After months of planning, over one hundred e-mails, dozens of international calls, and one organizational meeting, our “Literary London” CVCA J-term class finally arrived. For those not familiar with the concept of J-term, schools sometimes take some time after Christmas break to offer unusual classes and trips for the students. Our college, Middlebury, had this program for four weeks in January, and this year CVCA implemented a J-term program of eight school days, from January 3rd to January 12th. Meredith proposed that we offer to bring a group of students to London, and last spring we had thirteen students sign up. It always seemed as if we had lots of time available for the planning, and we did make good use of the time, but suddenly Mer and I were meeting students at CVCA this morning at 8:00, with the bus to the Pittsburgh Airport leaving CVCA at 9:00.

A note on the interesting use of time in this entry – “today” is a funny term, in that Mer and I woke up at 6:00 am on Monday the 3rd, but did not land in London until noon London time on Tuesday the 4th – it is all the same day for us. Happily, all of the students seemed to get some sleep on the plane. Sadly, the old-and-used-to-a-bed folks did not.

Anyway, Mer and I were very pleased with how things went this morning – everyone was at school by 8:45, as we had told them to be. We were all loaded and on the bus and underway right at 9:00. The students were cheerful and chatty, but certainly not bouncing-off-the-walls excited. I think they knew we had a very long day ahead of us.

The bus ride was uneventful, with the exception that we had to circle around the airport one full time. It turns out that if you try to obey the signs and follow directions for buses at the airport, you end up at a gated road; it seems the airport meant commercial buses with special passes. A nice man gave us directions and got us all set.
The check-in at the airport went really well. Our students were great – they did whatever they were told, and the process of checking in fifteen people went really smoothly. The Delta counter people were very helpful, and one of the ticket agents got me and Mer signed up for a miles-club so we could take advantage of all of the miles for this trip – we ended up with enough miles for two free domestic tickets. That was very nice of the lady to point out. They also offered me and Meredith free drinks on the plane (of the imbibing kind), which we turned down, explaining we were with a Christian school; maybe it was a small witness. We got to the gate about ninety minutes before our flight to Atlanta (where we would catch the big plane for London), so that gave time for some of the students to get lunch if they desired and come back to the gate area to eat it. Everyone was back on time, and the flight to Atlanta was smooth and on time (after a few minutes where it looked like we would be delayed because of a stuck pin on the loading ramp, but they were able to free it after just a few minutes).

We got to Atlanta, where we were scheduled to have a layover of over seven hours. Mer and I decided that was too long to spend in an airport, so we decided to take a field trip to downtown Atlanta. We figured out the inner-airport train and got to the city train system (the “Marta”). We were again helped by a very friendly worker who helped me buy fifteen round-trip tickets for the Marta system. We figured out how to get through the turnstiles (all the mass transits of various cities seem to be slightly different), and we headed north to downtown Atlanta.
We got off at the Peachtree station, and headed off down the street – I was aiming for Atlanta’s Olympic Park, which is a short walk away from the Marta station. It was sunny, but cool in the shade of downtown, but it felt good to be outside.  We started heading down a hill, and I could not see any space opening up. After three blocks, I stopped and dug out my map in my backpack, and discovered we were heading east when we needed to be going west. Mer and I chalked it up to showing off downtown Atlanta.

We did get to the park, but the sidewalks turned out to be very crowded getting there – we were walking against major crowds that turned out to be there for the Passion Conference 2011 (it appeared to be a huge Christian conference). Somehow we managed to run into the huge crowds both going to the park around 4:00 and coming from the park around 6:30.

We got to the park, which is not very big, but is well laid out. We took some photos near the park’s dancing fountain, which is in the shape of the Olympic rings, and then we got an early supper from Googie Burger, a burger stand on the edge of the park. It was cool (in the mid 40s), but we were still able to eat outside.
After supper, we wandered around the edge of the park. We took a bunch of pictures of various statues and well-lit flora, and we took the time to cross the northern edge of the park to see the outside of the World of Coke (the softdrink manufacturer is based in Atlanta). We did not have time or money to go in to the World of Coke, but we took some pictures with the statue of the inventor of Coke.

