Tuesday was my forty-first birthday, and although we celebrate birthdays on the next weekend, Mer at least wanted to take me out to eat. She had a coupon to O’Charley’s, which is a new(ish) restaurant on Howe Road in Cuyahoga Falls. So, she took me there. Despite the name, O’Charley’s is not an Irish restaurant; it serves mostly American foods, and oddly has a lot of hearty soups. I am not normally a soup guy, but they had several soups that sounded good. I got a burger and fries with a soup appetizer, and Mer got “endless soup,” so that she could try at least two kinds. The food was very good, and I liked the ambiance – the restaurant was decorated with pictures from the late 1800s and early 1900s that depicted local people and places. I found them very interesting. I like to eat out, and I like spending time with Mer, so it was a good birthday dinner.

For our respective birthdays, we always “officially” celebrate the weekend after. Last Saturday was my day to take Mer out for her birthday. I wanted to do something special, but my week leading up to Saturday had been hectic, so I was scrambling to pull something together. I wanted to take Mer and our good friends Zach and Londa to an amazing Italian restaurant (and winery) in Canton, called Gervasi’s. It is very upscale, built in an old barn with lots of exposed wood, and the food is excellent. It is also on extensive, pretty grounds, but that is less appealing in January.

Anyway, I called to see if I could get reservations, and because it was last-minute, the best I could do was 8:30. I took that, and arranged things with Zach and Londa. They came over at 5:30 or so to visit, and we actually all went downstairs to the music room and sang for about an hour. Londa plays piano really well, and Zach and I passed the guitar back and forth. We had a really good time.

We headed out for supper and found the place with no problems since I had my GPS (the winery is tucked away in an area of Canton to which I do not often get). We were seated efficiently, and happily next to the fireplace, which was warm and atmospheric. We ordered and chatted. It was a fantastic meal, and very leisurely – we were at the table for almost two hours. Good food and good friendship made for a good way to celebrate the birthday of a good wife!

On Friday, we headed up to Cleveland for the second time in four days. For Christmas, Mer had gotten me tickets to a couple of shows at Playhouse Square’s 14th Street Theater, which is a small cabaret-style theater. This evening, we were there to see Last Call Cleveland, a sketch comedy group.

As some readers of ye olde blog know, I coach an improv comedy group. Improv comedy is where everything on stage is made up off the cuff. Sketch comedy, on the other hand (or the other stage), is where the group does short skits that were written and practiced before the show (think Saturday Night Live). I haven’t had much experience with sketch comedy, so I was looking forward to the evening.

Before the show, we had supper at Otto Moser’s near the theater. Otto Moser’s claims to be the oldest restaurant in Cleveland. Neither of us had ever been before, and we liked it very much. It was mostly pub-grub (burgers and such), but they did it well.

Last Call Cleveland had an opening act of a stand-up comic. I was delighted – I had never seen a stand-up comic before, and was excited to see one live. The man was very good. His parents were Puerto Rican and Mexican, so some of his humor was ethnically based. He did have some swearing and some off-color humor, but much of his humor was pretty clean and very funny. Our favorite skit was where he was coming up for slogans for JoAnn Fabrics; we especially loved “For homeschool kids, it’s called a field trip!”

The stand-up comedian’s act was about fifteen minutes, and then Last Call Cleveland took the stage. They were very energetic; the group was made up of four guys in their early thirties. They set up a recurring skit for the evening in that they were given the task of going back in time to save Cleveland from itself by stopping the river fire, the Municipal Stadium beer riot, and the last-second Michael Jordan shot that beat the Cavaliers when it looked as if they would go to the NBA Finals. That set the tone for the evening – lots of good-natured ribbing of Cleveland, which I loved.

They had a lot of funny skits, but I really loved one near the end where two of the guys sang a song based on a true story of an encounter with a five-year-old at Walmart. It did not turn out well for the adult guy who wrote the song. It was also amusing to watch the audience. There was a bar, so the audience mostly got feeling better and better as the show went on, and we even heard one woman say how much better the second half of the show was compared to the first half. She was raising her third sheet at that time.

