Last Thursday was Thanksgiving, and Mer and I have much to be thankful about, although we often forget that in the business of our lives. We have a great family (Shannon notwithstanding), good jobs, a nice house, our health, wonderful friends, a good church, family living in cool places to visit, and on and on. I think we take these things for granted too often – God has been good to us just out of grace, and I am glad we set aside a little time to remember this.

For the actual day of Thanksgiving, we took a mellow morning. We headed down to Aunt Mary’s house in the afternoon, where we had a satisfying meal involving lots of whipped potatoes (as well as meat, and jello, and bread, and pumpkin roll, and more). I certainly got enough to eat.

After supper, we sat in the living room and played a fiercely-fought game of the original 1983 Trivial Pursuit. Aunt Mary has only ever lost to Mer, and even then only once. I have never won. In this game, I was up 4 pieces to 2, and Aunt Mary still won 6-5-4 (I had five and Mer had four). I knew a 4-2 lead was not safe. I guess I need to be thankful for a smart aunt. After the game, Mer and I headed home for an early evening to bed for our big anti-Black Friday where we were planning on cleaning out our basement of years’ worth of material goods.

Last weekend, on Saturday, it was “my” day, and it was beautiful out, so I wanted to make sure we got outside some. After a mellow morning and a short run, I took Mer to Peninsula, a nearby cute town that reminds us both of Vermont. We got lunch at Fisher’s Restaurant, an eatery to which we had not been before. We got a great set in a bay window that looked out on the town, and we got excellent food.

After lunch, we drove (with a fairly good-sized detour because of one wrong turn) to Horseshoe Pond, one of the many parks in the Valley. We had tried hiking Horseshoe Pond before, but were driven off by aggressive deer flies. I figured that would not be a problem this late in the year, and I was right. We did have to traverse several large muddy areas along the trail. The trail was pleasant, and it was great being outside, but the trail did not offer too many “wow” spots – it was nice along the way, but no vistas or water, except for the pond at the end of the trail. Still, it was a good walk.

In the evening, we swung by Matt and Clarice’s place. They were out of town, so we fed and watered the kitties. Clarice has quite a movie collection, so we borrowed Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Inception. I had not see Roger Rabbit since I had seen it in the theater twenty years ago, and it was one of my favorite movies at the time; I had found it magical with its use of real people and animations. We watched it after we got home, and it has stood up well. The effects still work, and the story is still entertaining. It was good to see it again. We saved Inception for another evening.

Last Wednesday, Mer and I got to go out to dinner with Aunt Mary. She came up to our neck of the woods, and we went out to eat at Rockne’s, a local restaurant chain. We got to see some other CVCA people there, so it felt homey.

After supper, we went back to CVCA, where we had front-row seats for the opening night of The Diary of Anne Frank, the fall play. I knew the basic story of Anne Frank, but I had never read the book or seen the play, so I was looking forward to the performance (in a depressing sort of way).

I love CVCA’s theater program. It is not perfect, but I would stand it up against any high school theater program, and many college programs. They just do a great job, and the tradition continued. The set was a suggestive set, with multiple levels and partial walls to suggest rooms. It was plain and simple, but it was supposed to be spare rooms in the back of a factory, so it should not have been fancy.

The acting ranged from solid to excellent. The young lady playing Anne was outstanding, bringing a young girl’s wonder and optimism to the role. She was winsome, and just sparkled in the the role. The young woman playing the wife of Mr. Frank’s friend was very natural in her role, and it did not seem as if she was acting, which is always a good thing.

One of the cool things that Brandon (the director) did was to interject several true stories of Holocaust survivors to open the show, to open the second act, and to be interspersed with the final soliloquy of Mr. Frank. It allowed more kids to get some stage time, and seemed perfectly natural in the play. It worked well and was very moving.

Mer has several of the students in her classes, and three of the actors in the play are in Royal Fools. It is always pretty neat to know the kids who are in the plays, and I was impressed at how they did. I also got to see several alumni during the intermission and after the play, so it was a pretty great evening (allowing for the depressing nature of the play).

Last weekend, on Saturday, it was Mer’s day, although she had a constraint. Mer is the junior high Academic Challenge team coach, and there was an Academic Challenge meet on Saturday. Academic Challenge is where teams of four students square off and answer academic trivia questions. This was a fairly big meet, with at least eight teams, including last year’s state champions, who sent an entire busload of students to the meet. By comparison, we had thirteen students total (although we had the best parent-spectator support, by far).