The walk back through the park was pretty. We watched the small but popular (covered from the sun) ice rink, then took in the well-laid-out streams and waterfalls of the park. We stumbled across the “Quilt of Remembrance” – a stone “quilt” laid out in memory of the bombing attacks in the park during the games. We finished the park portion of the evening by watching the city lights come on as twilight fell, and we got great enjoyment out of the now-colorfully lit fountain (and the groups of people who liked to try to run through the dancing fountain without getting wet, which included several of our own students, who managed to not get seriously wet).

By a little after 6:00, I decided we should head back, so we went walked back to the Marta station, and took the twenty-five-minute train back to the airport. We got through security efficiently, and actually were ready to go to our gate just a little after 7:00 (for a 10:50 flight). We were early enough that our plane did not have a gate yet. I made an educated guess that we were in Terminal E, based on the number of international flights that seemed to be leaving from there. I was fortunate and turned out to be right. So, we spent about three hours reading or talking or getting food or playing games. The time passed pretty well, and we got on board the airplane on time, and the plane left around 11:00 as it was supposed to.

I can’t speak to what everyone did on the flight. It was an 8-hour flight, and it certainly looked as if all of the students got at least a little sleep. Mer graded papers for a little over half the flight. I tried to sleep, and when that did not work, I  watched movies. I got to see Despicable Me, an animated film I had wanted to see for some time. I loved it. The I took a chance on a film I knew nothing about called Flipped. It turned out to be a Rob Reiner film, and I enjoyed it. It was the story of a boy and girl who met when in second grade, and the story of how they came to value and care for each other. It was worthwhile, and helped pass the time. I also spent time writing up some of this blog entry.

We got to Heathrow at around 12:15 London time. We managed to get off the plane, get through customs, find bathrooms, and get our luggage with some efficiency. We headed over to the Heathrow Underground station, and a very helpful Tube clerk helped me sort out getting a one-day group pass (the rest of the trip will be covered by our week-long Tube passes). We got to to the platform, which was pretty clear, and then waited for what seemed like a very long time. I’m not sure what was going on with the Tube schedule, but we waited at least twenty minutes, and maybe as much as thirty before the train arrived. As such, it was very crowded. Since we were there early, we managed to get on without any real trouble, and the practice on a crowded line was probably good for us.

We transferred trains twice; the second time we changed right outside of the Tower of London, which Mer pointed out to the group, but I was so focused on trying to figure out where were were going that I missed it. We got to the Limehouse station and got off the train, and managed to find our hotel after one more of my little wrong-way detours. The hotel is about a five-block walk, which is not too bad. We managed to get checked in and had about an hour to rest and unpack before we needed to meet at 5:00 to head back into the city for supper.

We were out the door at about 5:00, and the Tube got us to downtown at about 5:30. We got off at the Westminster stop, and the kids finally got to feel they were really in London – the Westminster stop dumps you out in full view of the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament. The kids got very excited, which was understandable. It may have been a bit of a disappointment that I then marched them past all of the sights to get to our restaurant, the Italian Locale, County Hall. Once in the restaurant, Mer did assure everyone we would see those sights and have time for pictures.

The restaurant somehow did not have our reservation, but hurried to get us two tables anyway. Supper was excellent, and most welcome. After eating, we walked over to the Eye, which included coming around the massive County Hall building to see a tree-lined walkway framing the Eye. It was very impressive. For those not familiar with it, the London Eye is a huge Ferris wheel, with enclosed cars that hold about twenty-five people and go over four hundred feet in the air.

I got our tickets, and we all filed into a theater to watch a cheesy but fun 4-minute “4-D” film on London and the Eye. The 4th dimension of the film was tactile – the system blew bubbles in our faces, fog machines spit out fog, and so on. After the film, we went out to the Eye, where the people in charge gave us a car all to ourselves, which was really great.

Any doubts about this trip were laid to rest while watching the students run around the car, being excited over the sights, and snapping tons of pictures. This sharing of London was exactly what prompted Meredith to plan the trip, and it was very gratifying. I handled the height pretty well, except for the very top, where I had to sit down and not look down. Some of the kids joined me on the bench in the car at that point. Still, it was a great experience.

