Christmas Eve day started out rough – Mer and I had massage appointments at Massage Envy, where I continue to try to get my shoulders back in proper working order (just from years of misuse, methinks). I get somewhat painful deep tissue massages while Mer blissfully relaxes. It works for us.

After our massages, we headed southward to North Canton to Aunt Mary’s house for our gift exchange. Mer’s folks had wanted to hold the gift exchange a day early – they had gotten Aunt Mary a Wii video game console with the games Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, and they (rightly) figured that opening gifts a day early would allow for more family game time.

Mer and I had chipped in with the Wii gift in the form of two extra controllers (the Wii only comes with one), so Aunt Mary has the ability to have three people playing games now. I think Aunt Mary was very surprised at the gift, but she took to it right away. I hooked it up for her, but then she was able to run the console herself; she created a Mii (a small character representing herself in the games), and was able to change out game disks and get the games going. She was pretty formidable in both Jeopardy and in Wheel. It was a good time seeing Mer’s mom and dad (in their 60s and 80s, respectively) playing the games.

Tech toys were not limited to Aunt Mary – she got Mer’s parents a new digital camera, so a small part of my day was spent in setting that up and teaching Dale and Carlene how to use it. They both caught on pretty quickly, and Carlene was taking pictures throughout the rest of their vacation here. I was pretty useful this Christmas!

Mer’s folks were very thoughtful and got me one hundred pounds cash, in actual pounds, for our upcoming London trip. That was very nice of them. Aunt Mary heard me muttering one day in her garage while doing something handy; I was commenting on Aunt Mary having a drill while I did not, and she went out and got me a very nice cordless drill set. I am now ready to “improve” the house in all kinds of ways (I’m also pleased to have it for the spring break service trips I usually go on).

That evening, Mer and I went to New Baltimore for the Christmas Eve service. It was packed out – there must have been two hundred people or more in the building. The service was quite lovely, and Mer and Janet (the pastor’s wife) sang a beautiful rendition of “The Coventry Carol.”

Christmas morning, we slept in, and then Mer and I had our own gift exchange. I had gotten Mer a bunch of dresses and figured her family did not need to see an hour-long fashion show. I have to admit that I got carried away with my first Christmas in three years where we had some funds available (because our other house sold). I like shopping for Meredith, so she ended up with ten or eleven new dresses. It was a good time, and they all more or less fit, so I don’t have to send any back (a few need to be slightly altered for length).

Mer got me a couple of interesting-looking books, a couple of movies, and the TV series Northern Exposure. I had only ever seen Northern Exposure once or twice while it was on, but it looked really quirky, and I love quirky. That should be very fun to watch, and with the addition of Shannon and Jolene getting us two seasons of Supernatural, we should be set on what we watch on TV for the next three or four months.

We spent the rest of Christmas day over at Aunt Mary’s place. She broke out her good china (probably a poor choice in my using the term “broke out”), and we had an excellent ham dinner. We then had a good time playing Jeopardy and Wheel, although I declined to play Wheel since I can’t spell very well.

Mer’s parents were here through Wednesday (they had the happy luck to be able to volunteer to get bumped from their flight on Tuesday, resulting in two free airline tickets). Mer and I had everyone over to out place for dinner on Sunday, and we went back to Aunt Mary’s on Monday evening. Since Dale and Carlene did not leave as scheduled on Tuesday, Mer was able to have lunch with her family on Wednesday up in Hudson at Yours Truly, a restaurant we are rather fond of. I had to work Monday-Wednesday, so I passed on the lunch option. If all goes according to plan, Mer will get to see her parents again in April for spring break. In the meantime, we had a very lovely Christmas time.

Oh – and it was a white Christmas. We had snow all of December until the last couple of days. We had not broken freezing for most of December, but this weekend we got into the 50s, and so all the snow is now gone. Still, it was around for Christmas and made everything very pretty.