I got roped into being a reader/scorekeeper. I had expected to be a scorekeeper, working with Mer as a reader. However, there was a shortage of people to go around as readers, so they made everyone into both readers and scorekeepers. Also, normally teams use buzzers to buzz in, like on Jeopardy!, but the tournament was two buzzers short, so they put me and Mer in rooms with no buzzers. We just had people raise hands and yell, “Buzz!” It was a little strange, and made me a little anxious, but it worked out fine. I only had about five close calls in four rounds (with each round being about forty questions), and the students played along fine with the situation. It was kind of fun, although for the last round, as my voice was starting to fail from all the talking, the questions turned to Japanese writers. Someone was clearly having too much fun at my expense.

Mer’s students did well, with her “A” team going 3-1 for the day, and her “B” team placing second for their grouping. The meet let out at about 12:30, so Mer decided to take me out to lunch at nearby Legacy Village (the parents all took their children home, so we were free to go). We had an excellent lunch at California Pizza Kitchen, where we had a gift card we could use. We skipped dessert there, and wandered instead over to The Cheesecake Factory, where we each got a piece of cheesecake to go, which we ate outside since it was sunny. Mer did finish her piece in the car, as the wind had picked up and was a bit on the cool side when it was blowing.

In the evening, Mer and I got in the car, jumped on the highway, and headed east. We kept driving and crossed into Pennsylvania, and I had no idea where we were going. It finally occurred to me that we might be going to one of the colleges in eastern Pennsylvania where we have former CVCA students attending. That turned out to be the case. We ended up at Geneva College. We were there to see a former student perform as Alice, in a stage version of Alice in Wonderland.

Tiffany, Mer’s former student, was wonderful as Alice. She was able to convey childlike wonder and throw childish fits, and she was on stage almost the entire play. It was a joy to see her do so well. The production overall was quite good. The major actors did well, and the stylized action of the play worked. For instance, the man playing the Cheshire Cat always had a creepy grin on his face, and when he was seated, he would wave his leg back and forth to suggest a tail. It worked. Alice’s shrinking and growing early in the play was well done as well. When Alice shrank, stagehands came on the stage and lifted the furniture up so she could not reach it. When Alice grew, Tiffany subtly put on a huge skirt, and someone lifter her up off the floor.

There were a few things I would have changed, though. The tea party at the Mad Hatter’s was a great scene, but they used real tin cups and plates, and sometimes it was hard to hear the dialogue over the noise of the utensils. It probably could not be helped in the small theater, but some of the sight lines were poor, especially during the tea party. Mer and I could not see one or more actors during much of that scene. Lastly, there were two long scenes that involved the royalty in Wonderland (a trial in the first act and a discussion of queens in the second act), and I felt as if those scenes could have been edited down without losing anything.

The set was excellent, with a stone wall on one side that had card symbols in the stonework, and a huge tree on the other side that had cards and tea things hanging from the branches. Most of the action happened on the stage, but some of it happened on the main floor of the theater, and that is when the sight lines were poor.

Overall, it was a solid play, and I was delighted to get to see Tiffany perform so well. Mer’s and my discussion of the play made for a short seventy-five-minute drive back home.

On Monday (the 7th), Mer and I got to catch up with Clarice. Clarice’s fiance, Matt, was on a business trip to China and Korea, so we wanted to help Clarice pass the time until Matt got back. We headed back to Clarice’s old stomping grounds, to the Hibachi Grill in Cuyahoga Falls,

I like Japanese grills – the food is good, and although I do not like everything (like shrimp), the show the chefs put on is always impressive. They have great artistry in preparing the food with flourish, and I like to watch them work. The only downside is that the table arrangement is set so you can see the chef work at your table, which makes conversation with your sitting-side-by-side companions more difficult. As such, after an excellent dinner, we all went to Handel’s for ice cream for dessert.

Handel’s is an outdoor ice cream place, which is happily open all year. But, it can still be cold, especially after the sun has gone down, so we got our ice cream and sat in the car. Clarice is a huge movie-nut, and even studied movie history and film making in college, so we had a long and very insightful conversation about films. She did warn us off of Japanese horror films as being just bizarre, and she did not enjoy Italian cinema too much, but she did like a fair amount of Hitchcock. It was another fine evening, and I hope it helped Clarice some while waiting for Matt to return.