It was a funny evening, and I laughed a lot. We did have yet another long ride home as another storm had moved in while the show was in progress. On the whole, it was not too bad, but there were a few tense moments on Route 80, which was oddly crowded for 11:00 pm on a snowy Friday night. We made it home just fine. The evening was a great Christmas present from Mer.

Mer’s birthday was Wednesday the 18th. We usually celebrate our birthdays on the following weekend, but I did want to take Mer out to dinner on her actual birthday. I had a $10 gift card to Outback Steakhouse, so that is where we went. We like Outback’s food, and it did not disappoint. Since it was Mer’s birthday, she got a free sundae, but she supplemented it with a dessert that gave smaller portions of three desserts, and I got my own dessert as well. So, between the two of us we had five different desserts on the table. I think that took our server by surprise. Happy birthday indeed.

On Thursday, we braved a snowy drive to go to Aunt Mary’s. The roads were not bad, but the traffic was so heavy that it took almost an hour and a half to get to Aunt Mary’s, when it normally takes about forty minutes. We got there safely, and Aunt Mary treated us to her company and to dinner at Grinders, which is a local chain of which Mer and I are very fond. Given the late hour that we ate, we were not able to linger too long at Aunt Mary’s house after supper, but we did have time to open the several gifts Aunt Mary gave us (my birthday is on the 24th, so Aunt Mary included me in the celebration as well). The drive home was on clear roads with little traffic, so that was a good end to a pleasant birthday celebration.

Last Tuesday (the 17th), Mer and I took advantage of being educators. Being in education has plenty of perks, but sometimes they are very tangible. We were able to head up to Cleveland to Playhouse Square, where we got to attend a lecture/workshop in the play that was being performed that evening, Ten Chimneys. The Playhouse hosts fed us a very good dinner, talked about the history of American Theater in the twentieth century (a theme important to the play), and, wait for it, gave us free tickets to see the play. It is good to be a teacher (and a tech).

Ten Chimneys is a play that looks at a famous acting couple from the mid-twentieth century. The couple, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, were a husband-and-wife team who worked on making theater more realistic. They are largely credited with developing a way of having actors speak at the same time (as happens in real life), but in such a way that important information was not lost by the audience. They were wildly successful, and they built a summer home in Wisconsin called Ten Chimneys. The play looks (mostly) at one summer where Lunt and Fontanne were studying Chekhov’s The Seagull, in order to put the play on later in the year.

The pre-show lecture focused on how American theater developed from melodrama (think damsel tied to a train track) to more and more realistic portrayals on stage. The shift started with the introduction of Russian acting troupes to the U.S. in the early 1900s, and developed through the 50s, where the American theater schools of thought split into many different methods. Lunt and Fontanne were important in the development of realism in theater.

As an added bonus to the evening, this was the very first performance in the small, but new, Second Stage theater. The Second Stage theater can be arranged in many ways, but for this performance it was set up in the round. We were all looking down onto a patio at Ten Chimneys. The sight-lines were excellent, with the farthest row being only seven rows back. In fact, the first row of seats was actually sitting in the “grass” on the edge of the patio. It was a very intimate setting.

The acting was very strong. All of the actors had done major work in theater and television, and they nailed their parts. The play was often very funny, with very witty lines. The play is mostly serious drama, and is largely the theater looking at itself (a play about people preparing to do a play). The production was well done.

My one problem with the play was the play itself – it never felt as if it went anywhere. It is not surprising that a play about a famous couple who strove to bring realism to the stage was itself very realistic. Real life does not often have climaxes and tidy wrap-ups, and the play was wildly successful in that. Still, I go to theater in part to get away from real life, so the play left me a bit disappointed. I cannot complain, though – it was all free, and we got a meal out of it as well, and I learned some things about American acting that I had not known.

Last Saturday (the 14th) was Mer’s day. She did a great job. She took me to brunch at the Blue Door Restaurant, which looks like a normal mom-and-pop diner, but is run by a former Marine who has since trained as a European pastry chef. They served good breakfast, but the pastries were great, and they served a very rich hot chocolate. Yum. That was a great way to start the day.

After some time at home, Mer then decided we would be out much of the evening, so she decided we should fortify ourselves with a visit to Handel’s ice cream. We both love it that there is an all-year-round ice cream stand in Ohio. The ice cream certainly hit the spot, even in January.

