Saturday – Breakfast at the Blue Door
Brecksville Reservation Deer Lick Trail
Bethesda at the Beachland Ballroom

Tuesday – Vienna Boys’ Choir at EJ Thomas Hall

Saturday – Berlin Amish Country Half Marathon in the morning
Saw Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at Weathervane
Watched Joueaux Noel in the evening

Friday – Berlin Amish Marathon packet pickup and lunch at farmstead with Mer and Ben

Thursday – Brecksville Reservation Hickory Trail and Thanksgiving diner at Cardinal; visit Dale in hospital

Saturday – Nelson Ledges, The Great Escape

Saturday – COSI, CVCA soccer state final
Sunday – Walk on Towpath

Last Thursday we made a mad dash out to Chicago and played hooky from school on Friday. It was a big occasion – Saturday evening was a show by Moody Bible Institute’s improv comedy group, Informal. Two of my former students, Ben and John, made the group as freshmen, and I wanted to see them in a show. Plus, one of CVCA’s former students, Chris, goes to Moody, and he was in my Connections group for two years, and I like and admire him very much. So, we took a long weekend to go visit Ben, John, and Chris, and to see Shannon and Jo, who live in northern Chicago.

Thursday was spent mostly in driving, although the traditional stop at Dairy Queen near South Bend was note- worthy. We got to Shannon and Jo’s apartment around 10:30, just as they were about to go to bed, since they had to work on Friday. We went to sleep pretty efficiently ourselves.

Friday morning I went for a cold but nice eight-mile run in a nearby park that has a one-mile loop in it. I was pleased that I was able to get that in. Mer and I got ready for the day, and took the El to downtown Chicago to Moody. We arrived early at the Starbucks where we were supposed to meet the guys, with the intention of getting breakfast. The guys got there just as we were being served, so we took our food on the short walk to the Moody student union so we could eat on campus.

It was great to see the guys again, and they were genuinely excited to see us. We finished eating breakfast pretty quickly, and they took us on a tour of campus. Moody is packed into about a one-block area, and is located only a short walk from the Gold Coast area of Lake Michigan. I got to see the dorm where Ben, John, and Chris all live (Mer had to wait in the lounge, since women are not allowed in the guys’ dorm rooms), and Mer was able to see one of the girls’ dorms with one of her former students.

After the tour of campus, the guys took us to lunch in the Moody cafeteria. We got to eat cheaply since John worked there – the workers gave us a discount, so we were able to eat for three or four dollars each, which was a huge deal since lunch was essentially a buffet with soup, pizza, drinks, sandwiches, grilled cheese, and more. Yum. We all sat together and were joined by another former student of Mer’s. It was a good lunch, both the food and the fellowship.

After lunch, John had to work, so the rest of us all walked downtown. We headed to Lake Michigan, where the lake was very rough from a strong wind, and we walked back to campus through some very ritzy areas as we headed south to the river. We crossed the river through an area that was new to me and Mer, and went back to campus. There, we left the guys for the time being, and headed back to the apartment.

Shannon and Jo got home from work and took us out to eat at their favorite pub, The Red Lion, which is a short walk from their apartment. The menu was small, but the food was quite good, and it is fun being with locals – the pub owners know Shannon and Jo quite well.

After supper, we all headed back to Moody to meet up with the guys. Chris was going to be a bit late, so John and Ben took us to see the inter-dorm flag football game. When we got there, the girls were playing. It was mobbed with college students, and that was fun – there was a lot of energy in the air, and the two male announcers were quite witty. There were several pretty great plays by the girls, including a pretty long pass. We were at the game probably for about fifteen or twenty minutes when Chris showed up, and we took that as our cue to leave.

We wanted to do something fun and urban with the guys, so we took them to the nearby Dave and Buster’s game room and restaurant. Since college students are broke, we gave them game cards so they could play games, and we let ourselves loose in the game room. It was relaxed and fun – no one felt the need to stay together as a group, so we all kept bumping into each other and watchingeach other play as the opportunity arose. Many of the games at Dave and Buster’s give out prize tickets, and when Shannon and Jo left, they gave all of their tickets to Ben and John and Chris. Ben was cleaning up in the ticket version of Deal or No Deal, and Mer and I added our tickets to the pile when we left. Chris told us the next day that they had about five thousand tickets by the end of the night, and used them to get ten Marvel superhero stuffed dolls. That made me proud.

Saturday started out well – Shannon and I went for a run in the park, and it was great to have someone to run with again. After we got back and everyone got ready, we all walked the couple of miles to Andersonville’s Anne Sather Restaurant, which has the world’s best cinnamon rolls, which come with any breakfast (if you want them). After brunch, we went back to the apartment, where we all took long naps (except for Mer, who graded school papers).

Shannon was not interested in supper, and Jo wanted to go hole up in a coffee shop to get some grad school work done, so Mer and I went to a close-by bar/restaurant called the Bad Apple, where we grabbed a quick supper. We went back to the apartment and grabbed Shannon, and the three of us went back to Moody to see the Informal show. Chris was kind enough to meet us at the Starbucks, where we managed to grab a quick dessert before heading over to Moody.