On Wednesday the 2nd, Mer and I were invited to see The Lord of the Rings:  The Fellowship of the Ring at a coworker’s house. We went separately, and I was slightly late, because I was having coffee (read: hot chocolate) with a very good student, Ben. Ben has been trying to decide between going to college at Bowdoin in Maine, and going to Moody in Chicago. I wanted to talk to him about the pros and cons of each, and he was willing to do that. We had a nice long chat of about an hour, and I think it helped clarify some things for him.

I showed up at the movie just as it was starting. Mer was there, along with Dubbs, our co-worker David, and our co-worker LT and his wife Audra. They had ordered pizza, and I brought cookies. We started watching the movie, and the pizza came about twenty-five or thirty minutes into the film, so we paused it there. LT had also ordered a dessert pizza (a cinnamon “pizza”) that was excellent. The regular pizza was fantastic too. I need to remember to get the location from LT.

I watched another hour of the film or so, but then I needed to leave. LT and Audra got a phone call about a family situation, and so they left shortly after I did. Mer hung in there and watched the whole film with Duubs, while David came and went as he wanted. I would have liked to have stuck around longer, but it was a good time with some good people. 

Saturday (the 5th) was a beautiful day. I called Zach and Londa to see if they wanted to go out to The Cheesecake Factory, and they were excited about doing that. However, they had a plumber coming, so it would have to be for dinner as opposed to lunch, as I had suggested. That was fine. I still wanted to make sure that Mer and I got outside since it was so nice out. It had to be a local trip, though, so we could be back in time to go supper with the Churchills.

So, I decided to take Mer to Portage Lake State Park. I had seen signs for it on the highway near Akron, but we had never been. It is an interesting park. It has an eighteen-“hole” Frisbee golf course, and a huge parking lot, and a pretty beach. The lot was mostly empty since it was November, but from the size of the lot, this beach must get used a lot during summer. The lake the beach is on is fairly narrow, but seems to be quite long, as we never saw the ends of the lake. There are pretty (and expensive) homes that you can see well from the beach, and there is one walking path that takes you out to a small point. Mer and I walked the beach and the little trail, and then headed back home. We were probably only in the park for about forty-five minutes – I had been hoping for more trails to walk – but at least we got outside on such a pretty day.

The Churchills came and picked us up at around 5:00 or so. We drove up and chatted, and when we got to the restaurant, there was already an hour wait, even at 5:30. So, we put our names in and wandered over to an art gallery that is in the mall, one that specializes in sculptures, which include my favorite sculpture, Melody. Melody is a statue of a woman in a long, flowing dress, who is dancing while playing the fiddle. I love it. Sadly, it is eighty thousand dollars, but it is still nice to look at.

We got back to The Cheesecake Factory and had about a twenty-five-minute wait. Supper and dessert were both excellent, and getting caught up with Zach and Londa was great. It was a fine evening together.

Late in the last week of October, I looked out the back window to see four very cute kittens playing in the back yard. I called Mer to come see, and she came and admitted that she and Ellen had seen them earlier but had wanted to keep me from knowing, since I would clearly try to capture them.

On Sunday the 30th, I managed to capture all four kittens. I got three in the first try, and the last one latter in the day. He was tough – he bit like a mad little thing. I stowed all four kittens in our spare bedroom, and I have been trying to socialize them to people ever since. We have no intention of keeping them, but I would like to try to get them a little more used to humans so they will be easier to adopt out. They sure are cute!

Monday the 31st was Halloween, and Mer and I continued our only tradition that we have managed to keep going every year – we carved pumpkins again; Mer figures it’s the sixteenth year we have done so, going back to even before we were dating.

I carved the outline of the TARDIS – the time machine that is used in the show Doctor Who. Mer needed some help in guessing that one. Mer tried to think of the scariest thing she could, and came up with the very strict “clean” diet we were on last February. As such, she carved a “no ice cream” pumpkin. It was amusing.

Saturday the 29th was Mer’s day, and she had warned me that it was not an exciting day, at least during the day. We mostly ran errands that we both needed to do, but we did get to run them together, so that was companionable.