We then headed south to Canton, to the dollar movie theater. Mer wanted to check out the movie Courageous. Courageous was filmed by the same people who had done Fireproof and Facing the Giants. All these films are explicitly Christian films, and we wanted to support the effort to get good Christian films into theaters.

Courageous tells the story of several policemen and the various struggles they have. Being a Christian movie, the film focuses on how the men turn to God for help and answers, but it is not done in a shallow way. I actually liked Courageous quite a lot. The film felt the most polished of the several movies we’ve seen by these Christian filmmakers. It had great chase scenes, lots of well-timed humor, and uniformly solid acting (not always a given in some of the bit roles in the previous films). With one exception (one scene), the film did not feel preachy to me, and even in the scene that was a little more in-your-face, it was a plausible scene of how a Christian might talk about God to someone who was not sure about God. It was a film that I was glad to see.

We left the theater and headed north. Way north. We took a zillion back roads to Chagrin Falls. I had never been to Chagrin Falls before, and from the brief in-the-dark tour that I got, it looked charming. I am looking forward to going back in weather that is more conducive to a stroll around the town.

Mer took us there to go to the Chagrin Valley Little Theater, a small community theater which was performing Enchanted April. At the risk of sounding horribly sexist, Enchanted April is a chick-flick kind of story. Two English women rent a castle in Italy to get away from England and their husbands for one month, and they bring along two other women as lodgers to help with expenses. After much soul-searching, everything turns out very well.

I had seen the movie, and I had seen the play version several years ago at Weathervane Playhouse. Weathervane had brought in an actual gardener to help with the set to depict the lavish gardens of Italy. I like the story well enough, but I was not sure what I would find in seeing it again.

I was happily surprised. What Chagrin Valley managed to do was a near-perfect casting of the play. Each actor was well suited for her or his role, especially the main two women. One was very guarded and almost icy, and the other bubbled over with enthusiasm and optimism. I really believed these women were feeling the emotions that they were expressing. The play went by very quickly, and it was a fine evening.

What was a little less fine was the lake-effect snow in which we had to drive home. It stopped, almost on a line, about three miles north of our house. Still, we got home safely, and it was a grand day.

This last week was the second half of J-term, during which Mer had some more free time. She also very much enjoyed her J-term class on Shakespeare, where she taught three plays over the eight days. Her class read Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Lear, and Richard III – one each of the typical categories of comedy, tragedy, and history. Mer’s class went very well, and she hopes to be able to teach it again, maybe even next year (with different plays, of course!).

With the extra free time, I was able to have in-week social time with Mer, which is a treat. On Thursday, we played a literature-nerd game, Dark and Stormy. In the game, you get to hear the first line from a play, poem, or novel, and you need to come up with either the work or the author. Mer beat me eight books to seven, but at least I gave her a good run for her reading.

After the game, we went to Kent to see part of the CVCA hockey team’s game. Our team was undefeated in the conference, and they were playing another team that was undefeated. The game was excellent, but we played a bit poorly in the second period and were down 4-2 when we left after the second period. Our team ended up losing 6-5.

On Friday, it was snowy, but not so bad that we had to stay home. As such, we headed over to school around 5:30 p.m. to see the J-term photography class’ portfolio show. The class had gone to Georgia and South Carolina for the first week, and then used the second week to select and edit photos. The pictures were quite striking. It was a good-sized crowd, and there were refreshments, so it was festive. We then tried to go to a concert that the music-writing J-term class was putting on at a local coffeehouse. The concert started at 8:00, and we got there right at 8:00 and could not get in the door because the place was packed. We decided we had given it a game shot, and we headed home.

I do have to say that I am a fan of J-term. I like the classes and the results, and people seem to have a good time. It is also really fun to have Mer be fairly stress-free for a whole month (Christmas break and J-term).

Last Sunday was a fun day. One of our senior students, Ben, came over in the morning. I had a special day planned, about which Mer knew almost nothing, other than it was happening. Ben went to church with us, and after church, we headed east to Pittsburgh. The Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh was having the last day of an exhibition of the work of Alex Ross, a famous comic book artist. Ben and I are both comic book junkies, and so we had to go. Mer was wondering what would make me drive two hours into the heart of an unknown-to-me city. and now she knows. Men in tights works every time.