The week leading up to Christmas has been happily puttery. Mer’s parents came into town on Monday. I had to work this week Monday through Wednesday, and on those days the pattern for me was work, come home and meet up with Mer, head to Aunt Mary’s where the Kings are staying, visit, eat, watch Jeopardy, go home, sleep, and repeat. The foods have been excellent, with take-out pizza on Monday, Chipotle on Tuesday, and a variation on Wednesday – on Wednesday we swung by to see our out-of-town friend Julie and her husband Jeff and their new baby daughter. They held an open-house drop-in for friends at Julie’s parents’ house, so we got to visit with them for about an hour. They are all doing well, and Julie is still funny and great to be around. Jeff and I got to chat about running – Jeff is another marathon and half-marathon nut. They had great finger food around, and so we ate well, and that was before we headed to Canton to meet up with the family at Taggart’s Ice Cream.

Taggart’s is an old ice cream parlor in Canton that we are all big fans of. They have been around since at least the 1930s, and they serve burgers and hotdogs and such in addition to ice cream. Mer and I ate well there also before heading back to Aunt Mary’s for a short visit.

On Thursday, I had the day off and stayed home and wrapped gifts for Mer while she met her family and a number of old CVCA teachers at Olive Garden. In the evening, Mer and I went back to Canton to go to “Aunt” Zovie’s house. Aunt Zovie is the widow of “Uncle” Bob, who used to work with Dale. As such, Mer has known the Lairs all of her life, and Uncle Bob and Aunt Zovie are like family. We had a great time catching up with Aunt Zovie and her family – it had been about two years since I had seen them. There was yet more excellent food, and good conversation.

So, work was good and quiet, and I got a lot done, and the evenings were full of food and fellowship – a pretty great way to lead up to Christmas weekend.

Last Saturday was Mer’s day, but first I had a rendezvous with my CVCA Connections Group at Steak and Shake in Streetsboro. Five of the guys showed up, and we laughed a lot – talked mostly about school and sports and food. To my recollection, it was the first time I had ever been to a Steak and Shake, and I approved – good fast food and pretty good shakes (I got an Oreo one).

I got back home at about 1:30, and Mer whisked me off to Akron, to EJ Thomas Hall on the edge of the University of Akron’s campus. After our being here in Ohio (version 2.0) for ten years, she was finally getting me to Tuba Christmas! Tuba Christmas, not surprisingly, is a tradition in many cities of having lots of people gather to listen to members of the whole tuba family play Christmas carols; the tubas play through the song once, and the audience joins in the second time around (singing, not playing tubas). The concert is free, and I had been curious about it for years.

We had no idea. There were 500 tubas on the stage. EJ Thomas had two shows that day, and both shows were packed out (and EJ holds 1100 people!). It was great! Many of the larger tubas were decorated with lights and garlands, and it is hard not to be joyous when seeing and hearing that much brass. It really made my entire holiday season – I strongly recommend going next year if your locale has a show (over 200 locations worldwide). Sadly, I forgot my camera, so no pictures.

After the rather wonderful concert, we headed over to Abby’s house. Abby is a colleague, and she was hosting the accounting department’s Christmas party this year. Since the CFO of the school is my boss, I get invited. I know the stereotypes about accountants, but this was a fun party before, and it turned out to be a good one this year too. The president of CVCA and his wife also get to come, and the president has really understated humor that I love, and his wife is an extrovert and a total stitch.

There is always a white elephant gift exchange, and this year Mer got a John Wayne video that has made the rounds for years. She mentioned that she was going to actually open the cellophane and watch it, so the person who gave it out actually stole it back (part of the white elephant game) so the sacred plastic would not be broken. That was amusing. I stole a shirt for Mer’s classroom decor – it simply says on the the front, “I’m not bossy, I just know what you should be doing.” Mer loved it. Mer finally ended up with the gift that we brought – a couple of older, but still useful, Rick Steves travel books. Since Mer had them in her classroom as well, she was content with that.

Steak and Shake, tubas, and white elephants. Oh, my.

Last Friday (the 10th), Mer and I went down to Akron to Actors’ Summit’s new and impressive theater in Greystone Hall to see A Christmas Carol. I have to admit I was not thrilled to be going. I feel as if A Christmas Carol has become so overdone as to become trite and even a little boring. Still, we had season tickets, so off we went.

