Last Friday, I took Meredith out for dinner to celebrate us selling the house on Wednesday. I wanted to take her somewhere nice. A few months ago, I got a promotion in my e-mail from Restaurants.com where I could buy $25 gift cards for $2 each (the catch is that you have to spend $35 total at the restaurant), so I bought seven of them, three for restaurants I already know, and four for new (to me) places. I looked through the four new places, and they are all nice, but they also have fairly snooty menus with things I probably would not like to eat. One of them had a chicken dish, so that was where we went.

Richfield is a little town about 15 miles northwest of us, and I have never paid it too much attention. I called up the Richfield Taverne and made reservations for the outside patio, and we headed out that way. The Taverne is very nice – the inside is spacious and has an old-time feel, including a decorative tin ceiling. The patio was very pleasant, with only about ten tables. We both ordered the chicken dish, and enjoyed the evening air. The food was good, but not necessarily stunning. As we were finishing up eating, a duet set up and started playing light jazz, which was very fun. I was not enthusiastic about the dessert selection, but I needed to spend $2.00 more to get my discount, so we tried a chocolate-and-berry cake that turned out to be very good. Normally, I do not like chocolate and fruit mixed together, but this one had the fruit drizzled just on one end, so I was able to split most of it with Meredith. All in all, it was a good way to celebrate.

Saturday was “my day,” as long as we still made it to our two scheduled graduation parties. I wanted to check out a trail in the Valley that we had not yet tried, and so we headed off to the trailhead. The trail is called Wetmore, which I joked was probably a warning. It was. The trail was also primarily a horse trail, and it turned out to be over 5 miles long. And it was hot. Still, ignorant of the arduous walk ahead of us, we plunged in. At first, the major issue to watch out for was horse droppings, but then we got to the first very shallow stream we had to ford. No problem. Over the whole trail, we had to ford four or five streams, and none was very difficult, but they were usually very muddy on the banks. Mud kept cropping up on the trail, and the horses had churned it up quite a bit. Still, we kept on until we figured we were well over halfway back to the car. At that point, there was about a mile-long stretch that was more churned-up mud than dry ground, and we had a tough time picking our way along the side of the trail in an effort to stay dry and fairly clean.

We cleared the worst of the mud, and we ran into a very nice man whom we had seen at the start of our walk. He stopped to chat and found out where we’d parked, and informed us we were about halfway back to the car. I think he meant to be kind, but that came as a bit of a blow. The happy news is that the back half of the walk was fairly dry, but it compensated for that by being really hilly. We got back to the car tired and hot, and went back home to each take our second shower of the day.

We then headed to Silver Springs Park in Stow, a park not too far from where we live. There was a graduation party going on there, and we had never been to the park before. It turns out they have a great playground for little kids. Anyway, the party was in a pavilion and the food was great (burgers and such, with cookies and cupcakes). While we were eating, I saw two students come walking out of the woods, so I figured correctly that there was a trail in the park. Since it was a park, I figured that the trail must be fairly short. I was not doing too well on my figuring. We decided to give it a try, and the trail turned out to be over two miles long, with a few muddy sections, and Mer was in sandals. We ran into another kind man who helped us choose the right paths to get back to the party, and 40 minutes after we set out we got back in time to have some cake, which had been cut while we were walking. All in all, I figured we walked about 7-8 miles on Saturday, in addition to the 12 miles I ran in the morning. I was pretty tired.

We then went to a second grad party that was very close by. It was at the house of a colleague, and we had some good food and a good visit with a teacher friend. We were also entertained by the casual but competitive all-ages volleyball game that went on the entire time we were there. We then went home, full and tired.

On Wednesday, around 4:00 in the afternoon, the deed for our old house transferred to the new owners. After 2 years, 11 months, and 2 weeks, we became a one-house household again. I will post soon about the lessons I learned over the last three years (God had to use a fairly big spiritual two-by-four on me), as well as the tons and tons and tons of blessings we received. It has not fully sunk in yet, but I am taking Mer out tonight (Friday) to celebrate. Many thanks to family and friends who wished us well and prayed for us and showered us with support for three years.

(Oddly, it turns out that this is the best picture I have of the house. I guess I never took pictures of it.)

Last Friday we headed over to Aunt Mary’s spiffy condo. She had invited us over for pizza, along with “Aunt” Zovie (not a real aunt, but a life-long family friend), and the “Hubes” (short for Hubeles, other long-time family friends). I had not seen Aunt Zovie in two years, since Uncle Bob died, and it had been a full year since we had seen Don and Donna and their family. The get-together was a great time. I like getting together with Aunt Mary, and Aunt Zovie is a lead contender in any competition to determine the world’s most gracious person. Don is just drop-dead funny, and Donna and the children are delightful. Don kept us laughing recounting his experience playing the semi-bad guy in The Fantasticks (he said playing a guy who is cynical and likes to mess with youth was a “real stretch”). The pizza hit the spot, and Aunt Mary served up the same light-but-great cake that we got her for her birthday. What a wonderful way to spend a Friday.