I am very happy I had my GPS – I think the majority of people living in Pittsburgh are people who drove into the city and could not find their way back out again. The roads are not laid out in a grid because of all the hills, and it was very confusing. Still, we made it to the museum and started on the seventh floor of the museum, where the Alex Ross exhibit was on display.

We started in a smaller room that had laid out the influences that Ross cites in his own work – mostly that of an artist from the 1920s and of Norman Rockwell. The exhibit laid out paintings from the earlier artists, and then showed one or more Ross works that were similar in style. It was very cool to understand the progression.

After taking in the smaller room, we went into the main hall, where there were about fifty Ross works on display, mostly of heroes from DC comics, like Batman and Superman. Ross tries to paint ideal but still possible heroes, and his work is stunning to comic nerds like me. Since this was the last day of the exhibit, the gallery was pretty full, and it was cool to people-watch as parents my age explained to small children the origin of various heroes.

Most of the work was of a very high level and from the professional work of Ross. However, there were some fun and interesting pieces from Ross’ childhood, including his own homemade comic book, paper action figures, and a great drawing of Charlie Brown dressed up as various superheroes. It showed an interesting perspective on the development of the talent of Ross.

Once we finished the Ross exhibit, which took about two hours, we looked at several floors of the Warhol museum. The rest of the galleries were very modern, and held my interest very little. We covered the rest of the museum in only about twenty minutes.

We headed back to the car. I wanted to go to Station Square, to the Sesame Inn Chinese restaurant. Our friend Craig used to live in Pittsburgh, and the Sesame Inn is one of his favorite restaurants. It is a ten-minute drive from the Warhol Museum to the restaurant.

Over thirty minutes later and many many wrong turns later, we finally arrived. Did I mention that Pittsburgh is confusing? It was about 4:00 on a Sunday, with the Steelers playing the 7:00 game later that day, and so we had the entire restaurant to ourselves. The Sesame Inn did not disappoint. Our food was plentiful and excellent.

Now that we were fortified, we walked the short distance to the Incline. The Incline is a public transportation car that climbs straight up the steep hill near Station Square. Since Ben had never been to Pittsburgh, I though we should ride it. The ride gives a great view of the downtown, and you can get out at the top and wander around a very nice neighborhood with great views, which we did. Again, it was sunny and warm, but the wind was getting cold. Also, I suffer from a pretty strong fear of heights, so I think Ben and Mer had a great time on the observation platforms, while I stayed off them as much as I could (except for a few photos).

After about a half hour of strolling, we headed back down the Incline and walked back to the car. We had a good drive back, getting to talk to Ben about his involvement in Forensics (Speech), in which he is quite good. Ben also enjoys a fair amount of music that Mer and I like, so we got to mutually enjoy some Simon and Garfunkel and some James Taylor.

A pretty day, good company, good food, and superheroes. That makes for a great day.

CVCA’s Jterm started last week on Wednesday. Jterm is a special eight-day session where teachers offer trips or three-hour classes for students to take, and they tend to be quirky and fun classes that highlight teacher interests. Last year, Mer and I used Jterm to take students to London, but this year Mer only had to teach a three-hour class in the morning, and then she was free. As such, she actually had some time to do things.

So, on Friday, it was a sunny and warm day, so I took a half-day off from work, and Mer and I headed north toward the lake. Mer had a gift card from CVCA’s auction from 2010, and the card was to a coffee shop that was only open Monday to Friday during the day. This seemed like a great opportunity to go, so we headed up there. Sadly, in the year-and-a-half that had passed, the place had gone out of business. Not to be deterred, we had lunch at the Redhawk restaurant next door. They had really good and unusual sandwiches.

After lunch, since we were so close to Lake Erie, we headed up Route 44 to a huge public beach. Not surprisingly in early January, there were not a lot of people about. Although the day was warm, there was a fierce wind coming straight off the lake, and neither of us was wearing a true winter coat. We only stayed a short while. Even so, it was a refreshing change of pace from a usual Friday workday.

On Saturday, I went running with Jim. It was pretty great to be able to run fourteen miles outside on the Towpath Trail on January 7th. The northern part of my run was snowy and icy, but the nine miles on which I ran south of where I’d parked was all clear of snow and ice. It was a real treat.

