Last Sunday Mer and I were supposed to go to Aunt Mary’s to get together with some family friends to have a birthday celebration for Aunt Mary. We were to arrive at 2:00, so we slept in and went to the late service at church. Once we got to Aunt Mary’s house, we were joined by the Georges and the George family members who live in the area, “Aunt” Zovie and her son Michael, and eventually Pastor Ken and Janet. I think we had about fifteen or sixteen people in all – it was a rather festive crowd.

Mer and I brought a cake for Aunt Mary, but she had supplied a ton of food – sloppy joes, cupcakes, cookies, chips, and more. It was all comfort food, and quite good, and a lot of it. We all gathered around to sing happy birthday to Aunt Mary, except when we got to the “Happy Birthday, dear Aunt Mary,” I was the only one who sang that. Everyone else sang, “Happy Birthday, dear Matthew.” Aunt Mary, with help from Meredith, had planned all of this as a belated fortieth birthday part for me. Needless to say, I was quite surprised and honored. Aunt Mary had even arranged for Dale and Carlene to call and then for Kelly to call. Mom tried calling, but somehow got the wrong number.

We ate and chatted and had a good and sociable time. After we ate, I was handed tons of bags of presents and cards. The cards were sweet, but I was confused when the first bag present contained women’s clothing. Everyone laughed, and I kept opening more and more assortments of clothing, some men’s and some women’s. I finally figured out that these presents were all donations to The Haven of Rest, a charity for homeless people in Akron. I was delighted that my birthday was a reason to help the poor. That was one of the best gifts I have ever been given.

Mer and I left the party around 5:15. I was touched and very pleased. We then headed back north all the way to Cleveland, to Severance Hall. Severance Hall is the home to the Cleveland Orchestra and, in this case, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra. One of Mer’s students plays harp and is in the choir of the Youth Chorus, and her family had given us tickets to see her in a concert last Sunday evening.

The concert was made up of two pieces – Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade” and Carl Orff’s cantata “Carmina Burana.” The first piece featured harp and the jaw-droppingly good first chair violin player, who is only a junior in high school. So, we got to see a good bit of Mer’s student on harp. The sound produced by a group of high school students was amazing. While I am not a classical music guy, I would have put their performance up against most regional orchestras – they just nailed the performance.

After the intermission, the choir came in, with about eighty members. They sang “Carmina Burana,” which is well known through movies and some TV commercials. Again, they did a fabulous job. The soloists both had great voices, although the second vocalist still needs to work on his power, since I could not always hear him. The full choir kept up with the orchestra with no problems. It was a well-done concert, and was a good end to a good day.

The birthday event kept on giving – last Tuesday, Mer and I were able to go back to Aunt Mary’s for tons of leftovers and an evening of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy.

Last Friday was our second Royal Fools improv show of the year. I scheduled the date about six or eight weeks ago, and I had looked at the calendar to make sure we were not going up against anything else that evening. The date got approved and everything was set, and then I found out that the boys’ basketball team had the opening game of the playoffs that evening. So much for the best-laid plans. So, we had a smaller crowd than we have had for a while, but it was still big enough to feel festive – we probably had about seventy people (we have been up around a hundred for the last four or five shows), and they were an active crowd.

The show was solid, with some shining moments, as well as a few mistakes (there were several times where the students said “no” on stage, and that is never supposed to happen). The show included:

– An art review of art inspired by an artist’s “happy” period.
– A man who made a new type of apple and then had to do the scene again in slow motion and then again while breakdancing.
– A dating game where the candidates were Frodo, Steven Hawking, and Hilary Clinton.
– A political debate over the merits of Coca-Cola and over the existence of unicorns.
– A girl caught in her dastardly crime of enjoying the book Twilight, with her accomplice Yoda, while at the North Pole.
– A group of students who silently had to act out going to the moon to catch bees, where they died after having foot surgery that went wrong.
– An improv showdown that included variations on how to say “That’s my hippopotamus!”
– A skit about being scared of words while being in a library.
– The Fools’ recreation of the 1980s film Dark Crystal.
– A paperback skit where a coach was playing favorites with one of his athletes.
– A musical chairs game about a birthday party that was interrupted by a snow storm and a Yeti.
– A skit about invading Mars and then feeling bad about doing so.
– A game where the kids had their hands removed in order to have muppets implanted on the ends of their arms.
– A Foolish Idol competition where the contestants sang about a Shamwow and carrots.