The set was very simple – just a bare stage with a huge (fifteen feet high) chest at the back of the stage, that opened up to be a backdrop and prop station. At the very start, just two actors came out – a young girl (who would play Tiny Tim) and Neil Thackaberry (who would play Scrooge). They started the play by Neil/Scrooge taking an inventory of stage items. This caught my attention – it was not the beginning I had expected. Actors’ Summit had chosen to do a newer adaptation of Carol that started out as a stage company in crisis – they were supposed to do A Christmas Carol, but the actors playing Tiny Tim and Scrooge were suddenly unavailable, so the stage manager and apprentice had to step in. It resulted in a “frame story” where the play-within-a-play was framed by a fifteen-minute introductory scene and by a 1-minute wrap-up. It added some freshness to the story and got me paying attention.

The actual telling of the well-known story was condensed to the essential action. The entire play, including the new parts, was only ninety minutes long. As such, the play moved along at a very good clip and never got bogged down. It also sprinkled tongue-in-cheek moments in the play, like Neil/Scrooge having to be prompted to say “Bah, humbug!” because he, as a stage manager, did not know the part so well.

The acting was very strong, and the sixth-grade girl playing Tiny Tim was very talented (she even played fiddle at one point). There was a decent amount of live music during the play, and the play openly stressed that it was a play – Neil/Scrooge was worried they had lost Marley’s chain, but the actors assured him they could “create” a chain out of air. All of the props were stylized – white sheets for snow, orange boas being waved to suggest fire, and so on. It was a nice nod to the craft of acting and how things do not have to be realistic to be effective.

This is the good thing about having season tickets, and we find this out every year. If you have the tickets, you end up going to plays you would otherwise skip, and in doing so, you find some real gems.

Saturday was “my day,” and I decided to spend the day being puttery. I ran some errands, including getting a new shovel since my old one was cracking. It was a bit of a madhouse – there was a storm being forecast that was supposed to drop one to two feet of snow here. It ended up dumping about one foot of very light powder over the course of forty-eight hours on Monday and Tuesday, but it made Lowe’s an interesting study in human nature. I went in at about 8:00 to look at shovels, and I stopped to look at the twenty-five or so snow blowers (I may get one in the next year or two). I looked around at other stores for a bigger shovel, and went back to Lowe’s around noon to get the shovel I saw there. In the four or five hours I had been gone, Lowe’s had sold all but three or four of the snowblowers, and some of these were $800 models. Buy stock in Toro – they are going to have a good quarter. The same storm-induced frenzy was true when Mer and I went to get three items at the grocery store later – it was mobbed, and the cashier in the express line said she had never seen anything like it. Mer and I wondered a bit at that – in the cupboard we always have the means to get by for about a week or so, and were a bit surprised that people were laying in supplies. Maybe they were just moving their shopping day up so they could avoid the storm.

Anyway, it was not all errands on Saturday. I was in a movie mood, so we went to Family Video to rent movies for the first time in maybe a year or more. It was my day, so I picked out two movies I wanted to see – The Guns of Navarone, a highly regarded and award-winning fictional WW2 story, and Dear John, a romantic film by the same author who wrote The Notebook.

We watched The Guns of Navarone first, and it was excellent. It had some great actors (Gregory Peck and David Niven), and was shot on location in Greece and so was beautiful. It was pretty tense and at times very intense, and I really enjoyed it. It was longer than I had planned on (over two hours), but a highly worthwhile film.

Dear John was a romance-by-correspondence, since the John of the title was in the army and on duty around the world. It starred Amanda Seyfried as the female love interest, and I had been quite taken by her in the wonderful movie Letters to Juliet. She had been very sweet in Juliet, and so I was hoping for much the same again. Dear John was a little darker than Juliet, but still entertaining. A review had said it was much more romantic than The Notebook; while it is a romantic film, it is certainly not more romantic than The Notebook. I was still glad to have seen Dear John, but I recommend Juliet and Notebook much more (and in that order – Juliet is sweeter than Notebook).

And finally, the big storm did hit us, but was light powder that I kept ahead of in my driveway, so no snowblower needed. It also resulted in two snow days (Monday and Tuesday) at school, so Mer stayed home and graded. Staff (such as myself) are expected to report to work as long as it is safe to do so. I could not see how walking a quarter of a mile in powdery snow would let me stay home, but I did have two quiet and productive days at work.

