Last week was Thanksgiving, and I am thankful. I am happily married to a wife who is also my best friend. I have cool friends whom I like and admire. I have a family I actually like to visit. I live in an age of modern marvels like television, DVD players, computers, the internet, and the automobile, which makes 300-mile treks easy to do. I have a job that I really enjoy, and one that provides for more than my basic needs and gives me a decent amount of time off. I really am blessed.

Mer and I left for our Thanksgiving break and headed back to Ellen’s cute house in Michigan. It was only a three-hour drive, but it seemed long to me because we did not get on the road until just before 5:00, because of school. The drive was uneventful, and we got to Ellen’s around 8:00 and immediately (I think we said “hello” in the car pulling out of the driveway) left for supper. Two weeks before when we had been at Ellen’s for the marathon weekend, Mer had been getting over the flu and so had not fully been able to enjoy her food at the Saucy Dog restaurant, a local BBQ place. So, Mer asked if we could go back, and Ellen did not need much persuading.

We ate too much at the restaurant, but skipped dessert. The Saucy Dog desserts are huge, even by Riordan standards; plus, we had homemade dessert waiting back at Ellen’s. Ellen had made flan, a custard-like dessert, that I tried but found quite rich, so I stopped at a taste. I normally am not turned away from rich food, but Ellen had also amazed me by making one of my native-land foods, whoopie pies. They were flat-out excellent. With no offense to flan, it just cannot tempt me away from a freshly made whoopie pie. Ellen even went to the trouble of making these decent-sized; they were a little bigger than a closed fist. I have seen (and eaten) bigger, but these were not wimpy whoops.

We slept in some on Wednesday, but had to be somewhat efficient because we had to be on the road around 11:00. We were driving west toward Mom and Marc’s place, but wanted to swing through South Bend to visit with our college friend, Jen (known to her college friends as “Gen”) and her family. Excitingly, Gen had recently given birth to her second daughter, so we wanted to meet her. We had agreed to meet around 1:00 and go out to lunch.

We got to Gen’s after only one slight detour (I missed the first South Bend exit), and we headed out to eat. Gen’s husband, Dan, was already at the restaurant with their first daughter, who is now an adorable two-year-old. Dan had an appointment later that day, so he went ahead of everyone else. Gen drove her car and we followed her, past Notre Dame University and the new spiffy-looking buildings on one side of campus. We stopped at the bakery/sandwich shop, Indulgence, and went in.

It was a nice place. The had good sandwiches and pita-pizzas for sale, and a small but excellent-looking display of desserts. We ordered our food and sat down and chatted about family and running and medicine (Gen and Dan are doctors). Along the way, Dan had to leave with the elder daughter, but we stayed on and kept talking. And eating: Mer, Gen, and I ordered small cakes for dessert, and they were great. All in all, we got to visit with Gen for about two hours (and her younger daughter is very cute and well-behaved).

We headed up the road to Mom’s, and got there a little after 4:00, just as Mom was pulling into the driveway from her Chicago commute (she works in Chicago three days a week). Marc was home, so we schlepped all of our stuff into the house and were able to greet everyone. We puttered around a lot that evening. Mom made a light supper of burgers, and we watched an episode of The Power of Art, a BBC series on eight different artists who changed art. It turns out to be really fascinating and really well-told. I had thought that Ellen and Mom and Marc would enjoy it, and they seemed to.

Thursday was a mellow day as well. I walked down to the beach by myself, as it was a very cold and windy day. Mom and I walked down to the lake and back mid-morning. It was a pretty day. Once we got home, Mom, Marc, Ellen, and Mer all watched Wall-E while I decided to take the low ground and watch football upstairs. In my defense, I switched over to Mythbusters during commercials. I had a decent time watching the game and eating.

Around 4:00, Mom and Marc served up a large and excellent Thanksgiving dinner, with all the usual foods – turkey, potatoes, corn, cranberry sauce, biscuits, and other foods. I did not eat myself to excess, but it was still a large meal. After supper, we all sat down and played the word game Snatch-it. It is a game like Scrabble, but with no board, and you can steal other people’s words if you can add letters to make new words. Mer won the first game (I had three points) and Ellen won the second game (I got shut out). It was clearly time to go watch another Power of Art episode.