Mer did have a surprise in the evening that was much fun. We drove out to Twinsburg, to the library, where the library was open late to host a murder mystery. That would be interesting in itself, but it had a couple of CVCA students in the cast, and it was written by a CVCA student (one of Mer’s). There were also several CVCA students who showed up to see the play.

The play was called Sweet Sixteen, and it all took place at the birthday party of a girl who had just turned sixteen. There were about eight guests at the party (in addition to all of us, who were supposedly invited by a girl hooked on Twitter). After the murder, there were another couple of people who were the investigators. So in all, there were ten or so people in the cast, all teenagers.

The play was a very good effort, especially for a first play. It was also aimed at tweens and teens as the target audience, and I think it did that nicely. We were allowed to poke around the crime scene, and later to ask questions of the various suspects. The actors stayed in character quite well throughout the questioning, which is a good testament to their improvisational skills. In the end, we all voted on the various suspects, and we ended up with the correct suspect. It was a stimulating time, and fun to be with CVCA students outside of a school environment (albeit in a library).

Last Friday, Mer and I got to go to our second former-student wedding. As an added bonus, they were both founding members of my improv group, The Royal Fools, back in 2005. Josh and Kristen had been dating since high school, so I think they have been dating six or seven years now. They finally got married, and it was great getting to see a lot of former students, some of whom I had not seen in two or three years.

Josh and Kristen got married at a modern but pretty church north of Akron. Mer and I knew most of the groomsmen – three of the five were former CVCA graduates, and one other was Matt, Clarice’s fiance. We also got to sit with Clarice and Michelle in the church, and they sat with us at the reception too, so we got in a pretty good visit.

The wedding was nice, but fairly brief, perhaps because it was on a Friday evening. It was made up of the lighting of the unity candle, one song, the exchange of vows and rings, and the kiss. Short and to the point. While Kristen marched in to Bach, she and Josh marched out to “The Imperial March” from the Star Wars trilogies. That was a lot of fun.

The newlywed couple greeted all the guests, row by row, and then we got to blow bubbles at the bride and groom as they got in their car. Since we did bubbles at our own wedding, I am always happy to repeat the experience.

The reception was at an Eastern Orthodox church, in one of their two halls. We grabbed a table near the front so we could see the bridal party. On the plus side, we could see, and we got to eat pretty quickly. On the down side, we were near a speaker for the DJ. He was playing tons of cool music from the big band era and the Rat Pack era, but it was often too loud for us to carry on long conversations (although not always).

As part of the appetizers, Josh and Kristen had provided a “candy bar” where there was a large variety of candies. They also had crackers and cheeses. It was a fun idea, and kept me and Mer happy while we munched and chatted. Our tablemates were Clarice and Michelle, our colleagues Dale and Linda, and a former student, Jessica, and her husband. It was a fun group.

After the bridal party arrived, there was much food and then the cutting of the cake. After cake, they twenty-somethings started dancing, and it was fun to see them on the dance floor. Mer and I hope to be able to do more of that at future weddings, but we want to take some swing lessons first. We left the wilder folks dancing sometime around ten o’clock. As far as we know, Matt and Clarice are up next, with their wedding in the spring.

Last Thursday, Mer and I headed southeast about forty-five minutes to Mount Union University in Alliance. The college has a speaker series for which they bring in famous people to speak. This Thursday, we were there to hear Khaled Hosseini, the author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns.

For those not familiar with Hosseini, he was born in Afghanistan to a father who was a diplomat. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in the late seventies, Hosseini and his mother were in Paris with his father, who was assigned there. They sought asylum in the United States, and they moved to California when Hosseini was in high school.

Hosseini trained as a doctor, and wrote his first novel, The Kite Runner, while he was in residency. During his talk, he said he wrote the book for himself, and had not expected much from it. The book tells the story of a boy who grows up in Afghanistan, but leaves the country after the invasion. It is a compelling story, and the book was a best-seller. That allowed Hosseini to quit being a doctor and become a full-time writer.

The talk session lasted about ninety minutes, and was in Mount Union’s gym. I’m guessing there were about two thousand people in attendance. Hosseini was very engaging and affable, and seems like someone who would be fun to know. He has also started a foundation to help children in Afghanistan, which is quite commendable.

I found the entire evening interesting, and since Mer teaches The Kite Runner, I was happy she could get to go. She said it was very helpful to her.