This last week was two of the three CVCA Christmas concerts. The handbells and strings concert was the prior week, but this week was the band concert and the choir concert. Mer has many talented musicians in her classes, so she certainly wanted to go, and I went along since I have a number of students in Fools and Ceili Club who are also in musical groups.

Both concerts were held in the Chapel/auditorium. The band concert was Tuesday, and it was held even though we had a snow day on Tuesday. Happily, the roads were clear by the evening. The choir concert was Thursday. Both concerts were excellent. I am amazed at the high level our Fine Arts department performs at.

The band concert lasted about an hour, and featured the junior high band and the high school band, as well as three ad hoc small ensembles. Some of the small ensembles needed to blend a little more, but the full bands were great, especially the full high school bands. They had a really big and warm sounds, especially when they played the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah, which they ended the evening with.

The choir concert was longer – it went two hours. There are six different choirs at CVCA, including a show choir, gospel choir, chamber singers, and several “normal” choirs. The show choir is always fun, and they opened the evening with a medley of Christmas songs with choreographed dancing. The concert then featured the junior high students, and after an intermission, the gospel choir, chamber singers, and high school choirs. The evening ended with a CVCA tradition of having all the high school choirs sing together with choir alumni for three songs, which included the Hallelujah Chorus. That is a pretty great piece of music for this time of year, and it was great to hear it performed in two different ways. The CVCA concerts are a good part of the Christmas season.

Last Saturday, Mer and I met Eric and his wife, Shanna, at their cute apartment in Kent. We also got to see the much-grown Atlas, the kitten Eric and Shanna got last spring. He is a big kitty now! He is all black, and very cute.

We were meeting Eric and Shanna to go see the band Over the Rhine at the Kent Stage. Mer has followed Over the Rhine for almost twenty years now, and they are an excellent band. Eric and Shanna were familiar with their music, but had never had a chance to see them. This would be our third time seeing Over the Rhine at the Kent Stage, and our sixth time overall.

Since Eric and Shanna live in Kent and the concert was in Kent, we decided to eat in Kent. Eric and Shanna recommended Ray’s, a bar that serves excellent burgers. We were quite happy with that, so we drove downtown since it was cold and snowing some (normally, we could have walked from Eric’s place). We were surprised to be stopped in traffic on the bridge into downtown Kent; Eric then remembered it was Kent’s Christmas celebration, which included Santa arriving on a train. We had a chance to park the car, so we did, and we walked the short walk to Ray’s. Kent was decked out with lights, and was quite pretty with the snow.

Ray’s was packed, but we found a seat. It took a little while to get our order in, which probably should have been an indication of how busy they were. I ran to the bathroom, and when I got back, Eric, Shanna, and Mer informed me they thought they had seen Over the Rhine being escorted to a private room upstairs. That was fun.

We talked and had a good time, and then noticed it was getting late. We finally got our food after a forty-minute wait, which seemed a bit excessive for bar food. I allow lots of time for these sorts of evenings so that we do not have to be rushed; that is a good thing, since it was almost an hour and a half from the time we sat down to the time we got up to leave. I even just left cash on the table for the bill because our waiter disappeared. It was great food, but I was not thrilled with the service. I may give them one more chance, taking into account the fact that it was a special evening in Kent, but there are plenty of other restaurants around as well.

I dropped Mer’s leftovers in the car, and then caught up with everyone at the Kent Stage. We went in, and Mer saw one of her former students – one whom we had run into at the prior year’s concert. Eric and Shanna also saw several people they knew. I guess we run in circles that like this kind of music.

There was an opening act of a woman singer-songwriter who played guitar. Her guitar playing was very fine, and her voice was great, but for whatever reason her music did not grab me. She played for about forty-five minutes, and then there was a fifteen-minute intermission.

After the intermission, Over the Rhine came on. The official band is now just two members – the husband and wife team of Karin and Linford. Karin sings and plays guitar, and Linford sings some harmony and plays guitar and piano. They also brought several excellent musicians along with them for the evening – an upright bass player, a drummer, a man who played several variations on guitar-style instruments, and a harmonica/dobro/slide guitar player. They had a really great, tight sound.

Over the Rhine had just finished recording a new album, and so the concert heavily featured the new songs. Mer and I had an advanced copy of the CD (we had contributed $20 to help get it recorded), so the songs were fairly familiar to us. They also did several songs from their two Christmas albums, which was seasonal and fun, and they did a number of other songs, mostly from albums in the last ten years or so (the albums from the first ten years were not really drawn from).