So, I was pretty pleased with the show. It was a long one – it went a full hour and a half (most shows are an hour and ten minutes or so), but I did not feel as if the show dragged on too long. There were two games I should have ended sooner than I did, but that happens in improv – sometimes I think things are going to keep on getting better and I miss the spot where I should have ended things.

We have one more show to do this year, which should be in early May. Then, I will lose a stunning twelve of my fourteen Fools to graduation, including one student who has been in the group for four years, and another four students who have been with me for three years. This is going to be a very hard act to follow next year, but we still have two more months of improv wackiness to go this year. It should be fun.

Last Thursday, Mer took me on another mid-week date. This one was to a small theater at the University of Akron, where the Music and Dance Departments teamed up to put on a cabaret musical review. Normally, Mer and I are not too crazy about musical reviews, but this one was not trying to pretend to be a theatrical story; they covered love songs (including break-up songs), and kept the evening lighthearted, so we were both quite charmed by the performances. In addition, one of CVCA’s former students was a major singer for the evening, and it was grand fun to get to hear him sing again. As a final bonus, one of my former Fools and one of Mer’s favorite students, Mary, came to the show, so we were able to sit with her and get caught up on her life.

The show lasted about ninety minutes, not counting an intermission, and it was fun to see the mixture of songs and dances. There was a piano player providing the music (and he was really good – I forget how good even an undergraduate can be), eight male and female singers, and six female dancers. The singers did some dancing and the dancers did some singing as well. I had forgotten how fun it is to see an informal college show – there were cheers from the audience from time to time, and some of the lyrics to some of the songs were tweaked to include names of friends. While I did not understand the inside jokes, it was still a festive atmosphere. I’m glad Mer took me to the show – it is a good reminder that we need to take more advantage of the three major colleges in our area (Akron, Kent, and Malone).

Last Monday was our last full day on the Clean Diet (Tuesday we could eat what we wanted). So, here are some final thoughts of a four-week diet:

– It’s expensive to eat healthily: I think our weekly grocery bill about tripled. Mer and I have long noticed that college students from wealthy families are rarely fat, and I think at least some of that is because upper-middle-class families and rich families can eat better.

– My knee and back felt better: This may just be from losing weight (that helps my back) and from not pounding on my knee (I did not have the energy to run much during February), so the jury is out on the restorative effects of the diet.

– My energy levels did level out: Most days during February I did not have my early-afternoon energy fade, and that may be from the diet. Also, when I was tired, I tended to be tired all day, and that was generally from too little sleep.

– I lost a ton of weight: For the four weeks of February that we were on the diet, I lost 17 pounds, which is remarkable.

All in all, I would not do the exact diet again – it was very difficult, especially having to turn away social offers because we could not be sure if food was involved. If I start to put the weight back on, I would do a modified Clean diet since the weight loss was so drastic. I would eat the big meal in the evening, which is more enjoyable for me, and I would allow exceptions on the diet when invited out to eat by my friends and families.

The diet also made “normal” food taste really really good. That was a nice perk. I have also decided to keep making and drinking smoothies so that I can get more fruit in my diet. I also am back to being able to run normally – I had a good-feeling ten-mile run today (Saturday) for the first time since last December. Not having the extra holiday-birthday weight to carry around is helpful with the longer runs.

I am glad I tried the diet, and although I would not do the strict diet again, it has made me reevaluate my diet. I am trying to eat more organic foods, and we still have our drinking water filtering system, so that cannot hurt. The experiment was successful.

Last Saturday was Mer’s day, and she had a very full day planned. We were up early and headed north to downtown Cleveland, to a TV studio, of all places. I was not expecting that. Once inside, I saw a bunch of teens dressed in suits, and then I remembered that CVCA’s Academic Challenge Team was going to be on the Academic Challenge TV show. Our team showed up a few minutes after we arrived.

Academic Challenge is a wonderfully nerdy team competition, where teams square off to answer academic trivia, science, math, history, and literature questions. It’s like a school-sponsored version of Trivial Pursuit or Jeopardy. It’s pretty great stuff. Normally, teams compete at local high schools, but each week a local television station broadcasts three teams of three students each. This was CVCA’s first appearance on the program in over a decade. Mer had wanted to see it, so we were there to be in the audience.

CVCA’s taping slot was second, so we got to see the first show being taped; we got to sit in the next (empty) studio over and watch the show on monitors. We had to be very quiet so that we would not be heard in the next studio, but that was okay – it was fun to see how things worked.

Once our session was ready to go, we filed in to the studio to watch. Mer and I sat with Dubbs, who was also there to cheer the kids on. We had two guys and a girl on our team, and we faced off against another private (Catholic) school and a public high school from a wealthy district. It seems there is a tie-in between academic excellence and money, which does not really surprise me.