Last Saturday I was in bachelor-mode since Mer was in Florida for an education conference (and was getting to stay with her parents as a bonus!). Happily, I had an excellent social opportunity to shake me out of my stay-at-home mentality – the Kent State Folk Festival.

The Kent State Folk Festival is a folk music festival that happens every year in Kent. They have multiple acts around town (I think they had forty acts in different locations this year), and always bring in some headliners for the big venues. One of the bands this year was a favorite of mine – Eddie From Ohio. They have a great, tight sound with rich harmonies and some pretty kick-butt guitar playing, and they have not toured much of late, so I was excited to see them. I like sharing music, so I invited my friends and colleagues Dubbs and LT along, and they agreed.

We met at Rockne’s restaurant in Kent, and we got the evening off to a great start. We had good food and laughed though all of dinner. Dubbs and I dumped on LT a lot, but he took it with good humor. We then headed over to the Kent Stage for the music of the evening.

At first, I was disappointed that there were two opening acts for Eddie From Ohio – I wanted to jump right to the “good stuff.” I was pleasantly surprised, though. Both acts were excellent. The evening actually started with the winner of the Kent Folk Festival talent contest; the winner gets to perform one 4-minute song on stage to open the evening. The man did pretty well, but forgot to plug in his guitar, so that his vocals we much louder than his guitar. The acoustics in the Kent Stage are pretty good, so we still could hear his playing.

Then, the Secret Sisters came on. They really are sisters, and they sing old-time- style music (they did several Hank Williams, Sr., songs) with great harmonies. All three of us really enjoyed their music, and LT actually missed the start of the second set so he could talk with them in the lobby. LT got a CD, but sadly they had left the building by the second intermission when Dubbs and I wanted to buy their CD. 

The second set was a pianist and singer, Vienna Tang. She was a stunningly accomplished piano player, and her lyrics were intricate. She was fascinating to watch and hear. She had brought an electronic loop-back machine with her, so she was able to sing harmony with herself, and she “sampled” herself clapping so she could provide her own percussion as well. It was a great act. Dubbs used her iPhone to buy an album from iTunes during the second intermission. I enjoyed the show, but I will probably not buy a CD because the music was so intricate; it was very heavily influenced by classical music, and so was a bit outside of my normal listening taste. Still, it was a great concert.

Dubbs gave me grief during the second intermission because it was 9:30 already and she was tired. She threatened me and said Eddie had better be darn good. Happily, they were. They came out singing songs that showcased the amazing range and power of Julie, the lead singer, and they did well for themselves on guitar as well. I think it was the third song in where they did “Great Day,” an a cappella song that has great harmonies and blows the roof off of any venue with Julie’s power. Eddie had great stage chemistry and had good banter, and did a great mix of songs covering many of their nine albums. I was very impressed, and Dubbs admitted that I had actually done something right. LT also seemed impressed, so we all had a pretty great evening.

Last Wednesday, Mer and I got together with Aunt Mary for a middle-of-the-week outing. It was time for CVCA’s fall play, and since Mer was going to be out of town for a conference Thursday through Sunday, we needed to go to the Wednesday performance. CVCA was putting on Twelve Angry Jurors, the co-ed version of the film classic Twelve Angry Men. Aunt Mary very much wanted to see the production, so we had our mid-week date night all set.

We went out to supper at Texas Roadhouse, and as an added bonus we ran into the cast of the play finishing their supper (they had a 5:30 curtain call). It was fun to see the kids, who were all pumped up about the play. We had a good supper, and swung by the house briefly before heading over to school for the play.

Mer and I were finally able to buy some “Stargrams” for students we know. Stargrams are a fundraiser that happens at every play that CVCA does; they are slips of paper where you can write an encouraging note to anyone, cast or crew, who is involved in the play. For fifty cents each, they get delivered backstage, and the money goes toward helping a service group with their spring break service trips. Since Mer and I had finally sold the house, we felt we could afford to send Stargrams (Mer always has at least ten students in the plays, and even I had four this time).

The set was interesting. It was just one room with a conference table, but the walls were stripped away back to the studs in various places. The director’s notes in the program explained that the walls were “peeled back” in layers since the play was all about attempting to peel back verbal layers to get to peoples’ motivations and (hopefully) the truth.