The concert lasted two full hours, and was very excellent. Eric and Shanna seemed very excited about the show, so I was pleased with that. Maybe Over the Rhine will continue the tradition of playing a December show in Kent; I hope so. The shows have started to become a holiday tradition with us.

Last Friday we opened the Royal Fools improv season. We have a record fourteen students this year, and for six of them, this was their first show. All the Fools did extremely well; I was very happy with the show. We got good feedback from the audience after the show, and the online (Facebook) buzz was also very good.

The audience was a joy to play for – they were very energetic and quick to laugh. I do not have an exact count, but we were over one hundred people for sure. My pastor, Ken, and his wife, Janet, made the forty-five-minute drive to CVCA to see it, and that meant a lot to me.

We were able to do a little actual good as well. We were able to partner with an effort to raise some money for a CVCA family who has financial needs. We set out baskets and people gave whatever they wanted. I have not heard a total yet, but the baskets seemed to be happily full; at a guess, I’d say we were able to raise a couple of hundred dollars. It is not a lot of money, but it lets the family know we are thinking of them.

We also had our first Fools promotion ever. We were given some money in memory of Mark Hartburg. Mark was my former student who died last summer after a long battle with cancer. Mark loved the Fools, so I decided to spend the money given in an effort to draw in audiences for future shows by advertising our group. So, I bought 250 buttons and 100 zipper-pulls with the Fools’ logo on them, and we gave these out to the audience for free. Again, I’m estimating, but it looks as if we gave out about 150 buttons and about 75 zipper-pulls. I hope it creates more visibility for the group.

Some of the fun things that happened in the show included:
– A superhero, Cheeseman, being attacked by his own towels
– Two girls needing a better joke book, so finding a “joker,” who turns out to be the Joker of Batman fame (all done while wearing blindfolds)
– Ugly griffins being used as basketballs and golf balls
– A world championship of underwater basket weaving ending in a tie
– A debate over the merits of flying monkeys
– A car salesman trying to pitch a $20 million car, which was played by one of the Fools
– Robot-generated sculpture explained to the audience
– A guy who went to LegoLand, where he became a pirate but met his end via AP term paper
– A Dating Game show where the choices were Kesha, King Kong, and Gandalf

So, all in all, it was a very fun evening, but it did not end with the end of the show. Mer and I hooked up with the Churchills and Gurnishes, and we all went to Coldstone Creamery for ice cream (a pretty typical occurrence after a Fools show). Nate and Zach are both funny men and kept us laughing for much of the evening, but Zach had us almost crying with stories of things that just seem to happen to him. We were at Coldstone for a little over an hour, and so Mer and I did not get home until after 10:30. Fools, friends, and food make for a great way to spend a Friday.

Friday was blustery, so I was the only one who walked down to the lake in the morning. The wind was fierce off the lake, but the waves were very impressive. I stayed for about 5 minutes and took some photos, but I was not dressed with enough layers to stand the wind for much longer than that. It was weather that, in terms of water temperature, Mom would describe as “invigorating.”

The day was again mellow (I do enjoy low-key long weekends). Mostly people read, and the ever-vigilant English teachers graded, as they do. I started C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces, a book I have wanted to read for a couple of years. It is very well written and engaging, but I only got a couple of chapters in when I felt the call of a nap. This was a bit unfortunate, because as Mer and I just refinanced our house, and Mom and Marc are looking to do the same, I ended up having dreams that Mer and I were refinancing again and I could not figure out why. It was not the most restful sleep ever.

In the mid-afternoon we headed up to St. Joseph, a town a short drive from Mom and Marc’s place. It is a very pretty town, up high on bluffs that overlook the lake. It has a very cool downtown, with pedestrian-friendly shops and restaurants. We went to a glassblowing studio that has an outreach to local at-risk students, and seems like a very cool place. The studio is actually in Benton Harbor, right across the river from St. Joseph. The glassblowing studio has a store that sells the art, which helps support the artists. It also has a small gelato (Italian ice cream) store that benefits the studio as well. Marc volunteers at the gelato place once a week, and wanted to show us the place. I am a big fan of glass art, so I was excited to see it. I also happen to like gelato, so that was a nice bonus as well.