We took our time (and lots of pictures) in getting back to the Tube stop. The day finally caught up to me on the Tube, and I almost fell asleep twice on the trip back to the hotel. Once there, we handed out cell phones, and then told everyone to get to bed efficiently. It was about 10:00 or so when I finally got to sleep, and I was out pretty quickly. What a great day.

As we wrapped up 2010, Mer and I finally broke into a gift from late 2009 – The Premiere Frank Capra Collection. This contains five films, all of which are amazing, and all of which are stories of the little guy winning over long odds (and winning the love of the smart and witty girl along the way). These include:

American Madness – a bank president sticks to honesty and fairness
It Happened One Night – a reporter falls in love with a rich girl promised to be wed to a famous aviator
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town – an ordinary many inherits a huge fortune
You Can’t Take It With You – a family lives doing just what it wants to do and ignores the rat race
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington – an ordinary man becomes a Senator

All of these films were incredibly entertaining and wonderfully witty. They are also all feel-good films, and darn it, I like to feel good. I know the world is not really a place where the ordinary person wins against long odds, but I don’t care. I still want to believe that.

The casts were star-studded, with Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, and Jimmy Stewart (one of my favorite actors). The actresses were less well known to me, but they were all sassy, pretty, intelligent, and snappy dressers (with the exception of the occasional very odd hat). It Happened One Night in particular is an amazing film for romantic comedies (and, as an aside, the creators of Bugs Bunny cited Clark Gable’s character as a major inspiration).

Four of these films were new to me (I had seen Mr. Smith years ago), and I could not have been more delighted. Mer and I actually spent New Year’s Eve finishing up Mr. Deeds and then watching Mr. Smith. We each had a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream, and I went to bed quite happy, but well before midnight. The odds were not terribly long on that.

New Year’s Day, we went to Aunt Mary’s. As often as we all are around, she tries to have a New Year’s Day party every year (some years it is in March, but she tries to have it). She keeps it fairly small, and the people she invites are fun to be around – this year it was the Georges and the Bakers and us. There was good food, and then we always play games. Sadly, this year, I had a migraine move in on me right after dinner, and I skipped the games in favor of taking a nap. Mer played the games (Catch Phrase and Would You Rather?), and she reported they were much fun.

I took Mer out for dinner at Aladdin’s – my head was feeling better, but my stomach was queasy from the headache. Aladdin’s has healthy food, and it did the trick – after supper I was feeling much better, so I drove to the Churchills’ to see if they wanted some dessert. Zach was entertaining a friend with New Year’s Day football, but Londa joined us at Friday’s for dessert. We got to catch up with Londa for about an hour, and that was much fun. Dessert with a good friend; I think Frank would have approved.

Well, another year has wrapped up, and it is time to see how ye olde goals worked out for last year.

I had wanted to log 1,000 miles of running on my Nike+ system. This seemed easy enough – it is just 20 miles/week for all year. There are several times a year where I run 20 miles in one day! Surely, this is possible.

Sadly, it will have to be a goal for 2011. I missed it for the second straight year. I had to take all of last January off to try to let an injury heal. The Nike+ seemed to always be locking up or being out of battery on the days over the summer when I was doing 12+ mile runs. Also, I know for sure it missed 55 miles of races that I ran this year, since I don’t wear my iPod while running races. I’m guessing the iPod/Nike+ missed about 100 miles of running (possibly more). Having said all of that … the official Nike+ stats for 2010 are:

888 miles (931 in 2009)
113,000 calories (106,000 calories – I ran about the same amount of time – slightly slower pace)

So, in all likelihood, I got to 1,000 miles for the year, but the goal is to get the iPod to register them all.

As far as the goal of losing about 10 pounds, I did at one point, losing 8 pounds by last October. Sadly, I have gained them all back over the holidays. So, the 113,000 calories, which equates to 32 pounds, was all eaten back over the year. I guess I’m glad I run.

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.