The actual play was pretty intense. I had seen the movie version years ago, but had forgotten most of the specifics. The play is about a jury in a murder trial, and the initial vote is eleven to one that the defendant is guilty. The play then unfolds as the jurors try to convince the one man who voted “not guilty” to change his mind. It is a very serious drama, and the students did a very nice job of keeping the scenes tense and focused. There were some occasional deliberately comic moments, but on the whole it was a fairly gripping ninety minutes. The play was done with one intermission.

The students were all playing people older than themselves, including one girl who was playing an elderly woman. They did a nice job of staying in character, even when they were not center stage. The only minor acting flaw I saw was that the students would occasionally get really angry (as the characters are supposed to), but then they would back off from the anger. I suppose that is one “problem” of having nice people at CVCA.

I enjoyed the play very much, and Mer and Aunt Mary seemed to enjoy it as well. The director, Brandon, and I talked the next day, and he was very pleased by the performance. He was also excited that the audience got sucked in and was tracking with the play. CVCA’s theater program is excellent, and this production did not disappoint.

I did not sleep particularly well last Friday evening in to Saturday morning. I was to run the Veterans’ Marathon in Columbia City, Indiana, at 8:00 on Saturday, and I rarely sleep well before a race. I got out of bed before the alarm was to go off at 4:30 am, in an effort not to wake Mer. I woke her up a little bit, but she managed to get back to sleep. It was a happy thing that I got up on my own; Saturday night I discovered that I had set the alarm to 4:30 pm, so if I had been sleeping soundly, I would have missed my race.

Anyway, I got up and got dressed, which included my t-shirt dedicated to my friend Mark, who died last summer of cancer. I also pulled on my new compression running tights that I hoped would help keep my recent injuries from flaring up again. I went downstairs to Ellen’s kitchen and made myself an English muffin, which I ate because I thought it was wise; I was not hungry at all because of the very large supper I had eaten. Whether it was from the large meal or my pre-race nerves, I also had digestive issues, but those passed after a mere five trips to the bathroom. I do not know why this seems to happen in about half of my races, but so far it has never interfered with my running.

I left Ellen’s house around 5:15, and got on the road. It was very dark, and I was on back country roads, so I was very pleased at my last-week purchase of a GPS. I could just drive while the computer told me every turn. It worked pretty well. I stopped twice on the way for bathroom stops, including a large truck stop on the highway where they sold LCD TVs. It made me wonder why you would need to buy an LCD TV at a truck stop.

Anyway, I got to Columbia City with no real problems. Columbia City is small – about 7,000 people, and I was a bit worried about finding parking downtown. I saw a sign for parking down an alley, and there was ample parking, so that was well. I picked up my race bib and timing chip, and lined up to use the bathroom one more time. I got to the start line later than I should have, with only about five minutes to go, so I was nearer the back than I would have liked. It resulted in my dodging a fair number of people for the first half mile or so.

It is remarkable to me that a town of 7,000 people decided to put on a race. There were over 900 runners for the day, which I think included the 5k as well as the half marathon, but I’m not sure. I know there were 271 finishers for the marathon alone, so the 900 runners could have been for just the half and the full marathon. I was also pleased that the race was designed to honor veterans, which is why the race is fairly late in the season (because it falls on the Saturday after Veterans’ Day).

The marathon and half marathon shared the first 13.1 miles together. The marathon course kind of looks like a figure 8, and the half marathon does the first loop. The course takes you way out into farm land. There were some very lonely stretches of road to run along, but wherever there were spectators, sometimes just at the end of a driveway, they were very enthusiastic. Somehow, for a good part of the front half, I found myself 50 yards behind the runner in front of me and 10 or more yards ahead of the runner behind me. It was a lot of time to be by myself, that is for sure. It made me appreciate my running partners.