We were about thirty minutes early, and so were first in line. The show cost a whole fifty cents, so we paid for Shannon and Chris to get in (we’re big like that). We sat in the front row, and before the show started, a few former CVCA folks came and said hello. The auditorium held about 250 people, and the place was packed.  Informal does two shows, and tends to sell out both.

The show started, and what a great show it was. The first half of the show was all sketch comedy, where the players did a pre-arranged series of routines that were all very funny. There was a movie trailer about a family of rats (Moody’s main quad has rats living in it), a skit about a guy’s failed attempts to get two girls to notice him at a coffee shop, a skit about an overly jealous roommate who did not want to share her friend, a skit about a group of camp counselors who survive a plan crash and decide to do get-to-know-you games rather than try to find help, a skit about an uber-cool guy who shot down everything his date said, and a skit about a pirate ship where the crew was divided between modern styles of being a pirate and the traditional way of being a pirate (a funny and thinly veiled story about the division between modern worship and traditional worship). I laughed until my face hurt.

After the skits, the second half of the show was all improv comedy. Informal nailed it; they made a few mistakes according to the “rules” of improv, but only a very few. They were funny, high energy, and made everyone laugh. I have to admit that I was jealous of how good they were – what a great show.

Mer, Chris, and I stayed for the second show, but Shannon went home. He gave the show glowing reviews, but was tired and wanted to see Jo. The second show was still funny, and it was fun to notice the slight little differences in the skits. What a great time, and the audience was really into the show – lots of energy and laughter. We left pretty directly after the show, and got back to the apartment around midnight. We slept in, and then drove home on Sunday. I’m hoping to get back to Chicago to see another show in the spring.

Pumpkins, 2012 versions (year seventeen of the tradition):

Mer’s pumpkin was based on something scary – it is an abstract but recognizable outline of her bag-of-doom – the bag in which she carries her school papers that need to be graded. Mine was a celebration, or at least recognition, of the fact that we now have six cats.

Saturday was Mer’s day, and she started it out with work (kind of). Mer is the coach to for the junior high Academic Challenge team, which is sort of like teams playing Jeopardy!, with the kids having to answer questions in various rounds on various subjects. She tries to take her team to two or three tournaments a year, and this one fit well in the schedule. It was at Hawken, an affluent private school fairly nearby (about thirty minutes away).

Since I always seem to get pressed into reading questions, Mer just went ahead and volunteered me for the job. I like it pretty well, although my voice starts to give out later in the tournament since I am not used to talking that much. This tournament was being run by a Hawken alum who had started a non-profit group to encourage learning and education, and a couple features this group brought were computerized scoring and questions. I was comfortable with that, although I had to switch rooms at the last minute, and it took about twenty minutes to get the technology ready in the new room; also, the external screen with the score and timing clock went out on me in the middle of one round, but that was fixed pretty quickly by a suggestion or two from a helpful audience member who reminded me to check a computer setting when I was focused on the various cables. He was right.

One amusing aspect of being a reader – in the brief training we received, we were assured that there were not many foreign words and names to stumble over. That was a boldfaced lie – I had foreign words and names in every round, and many of them were from Asian languages. I managed as best I could, and I only messed up a couple of times on the scoring or on answers, which is not bad over fifteen rounds during the day.

Hawken fed us, which was very kind, and we wrapped up around 2:00. Our two junior high teams did not fare too well on the score sheet, but they were competitive in most rounds.

In the evening, Mer took me up to Playhouse Square, to a small theater to which we had not yet been. The theater only held about seventy-five people, and was set up as a thrust stage (with seats on three sides). We got good seats in the front row in the center. Mer had gotten us tickets to see a translation of the French play The Misanthrope.

It is a very interesting play about social norms. The main character is a blunt young man who thinks people should be completely honest all the time, and not worry about being polite. He hangs out in rarefied social circles where politeness is the norm, and the play explores the pros and cons of each view, while managing to be quite funny along the way.

In a nod to how strong the main actor was, I did not realize the play was in rhymed couplets until another character spoke. People do not rhyme in normal conversation, and it amazed me that the man playing the main role could speak so seemingly naturally, while speaking in a very artificial way.

The acting was quite good, although the lead actor was the one who stood out to me. There was one character who felt rushed to me – he seemed to feel the need to get to the rhyme at the ends of lines as quickly as possible. His acting was fine, but his line delivery needed a little work.

The set was simple, as sets tend to be when on a thrust stage. The stage was set up as one of two rooms, with chairs and a sofa and other small furniture.

The biggest negative of the play came from the audience. A man in the front row of one of the sides of the stage actually checked his cell phone while the lights were down, and continued to do so even after the actors came out and started speaking. The man’s whole face was lit up in the light of his screen. It makes me frustrated and worried that people are becoming socially stupid because of technology. I think he missed the irony of being rude while watching The Misanthrope.

Still, other than that incident, the evening was pretty great. The play was thought-provoking and well done, and I got to see one of the new theaters at Playhouse Square.