing Shrew was a great idea. Some admitted to me later that they were not sure, but it was gratifying to have them tell me what a great time they had. It was a grand group of people: Zach and Londa, Nate and Rachel (and their young son Jack!), Ami, our colleague (and English teacher) Joy, and a former CVCA teacher and fun person (and quite pregnant), Lis. Ami’s husband, Nate, was able to make it later to mess around with the Wii. So, for Shrew, we had nine people, counting me and Mer.

We had a grand supper – people added to my food with cookies, broccoli salad, banana bread, and apple pie. We had plenty of food, and we ate and chatted for about an hour and a half. Then, we did some warm up games to get our thespian sides moving – these games are suggested by the Shakespeare in a Box guide, and they are very funny. They consist of delivering lines in fun ways (sing the line as opera, or say it like a dirty joke), and in exercises of building a longer speech. Rachel had Jack say her lines, which was pretty darn cute. Raise that nerd child!

We assigned roles randomly, and some fun parts came out of it. Zach was Kate (the main female character), and Ami was Petrucchio (the main male character). The pregnant Lis was a male suitor to Kate’s younger sister (played by Londa, who also played an old man). Mer was Kate’s father. We have open-minded casting in the play.

At any rate, the play itself was a huge hit. We laughed and laughed. Ami (as Petrucchio) smacked Zach (as Kate) on the butt at one point, stopping the play for a few minutes while we roared. The game itself supplies corny props, like Groucho Marx glasses as a disguise and a pretty bad wig (that I got to wear as “the lusty widow”). There was much mirth when Londa and Rachel had to speak in Latin with two Latin teachers in the room (Lis and Ami). We had a great time.

After the play was over, we went back to the food, and with Nate showing up, I broke out the Wii and “Sports Resort” – a game where you try different sports. We focused on archery and sword fighting. Most people had never tried a Wii before, and so we got more than a few laughs watching people fling themselves about.

Another fun entertainment if the evening was a book Mer got me for Christmas. The book Cake Wrecks is based on the website of the same name, where the author shows pictures of commercial cakes gone badly wrong. The cakes usually have funny misspellings or bad drawings on them or the cake failed and fell apart. It is a very funny book, and it made the rounds getting chuckles out of everyone who saw it.

So, our first major party in our “new” house (that we have been in for two-and-a-half years) was a major success. I had a great time, and it seems as if everyone else did too. We’ll have to have more people over, and soon.