I had forgotten my watch at home, so I had no good idea of how fast I was running. The only real goal was to finish the race so I could try to honor Mark in that way. I thought I could break three hours and forty-five minutes, but that was not the most important thing. Without a watch to pace myself, I ran what I felt was a comfortable and relaxed pace. I even stopped at mile ten or so to use a port-o-john, which I usually do not do during a race if I can avoid it. It was to my great surprise, then, to see the only clock on the course; at mile 13.1 I saw that I had been running for about 1:43, which is a 3:26 marathon pace. It looked as if I had a good chance to break the 3:30 mark for only the second time in my running career.

I tried not to think about that too much, and I tried to keep my steady and comfortable pace. My left knee did not, and never would during the race, hurt. My right quadriceps, the injured muscles that made me drop out of the Towpath Marathon five weeks ago, were tender but holding up. They stayed pretty good up to the last mile of the race, and even then they just hurt a bit. The compression tights seemed to do their job (and the recovery time from the race has been remarkably short; the tights may have helped with that too).

The back half of the marathon was very rough. There were far fewer runners, and even less crowd support. In addition, the back half had a number of rolling hills which were surprisingly tough to run. Lastly, at least six or seven miles of the back half was into a stiff headwind, which included the last two miles into town. I started to get tired around mile 17 or so, and was struggling pretty hard by mile 23. I managed to keep going by taking it one mile at a time, but it was very difficult. I did slow down on the back half some, but managed to cross the finish line in 3:28:45, which was only 25 seconds off from my best marathon. Here are the quick stats:

Finish: 3:28:45 (7:58/mile pace)
Finished 56th out of 271 (top 21%)
Finished 17th out of 54 in my age group, 30-39 (top 32%)

I was pretty happy with the run. Overall, the Veterans’ Marathon got mixed reviews from me. It has tons of friendly people and good parking, and is run in honor of veterans. The water stations were mixed – there were a lot of them, but they were erratically spaced, so that there were some stretches of three or more miles with no stations, and then you could have three stations in two miles near town. On the back half, there was about a mile of the run on a rough gravel road that was hard on the feet. Still, it was a solid experience, and I am confident it will keep getting better (this was only the second year for the race).

After the run, I went back to the car, and I called Ellen and Meredith to let them know I had finished. I then drove back to Ellen’s, showered, and then ate an excellent pasta lunch that Ellen cooked. We three then looked at some difficult but rewarding poems by the Jesuit priest Hopkins, and then Ellen humored me and my craving for beef by taking us out to Johnny T’s restaurant. It was surprisingly crowded for 7:00 on a Saturday, but we found out that the local college’s volleyball team had just won a playoff game, and this was the post-game crowd. We got a table after about 30 minutes and had an excellent supper. We then went home, and I went to bed.

The next day we slept in, since Ellen’s church does not start until 10:30. I was up a bit early, so I read some of Hopkins’s sermons, which I liked very much. Mer and Ellen came down and we went to church, where we heard a good short sermon on how the ritual of the Anglican Catholic church is empty and useless unless you know the Jesus behind the rituals. After church, Ellen made us a different but still excellent pasta dish. I tweaked and fixed a few things on her new MacBook, and then Mer and I had to go (it is a three-hour drive home). It had been a very good long weekend.

Mer was sick of much of last week, so we actually had a slow week. On Sunday, Mer kicked my butt at a new word game called Snatch-it (she beat me by over a two-to-one margin) . I got a massage on Tuesday, and Mer got one on Wednesday (she had been too sick to get one on Wednesday). My massage was supposed to help me relax before my marathon on Saturday, but my therapist kept finding muscle knots in my shoulders and then in my quadriceps. Getting the knots worked on was painful enough that it was not relaxing, although I think it was good for me since I have been feeling better over the last few weeks since starting the massage treatments.

On Tuesday, CVCA’s boys’ soccer team won their game, and so they were on to the state finals. As such, the administration gave everyone Friday off so we could go to the game if we wished. Mer and I would have liked to have gone, but I was supposed to run a marathon in Indiana on Saturday, so for weeks we had been planning on going to visit Ellen in Michigan, and I would just make the hour-and-forty minute drive to the marathon from her house. We used the day off productively – I got the oil changed in Mer’s car, and then we signed papers that refinanced our loan on our house (we went from a 30-year loan to a 15-year loan). Even with all of this, we were able to get on the road at around 2:00 in the afternoon. When we stopped for a late lunch, I got on the wi-fi network at the rest stop and found out CVCA’s guys won the state championship game 3-2. That was very happy. That makes six times in nine years that CVCA has made it to the state game, and they have now won it three times.