The glass place was a big hit. We liked the various wares in the store, and you are allowed to stand on a catwalk that overlooks the kilns where they heat the glass. We watched a master blower working on mugs, and he made it look really easy. I suspect working with molten glass is anything but easy. One of the two founders of the studio was even kind enough to let me, Mer, and Ellen tour the new small but up-and-coming foundry, where they are beginning to teach iron-working as art. I’m also a big fan of metalworking, so that was cool.

Mer was so impressed with the place, she let me buy a glass-faced nightlight. We use a nightlight in our bedroom to keep the monsters at bay; plus, we can see when we go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Mom bought us a Christmas ornament,  which is a tradition of hers. It was nice to buy beautiful things that helped support a good cause like the studio.

After the studio tour, we swung by another art place that showcases local artists, The Box Factory, but we just missed their closing time (they close at 4:00). So, we headed down to the beach to see the waves. I’m afraid Marc’s car got rather sandblasted along the way, but the lake was really cool. The waves were huge, and the wind was still really strong off the lake. Mer and I got out to look and take some pictures, but for some reason Ellen passed on her opportunity for another installment of the Ellen-cold-with-the-Riordans series. It was cold, but it was really pretty too.

We headed back home where we munched on leftovers. Marc and Mom had some movies that they had rented, so we ended up watching the newer James Bond film, Casino Royale. I had not seen a Bond film in a few years, so I did not know what to expect. It turned out to be a really good action film, with one of the coolest chase scenes I have ever seen (it was a long chase scene too). Oddly, Ellen knew all sorts of fun facts and trivia about the making of Casino Royale, and could not quite remember why she knew all that she did. It was a good film.

On Wednesday, Dad had an operation to get some plaque removed from an artery in his neck, and on Friday evening I finally heard from Shannon that Dad was doing fine. Another thing to be thankful for.

Saturday started out quite well with breakfast at the excellent diner Sammie’s. Sammie’s has really great diner breakfasts – hearty, huge, tasty, and affordable. Mer was able to solve her always-ongoing breakfast issue of sweet-versus-savory food by sharing two breakfasts with Ellen – one sweet (waffle) and one savory (egg skillet). Mom and I walked the mile or so from the restaurant back to the house, which was a good thing after a hearty breakfast.

We then headed back up to St. Jospeh, so we could go to the now-open Box Factory. Since it was the weekend of a holiday, most artists were not there, but you could still see their art hanging on walls or by looking through windows. There was some excellent art on display. Also, the building itself is interesting since it is huge and has lots of exposed beams and such, and they also had a special display going of multiple sets of model trains. That was fun.

We then headed into the shopping section of St. Joseph. I wanted to visit a jewelry store that Mom and Marc like. They had a gold necklace that I had admired for some time, and I wanted to see it and maybe see what it cost. Sadly, it was gone. Mer took the opportunity to get her wedding and engagement rings cleaned, a service they do for free. It made a huge difference! Her rings looked brand new again. While that was happening, I spied a necklace that I took a fancy to. We decided to wander over to an art store, which was nice, but nothing in there grabbed me, so I went back to the jewelry store. I asked about the necklace and found it was affordable, so I bought it for Meredith. In a funny coincidence, over the Thanksgiving weekend, CVCA gave out a bonus to us as a thank-you for all the extra work we had been putting in with all the new changes at the school. It worked out to be within five dollars of what the necklace cost, so I was able to assure Mer that I could afford it.

We then headed back to the house, where Ellen, Mer and I packed up and headed out to go back to Ellen’s. It would make the return home for me and Mer over two hours shorter on Sunday, and I like shorter drives. We stopped at Culver’s for supper. Culver’s is a local area fast food place that has pretty good food, but also has good custard, which Ellen likes. Mer and I like most desserts, so that was fine by us. We got back to Ellen’s at around 7:30 or so, and we managed to squeeze in a game of Dark and Stormy, a game about books. Mer won. I really need to start playing some math and science games.

Mer and I headed out early on Sunday, and had an uneventful trip back home. We were back by noon so that Mer could start in on her grading and so I could nap. An unfair but not unusual way to end our vacation.