Saturday was again dedicated to making the rounds of graduation parties. We had three on Saturday. We started off the day at a grad party by a lake in southern Akron. We sat on the dock, eating Asian food (a rarity for mid-west grad parties) and cake (quite common, but welcome). We saw several of our students, and we saw fellow teachers the Schillings and the ever-expanding McSparran clan.

Grad Party, the Sequel, was held in a back yard in Hudson. It was strange in that we had been to the same place for a grad party last year for the older brother’s graduation celebration. It does drive home how fast the year goes when you repeat visits like that. There was some excellent comfort food (hot dogs and sloppy joes) as well as cake and several kinds of bars. We had a very pleasant visit with the older brother and the father (the graduate at these kinds of parties is usually too in-demand to talk to any one person for too long).

Grad Party III, the Expansion, was at another house in Hudson. This was the first grad party I had ever been to that involved multiple schools. In addition to CVCA, there was a graduate from Walsh Jesuit High School and one from Ursuline High School. This meant the party was huge and crowded, and it meant this was the first CVCA-affiliated party I had ever been to where there was a full bar. But, more importantly, they had the biggest and best dessert buffet table I have ever seen. There were buckeyes, and cookies, and cake, and more. They also had a ton of real food, and I had a barbecue sandwich that was probably the best I have ever had. Happily, since this was the third party of the day, I was fairly full and could not make myself sick at the dessert table.

Sunday, we had one grad party, here in Cuyahoga Falls. This was an interesting one in that the student we were helping to celebrate was not in Mer’s classes and was not in any of my groups. Jimmy is a very friendly young man, and we both met him on a Diakonos spring break trip three years ago, and he kept stopping by to say hi to me and to Meredith. I was very pleased that we were able to celebrate with Jimmy. There were Italian sausages and hot dogs for real food, and cookies and cupcakes and brownies for dessert. I handled myself with a little more dignity than I had on Saturday. We had a long visit with one of my Royal Fools and Ceili Club students and her family, and we got to see the McSparrans as well.

After the grad party, we headed over to the square, down by the river in Cuyahoga Falls. We wanted to check out the last day of the (free!!) three-day Cuyahoga Falls Irish Festival. We started at the back stage (of three stages), and we met up with the woman who leads the Hibernian Club Ceili Band. She was there selling music and whistles and such, and she gave me a dance CD for Ceili Club. We then took a seat in front of the stage and heard a great band. They were very much in the Irish tradition, but played almost all original songs. The had a guitar/banjo player, a guitar/bagpipe player, a pipes/whistles player, a percussionist, and a bouzouki/mandolin player. They had a great sound – probably the best band I have heard at the festival in the three years I have gone. We stopped by to say goodbye to Mary Ann (the band leader), and headed over to the second stage, via the river walk, which is pretty.

The band at the second stage was okay. They were a bit heavy on guitars, but they got on my good side early by singing a song about Portland (Maine, not Oregon). Sadly, they had completely inane banter in between songs that was really irksome, and so after 4 or 5 songs, I asked Mer if we could go. She agreed.

Sunday officially ended the great ten days of eating out. Hopefully, I can do better in the coming weeks at not eating quite so much.

The great food and social quest continued last Wednesday and Thursday. Every spring break for the last five years, I have gone with CVCA’s service group, Diakonos, to help out a community project, usually Habitat for Humanity. Last Wednesday, our friend Lesa held an end-of-year party for the Diakonos kids at her house. Mer was a bit reluctant to go along since she had not gone on the trip, but I convinced her that spouses were welcome. She ended up having a pretty good time, since about 3/4 of the students at the party were hers.

There were about 15 kids at the party, and tons of junk food. The real food was roast-your-own hot dogs, which were fun and tasty, but the real prize of the evening was the dessert spread. Whoa. There were warm chocolate chip cookies, the best no-bake cookies that I have had in years, s’mores, my chocolate-peanut-butter bars, and other various cookies and treats. I was better than I could have been, but it was not a temperate evening.

We had fun eating and chatting, and then we headed inside to watch the DVD of all the movies that had been taken on the trip. It was funny to watch the kids ham it up for the camera. We also watched the annual talent show that had been taped, and that went well. Some of the individual videotaped “confessionals” where students could say anything they wanted went a bit long for a party atmosphere, but it was still a nice evening. Mer and I had to leave toward the end of the video because it was getting late for me (I had to work the next day).