Anyway, we got to Ellen’s a little after 5:00. Ellen greeted us and we looked over her ever-cuter home. Ellen is very talented at decorating, and had made a few changes since the last time we had been there. The guest bedroom was particularly striking – it was all redecorated in black and white, from the walls to the bedspread to the pillows to the decorative boxes to the coasters on the night stands, and it really worked well.

After Ellen ran one of her students home (the student had been doing some waterproofing on the deck), we went out to eat. Ellen took us to one of her favorite places, the Saucy Dog, a BBQ restaurant. We all got huge portions, and I allowed myself to eat it all and then throw in a huge dessert as well. I figured it was all fuel for the race, and excuse I had been using all day Thursday as well.

Once we got back to the house, we introduced Ellen to Snatch-it. Ellen was very good at making large and obscure words, but missed some simpler words that I got. Once I had the small but simple words, Mer usually stole them and made them into bigger words. The end result is that I think Mer beat me and Ellen by more than both of us combined. On that note, I headed off to bed to try to get some sleep.

Last Saturday (the 6th) was “my” day. I went running six-seven miles on the Towpath with Jason. It had snowed lightly, but the trail itself was still warm enough that the snow did not stick to it. It was very pretty, once the sun came up. After the run, I came home and showered. Mer was just getting up, so she got ready, and then we headed over to Bob Evans for brunch.

It was a slow start to a day with a busy evening. Our friend and colleague Liz came over to our house around 4:45 or so, and we all got in our car and headed north. It was a blustery day still, and since we were heading to eastern Cleveland, we drove into the fringes of the snow belt (east of the lake gets a lot more snow than everyone else). The roads were okay for the most part, although we did see two cars off the road.

We first stopped off at a large pub called Muldoon’s. What a sweet place. It was very informal – football on the TVs, miscellaneous decor everywhere, signs with attitudes sprinkled about. The menu was quite large, and we all found stuff that sounded good to us. The food was so good, the service so excellent, and the atmosphere so relaxing that Liz declared that if she lived near the place, she would be there at least once a week. Mer and I both concurred. It seems like the sort of place where you could become a regular. Mer was the hero of the evening because she asked the waitress if she could combine two desserts (a chocolate ice cream dessert with a brownie dessert). When the waitress said she could, Liz and I both ordered the same thing, and Liz sang “Did You Ever Know That You’re My Hero?” It was a good time.

After supper, we headed over the four or five blocks to the Collinwood Cafe to see David Wilcox in concert. I think this is the fourth or fifth time Mer and I have seen him live, but Liz had never even heard of him. Dave had just come out with a new CD, and he performed some of the songs from it, but mostly he seemed to be doing either unpublished songs or songs from before 1995. The venue was a good one – a long hall with a slightly raised stage. Mer and Liz had snagged seats in the fifth row (or so) while I went to get my camera (and also came back with two chocolate chip cookies from the cafe – it is important to support local businesses). Dave did two sets, and sang for over two-and-a-half hours. While not uptight at all during the first half of the show, he seemed to relax in the second half and told more stories about his music. It was a good concert, and Liz seemed to enjoy the evening very much.

The first week of November was not so packed as some of the weeks we have had over the last few months, but we still did some interesting things.

Monday (the 1st) – Never say “never again.” Our good friends’ band Bethesda got exciting news in that they were opening for a band they admired greatly, called Eisley. They never thought they would get the gig, but they did, and it was a huge deal for them. I wanted to support them in this very exciting moment, but it meant going back to Musica – the music club in Akron that Mer and I had sworn we would never go back to after having seen several concerts there over the last year. Our general impression was that Musica was crowded, had few seats, was noisy (in a way that competed with the bands) and usually did a poor job of mixing the sound for the bands. So, in order to support our friends, we went back to Musica. To our delight, it was okay. They still had a little trouble mixing the vocals (the harmony singers were just as loud as the lead singer), but since Bethesda was opening, the club was not overly crowded when they played. Also, since all four bands that were playing were Christian bands, there were not any ragingly drunk people yelling over the band. Mer and I are still not big fans of Musica, but they did okay this night. We did leave after Bethesda finished their set, since it was a school night.