After the run, and I had showered and gotten ready, Mer and I headed to Kent to watch the CVCA hockey team play. It was a closer game than the one we had seen a couple of weeks before, but the guys still won pretty handily, 10-3.

We then went home, where I spent much of the day watching the NFL playoffs. While I listen to a number of NFL games while I work around the house, I watch very few games on television. So, it was a special treat to plop down on the couch and watch most of two games. In the afternoon, Zach and Londa stopped by for a short visit, and we made tentative plans to maybe go to Michigan and Chicago together for spring break. That would be much fun.

Sunday was a mellow day at Mom’s. I went for a walk in the morning, which was great. A front had moved in, and the wind was gusting to forty mph or more. I walked to the beach to see the waves, and the wind was strong enough that it made me stagger twice. That was quite a feeling. The waves were pretty big, and I loved the wildness of it all, although I could not stay long near the beach with the combination of the cold and the high winds.

It was the last week of the regular season in the NFL, so I tuned in the Bills game on my computer, and I puttered around the house, as I am wont to do. I don’t like to just sit and listen to games, so I like to do things while the game is on. So, I cleaned two bathrooms and the windshields in Mom’s car, and then I walked on Mom’s treadmill for over an hour. The Bills lost, but at least I had been productive.

Mer, Mom, and Marc went to the see the movie The Way. I was in a stay-at-home mood since the game was on, but I encouraged Mer to do as she liked. She said she enjoyed the movie. Mom and Marc then made a really nice dinner. The weather had been picking up, and more and more warnings of lake-effect snow were coming in over the television and online. There was a severe weather warning through Tuesday morning, but nothing was really going on yet in Bridgman. So, I made the decision to leave. We threw our things together and loaded up as quickly as we could. We called our friend Ellen in Hillsdale, and asked if we could come and spend the night. She graciously said yes, and so we made our quick goodbyes and headed out.

It was okay at first, heading south toward South Bend. There were two or three spots where the snow was heavy, but the bands were short in duration, and the roads were not too bad. We got east of South Bend, and I thought we were clear of the lake-effect snow, but I was very wrong. About thirty minutes east of South Bend, we hit some of the heaviest snow I have ever seen. It was near white-out conditions, and it was all I could do to see the taillights of the truck in front of me. I could usually make out the white line on the edge of the road because that was where one tire track was on the pavement. There were times I could not see even that. It was some of the most hazardous driving I have ever done. We finally cleared that band of snow after thirty minutes of white-knuckle driving, and we got on a northbound highway that was the shortest route to Ellen’s house.

What we did not know was that we had to get off that highway very quickly and use back roads all the way to Ellen’s. So, although we had driven out of the lake-effect snow, and we could now see, it had still snowed in eastern Michigan also. They had only gotten two inches or so, but since Michigan has a budget shortfall, they have decided to save money by not plowing often and by not using salt. As such, all of the roads to Hillsdale were packed snow and ice, which made for more tense driving. We did finally make it to Ellen’s, aided by eastern Michigan’s very straight roads, and by the nonexistent traffic we had the good fortune not to encounter. I was very happy to see Ellen’s.

Ellen graciously welcomed us, and I pretty much went right to bed – I was exhausted after the drive. Mer followed soon after. In the morning (Monday), I checked the weather, and there were warnings in Ohio for Lake Erie lake-effect snow, with it getting worse as the day went on. So, I made the decision to be very lame guests, and we left as soon as we were both awake. Ellen understood and sent us on our way with homemade scones.

The road south from Hillsdale to Ohio was terrible. It had not been plowed, and it was packed snow and ice. As soon as we hit the Ohio border, the road had been plowed and salted, although it was still messy at first. Once we hit the highway, all was well. We had smooth sailing to within about twenty miles of home, when we hit some light lake-effect snow, but it was not too bad. We made it home in good shape, and out kitties were all well. I hope it is a long long time before I see driving conditions like the ones we had passed though. I am deeply grateful that God can step in and save me from my own bad decisions, and that we made it home quite safe.

Still, it was a great weekend. It was fun to see Mom and Marc, to see new towns in western Michigan, and it was good, albeit brief, to see Ellen as well. I hope next time will be a bit smoother as regards travel.