Thursday we headed over to Clarice’s place for another game night with Clarice, Matt, Josh, and Kristen. We started the evening with Tribond, a game where you have to guess what is the similarity among three words. That turned out to be a frustrating game. My team only got to go twice – Mer’s team won by going twice, almost “running the table.” It is not a whole lot of fun to sit for 30+ minutes not getting to play. If we play the game again, we need to have three teams of two, and not two teams of three. It turns out that out of all the questions asked that evening, our team did not know two of them – the two questions we were asked and missed. Ah, well.

We then played a semi-improv game that Shannon and Jo had given us called Don’t Make Me Laugh. To a large extent, it was like charades, but with very weird things to act out (like “Be a buoy in a kiddie pool”). Since five of the six of us have done improv before, we had a really great time with that game. It was a nice bonus that Clarice and I ended up winning, but even before we knew that, we had a great time.

Mer and I almost broke the food chain after the party, but I had a Dairy Queen craving, so I stopped. That kept the (what ended up being) 10-days-of-big-eating-in-a-row steak going.

Last Monday, Mer and I were invited over to our friends’ (Eric and Shanna’s) apartment for dinner and to meet the new kitten. Eric and Shanna are both dog people, but they are not allowed to have a dog, so they decided to adopt a very cute kitty that they named Atlas. Atlas is a black-on-black kitty, and he is very energetic and playful and seems really healthy. It was a delight to get to hold a kitten again and have him zonk out on my lap. Good kitty!

Eric and Shanna have a very cool apartment on the ground floor of a house. It is very much a Chicago-style apartment, with nice woodwork and very high ceilings. Eric and Shanna were allowed to paint the place, and they chose great colors. They were also able to put out an elegant and pretty and matching table setting at the (roughly) ages of 25. Mer and I still can’t put out an elegant table setting at pushing 40.

They made some very good Italian food – two kinds of pasta and a tasty garlic bread. Eric remembered that I like Sprite and made sure he had some on hand for me, which was very considerate. Shanna had procured cookies and cream ice cream and hot fudge for dessert, and even had some ice cream cookies in stock as well. Our reputation for hearty dessert eating apparently went before us.

After supper and dessert, we gushed over Atlas, and then played an English-nerd game, Bethump’d with Words. Bethump’d with Words asks about the history of the English language and the definitions of words and the difference between American and British English. It is quite a fun game for word-nerds, and it was made even more fun by playing with Atlas while playing the game. Sadly, I had to call the game short before it was done because it was getting late and I had to work the next day.

Tuesday evening I “produced” my first concert. I organized a teacher concert at CVCA as a dry run for a potential fundraiser for next winter. It grew out of my desire to hear Eric and Shanna’s band, Bethesda, outside of a bar setting, but it grew into quite a nice little event. My fellow CVCA teachers, Matt and LT (known as the CVCA-only semi-real band The Flealands), opened the evening by playing acoustic guitars, mandolin, and djembe drum, and they sang. LT and Matt are both talented musicians, and they had a very nice sound together for two guys who don’t really play together. They did about 45 minutes’ worth of music, and then we turned the stage over to Bethesda. They took about 15 minutes for setting up and for a sound check (we ran out of time before the concert to do a full sound check), and then proceeded to do a 45-minute set as well. The sound was occasionally spotty for Bethesda; it turned out that the guitars were overwhelming the soundboard and messing up the vocal balance. Because of the quick sound check, each instrument was checked by itself, and so when the entire band was playing louder songs, the soundboard kind of freaked out. Still, the sound was more or less corrected at the cost of just one or two songs, and even then just at the cost of a clear vocal balance.

The crowd was much fun – there were about 100 people there, which is very good for a random Tuesday in June after school has let out, and with a minimum of advertising. The students seemed to really enjoy the evening, and that made it a success in itself. Regarding the concert, I learned several things, and that made it valuable to me – I learned we needed to start 30 minutes earlier for the sound check, and we needed two sound techs instead of just one (one led to too much running around, up and down stairs to and from the tech booth and stage). I’m hoping this will translate into a concert worth paying $5 for next winter.

After the concert and the clean-up, Mer and Dubbs and I went to Friday’s for dessert. I generally need some unwind time after evenings where I am partly responsible for the event, and so we went out to talk, laugh, and relax. All in all, it was a very good evening, even without the presence of Atlas.