Wednesday (the 3rd) – Mer and I had another session at Mesaage Envy, where I continued to have my neck, shoulders, and back worked on. It seems to be working. Mer enjoyed another relaxation massage. After the massages, Mer took me out to eat at our local Friday’s restautant. They were having a fund raiser to help out a CVCA family in need, and, as always, Mer and I are ready to eat for a cause. It was also fun to see CVCA students there to help support the family as well.

We then headed to the Akron Hibernian Club for the monthly CVCA Ceili Club gathering, where we get to dance to live Irish music. One of my former students came back from college to dance, and she even brought a friend whom she had been teaching how to dance. It was good to see her, and we had a pretty good crowd that night (I think we had ten students in all).

Friday (the 5th) – On Friday, we got together with Aunt Mary and went to Menches Brothers restaurant, where they are one of 5,000 restaurants to claim to have invented the hamburger. Even if they did not invent it, they have great burgers. They mix just a little coffee in with the burger, which sounds strange, but works really well. After supper, we headed back to Aunt Mary’s place, where we all watched Wheel of Fortune (where we got to see a woman solve a puzzle with just one letter revealed) and Jeopardy. I also puttered with Aunt Mary’s new laptop, cleaning off all the trial versions of programs that come with new laptops. Good company, food, and game shows are good ways to spend an evening.

Last Saturday (the 30th) was Mer’s day, and what a day she had planned!

I went running in the morning, and then showered and got ready. We headed up to Hudson, where we split up. Mer went to Panera for lunch, where by coincidence she met up with Terri, one of CVCA’s front office receptionists. Terri was with a friend and they invited Mer to join them to play Snatch-it, a scrabble-like word game where you can steal other people’s words. So, even though I had left Mer by herself, she had a very entertaining time.

Meanwhile, I went across the street to Chipotle. I was meeting some of the guys from my CVCA Connections group. CVCA started a program this year where all faculty and some staff (those who volunteered to do so) get connected with a group of 8-12 students, and we all meet together for 43 minutes once/week. The idea is to build a relationship with the students so that the students feel they have an adult at CVCA whom they can go to for help. Anyway, I have a group of 10 eleventh-grade guys, and we decided we should get together to eat once in awhile. One of the guys had picked Chipotle, so that is where we went.

It was a good time. Only four of the ten guys showed up, but that is okay – it was always optional. I had a good time talking with the guys, especially finding out more about the Norwegian exchange student in my group. He told us about Norway and the food and where he lived and so on. I knew that Mer wanted us in Cleveland by 3:00 or so, so I had to cut the lunch a little short; we still managed to visit together for a little over an hour. I went back across the street to pick up Mer, and discovered that she was still in the middle of a game of Snatch-it. I saw David, another CVCA teacher, in line for food, so I went over and chatted with him while Mer finished up her game.

We then headed northward to Cleveland. We have taken good advantage of out new location in Cuyahoga Falls, and we have probably been to Cleveland more in the last six months than all the times we went during the six years we lived in New Baltimore. It is one of many reasons we like living where we do.

Mer took us to the Great Lakes Theater Company, in the Playhouse Square complex. We were there to see Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband. A group of CVCA students had gone to see the play, and Mer did not want them to have seen a play she had not; more importantly, she had never seen An Ideal Husband performed live before, and this was the closing performance. I was excited to see the play because I am a big fan of Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, so I was looking forward to seeing another play by him.

The set was very simple – some columns and multiple tiers of platforms. It was very elegantly done, since all the major players in the play are rich, but it was very open so that furniture could be moved around to create different spaces. It also allowed for good sight lines since there were very few obstructions.

The actors in the play were the same actors we had seen a few weeks ago in Othello; the two plays were being done in repertory (both at the same time with most of the same actors). It was very interesting to see the actors from a major tragedy play in a major comedy. The villain of Othello, Iago, played the funniest character in An Ideal Husband, and it is to his credit that he was to pull both of them off.

The first act of the play surprised me – it still had funny moments, but was very serious. The main character of the play has one dark secret from his past that would threaten his highly successful political career and his marriage to a morally upright woman whom he adores. Another woman finds out and attempts to bribe the man, and the play unfolds around this plot. It is pretty serious stuff on the whole, with bits of very funny Wilde moments scattered throughout. I had expected a non-stop romp like Earnest. After the intermission, the play gets much much funnier. The first act sets up the dramatic tension, and Wilde gets lots of use and laughs out of the good-for-nothing, but very loyal and intelligent, friend of the man being bribed. It is very funny stuff.

The play ends well (it is a comedy, after all), and the production was excellent. The play was pretty long, and it was after 5:30 when we got out. Mer wanted me to swing by another theater in eastern Cleveland, the Cleveland Playhouse. She wanted to see if they had tickets available for The Kite Runner. She had tried to get tickets online without success, but she wanted to see if they had any available from cancellations or the like. It turns out there were some excellent tickets available, so she got those, and we headed off for dinner in Cleveland’s small but excellent Little Italy.

After having some trouble finding parking, we then had some trouble picking out a restaurant. We wandered up one side of the street and back down the other. Surprisingly, only about half the restaurants had their menus posted where you could see them. We finally found a small restaurant that I liked the look of – it looked like the real thing, and it turns out it was. Our server was pretty clearly a woman from the Old Country, and Mer and I both ordered pizzas that were very good (although in a nod to the American consumer, they were not the typical very-thin Italian pizza).

We then headed up the street for dessert at a place that had advertised good hot chocolate. Sadly, the person who normally runs the dessert bar in what is otherwise a gallery was not there. So, we’ll have to try that place another time, especially where the woman in the store said it would take ten minutes to “melt the chocolate.” That sounds like my kind of place. She also gave us two small pieces of fudge for free for the inconvenience, which was kind of her. We headed down the street and stopped in at a bakery. They had fresh cannoli that they filled right there as you waited. We each got a chocolate-covered shell, which they filled with fresh cream. It was delicious and seemed a fittingly authentic dessert to have in Little Italy.

We then headed back to the theater. Mer attended the pre-show talk, since she is going to teach The Kite Runner to her seniors this year. Mer asked me not to go to the talk since I had not read the book that the play was based on; we both value “pure viewings” of plays or movies if we have not read the book or play, so I agreed to skip the pre-show talk.

For those not familiar with it, The Kite Runner is a book (and now a play and movie) about a boy who grows up in Afghanistan. After the Soviets invade, he gets out with his family and moves to San Fransisco, but the events of his childhood keep haunting him, and he has to go back to Afghanistan for various reasons I won’t give away. The title refers to a popular Afghan sport – kite fighting. People fly kites and try to cut the strings of other kites until there is only one kite left. When a kite string is cut, it drifts to the ground, and becomes a trophy. The other boys who chase these kites down are called kite runners. The main character of the book/play has a servant boy about his age, and they have an interesting and very complex relationship that is the foundation of the play. It was gripping to see all of these things unfold, and I strongly recommend the play (and probably the book, since Mer says it is even better).

The actors of the play did a great job. The boys of the play were played by young men in late high school or early college, but they pulled off playing boys of about twelve very well through their body language. The play was also helped out greatly by the presence of the main character’s adult self being on stage as a narrator and observer. It worked really well and did not seem artificial.

The set was open, except for a large wall at the back of the stage that was used to climb on as trees or walls or whatever was needed. The play had commissioned an Afghan man who played indigenous drums to play the drums as background rhythms at key moments, and like a good movie soundtrack, it was there and added to the tension without my consciously realizing it was there.

The Kite Runner was also a long play, and we did not get home until almost midnight. It had been a long day, but a good one. I think that was the first time we had seen two plays in one day since our honeymoon, when we saw eight plays in five days. It was an extravagant date day that Mer had planned, and I appreciated it.

The last week of October was puttery, but very fun.

Tuesday (the 26th) – Mer and some other teachers took about 200 students up to Cleveland to see Great Lakes Theater’s production of Othello. I did not go along since Mer and I had previewed the play a month ago or so, and I find it a hard play to see too often since it is so tragic on such an intimate scale. The trip went off well, and the reports I heard back from the students I know were all positive; they liked the play very much.