Last weekend was pretty much about celebrating graduations with our seniors. Friday we went to two graduation parties (a midwest tradition of lots of food and cornhole and students). The first graduation party was at a park pavilion, which was nice since it was a pretty day. They had four (yes, four) cakes, so Mer and I ate too much and then actually managed to win two cornhole games, which is very unusual since we normally stink at the game. For those of you who don’t get to grad parties, cornhole is the game of throwing beanbags through a hole in a board. It actually is pretty fun, in a bocce or croquet sort of way.

The second grad party was at the student’s house, and was full of CVCA people. The father is on the CVCA board, and the mom substitute teaches at CVCA, so they know everyone at the school, and most of the school seemed to be there. The food was plentiful and excellent. The student (a very nice young lady) had spent a good amount of time carving out a cool path through the woods on their property; she then had the path lit by tiki torches and a bonfire. It was much fun.

As an aside, Friday was the first day of ten (yes, ten) straight days of going out for me and Mer, and most of the events involved food. It is amazing that we both don’t weigh 250 pounds.

Saturday I went running with Jason and Nate, and then (after I showered) Mer and I went to the Crooked River Grill to meet up with several fellow CVCA English teachers for breakfast. We were celebrating a former English teacher being back in town. Beverly, the teacher in question, was only at CVCA for one year, but she was (and is) an excellent teacher, and we were all very fond of her. She moved back to her home in Kentucky after her husband died from cancer, so we lost her. But, she was back in town to see “her kids” graduate; that is how much she loved her students – to come back four years later to see them graduate. Amazing. Anyway, we had a great time catching up (and eating an excellent breakfast), and Beverly expects me and Mer to come and visit her this summer.

After breakfast and a nap at home, we went to two grad parties. The first one was at a very cool house where most of the rooms had doors that opened right into the back yard, which overlooked a river and woods. There again was lots of good food, including a sundae bar (yum!). The house was full of students whom Mer and I knew, so we had a good time.

The second grad party was lower key for me – I did not really know the girl being celebrated; she was a student of Mer’s. The food was more of the snack type, which was good since it could have otherwise been the third big meal of the day. I did have a piece of cake.

Not to be worn out by three social outings, we went from the grad party back to the music club Musica. We have had some poor experiences at Musica, but we were giving it one last try since our friends’ (Eric and Shanna’s) band, Bethesda, was playing there that night. Happily, for us, Musica got it right this night. There were two bands we saw besides Bethesda, and we enjoyed them both. The sound was mixed pretty well, and one band was mostly electric but had a good sound, and the second band (on after Bethesda) was just acoustic guitar and banjo. They sang a lot of older folk songs and original songs in the folk tradition. It was a nice surprise from a venue that is usually much more hard core. Bethesda put on a great show, about 30 minutes long, and they sounded pretty good. The only mixing issue was that I could not hear the pedal steel guitar, but given that the rest of the band was blending well, I was happy to take that. We stuck around for one song of the headline act, a woman indie country singer who is well known nationally, but whose name I forget. I was tired (it was after 10:00), and her sound did not excite me too much, so we left. It had been a busy little day.

Sunday was church and then a nap – pretty typical occurrences for me on a Sunday. That evening was the formal ceremony of graduation for CVCA’s seniors. Faculty (like Mer) are required to go, and I go along since I usually know some of the kids and I can sit next to Meredith. Besides, the reception before the ceremony has really good desserts, including chocolate mint brownies that are quite tasty. Graduation was pretty typical – awards and speeches and the calling of names and giving of diplomas; it went by pretty quickly, and we were leaving just after 8:00. We ate a quick supper and watched a Quantum Leap episode on DVD, and then went off to bed.

Last week was a puttery little week.

Monday – Mer was gone on Senior Trip, so I was left to batch it. This meant homemade pizza and Spider-Man 2.

Tuesday – Aunt Mary invited me to her place, and we got take-out from Grinders. We then watched competitions on the Food Network, which I enjoyed. I especially liked “Chef vs. City,” where two teams of chefs had to do various food-related things in Chicago. It was fun to see Chicago from a food point of view.

Wednesday – I went down to Atwood Lake for the last evening of Senior Trip. I get to see Mer and hang out with her, and there is always a special dinner and “senior share” where the seniors get to say what they like (as long as it is positive). The weather was great, the food was very good, and the kids were kind. This year, the praise and thanking of classmates and teachers was more frequent than in past years, but it was also more general; they students tended to thank “the teachers” and “my classmates” and very few singled people out. This is not a bad thing, just different from past years.

Saturday – Mer and I had two graduation parties, one at The Ledges park nearby, and one at a very nice home in the area of Canton about 40 minutes away. We ate well at both. We were planning on seeing Aunt Mary, so we made it part of the trip to the greater North Canton area. We had a good visit for about 45 minutes or so.

Not a bad little week!