Wednesday (the 27th) – Mer took me out to Chick-fil-A for supper. It was a CVCA fundraiser for one of the sports teams (girls’ tennis, I think). We like to eat for good causes. The place was packed with CVCA folks, which made it fun – Mer and I are often remarking how nice it is to be part of a community. We ate dinner with one of our mutual students, Sarah. She is a stitch, and it was good to spend some time talking with her outside of school. After supper, Mer and I had an appointment for massages, so that was a great way to end the evening.

Thursday (the 28th) – Mer and I wandered over to CVCA to see the girls’ soccer team play in a playoff game. We showed up in the second half, since we ate supper first. Showing up in the second half also allowed us to get in for free, so that was a bonus. As soon as we walked in, with 25 minutes left in the game, CVCA scored to go up 1-0. It was a very windy night, with strong gusts of wind. We were playing against the wind, so as soon as we scored, our team dropped back into playing defense. It made for a very tense game since we only crossed mid-field again three times in over twenty minutes, but our girls went on to win 1-0. (As an aside, this season marked the girls’ team’s best performance ever. They went on to lose in this last Saturday, but that still put them in the final eight teams in the whole state. It was a great year for them.)

Friday (the 29th) – Mer and I are trying hard to eat out with out colleagues more this year now that we sold the other house. This Friday, we planned on meeting Dave and Chrissy Kamp at Aladdin’s for supper. While we were waiting for Dave and Chrissy to show up, Dubbs walked in and joined us. She was meeting a bunch of teachers there too, so we made one big table. I think by the time everyone was seated, we had nine people at the table, eight of whom work for CVCA (we had one husband who was an alumnus). It was a really great time – lots of laughter. Sadly, we did not have time for dessert, but Mer and I grabbed some cookies on the way out. I needed to be back at CVCA in time to cheer on the marching band as they started marching toward the football field. It is a tradition of mine, and this was the last football game of the season (unless we won and made the playoffs). It was certainly going to be the last home game of the year. Mer joined me this time in yelling for the band, then she went off to her room to grade.

I watched the football game through halftime, and I watched the band at halftime. They do a great job. I was kept company by a former student, Andrew, so that was companionable. I did leave after halftime, even though it was a good game. I had a 13-mile run early the next morning, and the cold evening air had made my left knee ache pretty badly. I went and found Mer in her classroom, and we went home.

Our team did end up losing the game, but they played a great game against a 9-0 team. Our guys actually went up by a touchdown late in the game, but it was called back on a controversial holding call. It was too bad – our guys played really hard.

So, October ended well. Saturday turned out to be really busy, and a really great time, but enough happened that it will require a separate entry.

Sadly, we shipped Tava off to a new home today. It turns out that right after I adopted Tava, another lady called the vet about adopting her. She was looking for a cat for her mom. She left her number with the vet in case our adoption “didn’t work out.” So, we called her yesterday, and she and her mom (who wanted a cat) came and got Tava today at noon. I was pleased – the mom had had cats before, but had none now. She told me that Tava would be an indoor-only kitty, and she thought Tava was beautiful. Tava was scared because she needs a few hours to get used to new people, but I am confident she will be okay in a couple of days – she is just a bold little adventurous kitty, so she should be used to the new house pretty quickly.

After five weeks, we finally decided we could not keep Tava. The number of fights with the other cats seemed to be increasing, and on Tuesday night I noticed that Emma had a large gouge missing from her side – a hole about the size and depth of a cigarette burn. She had been bitten, and I took her to the vet’s on Wednesday. Once I had seen the depth of the wound on Emma, I knew that we had to find Tava a new home; otherwise, one of the kitties, maybe Tava, was going to get hurt.

I’ll miss Tava. She is one of the most affectionate kitties I have ever seen. She loved to be with me and Mer on the couch, and she would snuggle and fall asleep there with us most nights. Her funny looks became endearing, and she was a great purring kitty when she was being loved. I am very confident she will make her new humans very happy.

So, we are back to a three-kitty household. It is at least quiet again – no more growling and hissing. Macska and Jackson, who have not gotten along well in the past, now are content to be on the bed together at night. It seems that fear of Tava drove them together. Here is hoping the peace of the house lasts now that Tava has a new home.