The competition was much fun. The Catholic school was very fast, and they ended up winning the game. Our team came in second, and Mer was pleased that they did better than either of the other teams in literature and mythology questions. I kept informal track, and I think there were only three or four questions that were asked during the show that I did not know. That made me feel smug, although I’m not sure I could have rung in first on all of the questions that I knew. In the whole show, I think there was only one question that was missed out of all the questions asked to all three teams – it was impressive. Mer and I were pretty sure that any of the three teams in our game would have won the game we saw being taped earlier. It was a pretty great time, and I hope since we did pretty well that our team will be invited back.

After the taping, we mingled with the students. They invited us to lunch, but since we were still on our Clean diet program, we declined. We got back in the car and headed west, to Strongsville, to the Cleveland Metroparks tobogganing chutes. Mer had “won” tickets to the chutes at CVCA’s auction last year, and this was the last day to use them. We used the restrooms, handed in our tickets, and grabbed a toboggan. This presented the first challenge. The toboggans are four-person sleds made of wood, so they are large and heavy. We tried carrying our sled together, but Mer was not tall enough to keep the sled up as we climbed the four or five flights of stairs. So, I had to figure out how to carry it. We took a total of four runs, and for runs three and four, I finally settled on grabbing the sled by the lowest hand ropes, and then leaning it on my back so that it went straight up over my head. That worked pretty well, although I’m not sure it did my back any favors.

The tobogganing run was a blast. The chutes are refrigerated, and so they were fast even with it being about 35 degrees out. The attendant at the top told us we were probably going about 35 mph, but had said they can get over 50 mph at night when it is colder and the ice is faster. The hill is really, really steep – it very much feels like going over the first big hill of a roller coaster, except you are sitting on the rails (as it were). We could only take four runs – Mer had evening plans that she wanted to do, and the schlepping the sled up the hill is tiring. Still, the all-day tickets only run $8, so I expect we’ll be back next year.

We went home and I made lunch and supper, and I took a short nap while Mer went and bought groceries for the first time in a month – since we were finishing out February diet on Tuesday, we needed normal food back in the house again. After supper and an episode of the TV show Doctor Who, we headed south to Canton, to the Civic Center, where we went to the small “bare bones” theater where the center does its smaller plays. I was very pleased to see we were there to see The Elephant Man.

The Elephant Man is a play based on the true story of John Merrick, who suffered from extreme deformities, and he lived in London back in the 1880s. He was attended to by a London doctor, and the play looks at their relationship over several years. I had seen it years ago at Porthouse Theater, and I thought it was a great piece of theater, so I was happy to see it again.

As an added bonus, the doctor was played by a CVCA graduate who graduated about four years ago. He did an excellent job. The actor who played John Merrick also did an amazing job, and the female lead, who played an actress who visited John over several years, was quite good as well. The play was as moving and thought-provoking as I had remembered, and the director did some very interesting things with the play. He decided to keep stripping the stage of props, especially toward the end of the play, as John and the doctor kept stripping back to more and more honesty. The director also used actors in double roles to bring out the parallels of the main characters. It was very effective.

Mer had managed to plan quite a fun little day that still did not involve going out to eat. That was quite a feat of planning – for us, at any rate.

Friday evening, Mer and I got together with our colleague Liz, and we headed over to Kent, to the Kent Stage. Mer and Liz both had had the day off because of a snow day, so they both had a jump on the weekend. I had to work, and had gotten up at 5:00 a.m., which is normally fine, but I was still tired from being out Wednesday when we saw Riverdance. That made me a little sleepy as we got to the Kent Stage, to see the folk group Red Horse.

Red Horse is a trio of well-established folk artists – John Gorka, Eliza Gilkyson, and Lucy Kaplansky. They respect each other’s work, and so decided to band together to release an album where they covered each other’s songs and did a few originals. Mer and I are pretty familiar with Gorka’s music, but the other two were new to us. Liz and never heard of any of them, but she was a game soul who wanted to give them a listen-to.

We had seats in the “balcony” of the Kent Stage – it does not really have a balcony in the sense I usually think of. What it does have are a bunch of raised seats at the back center of the house. I was afraid they were not going to be very good seats, but they were not bad. We could see over everyone’s head, even if a person stood up, and we had a ton of leg room.

The concert was quite good, although on some of the mellower songs in the second half I fought off sleep because I was tired. Gorka has a wonderful voice, and he is a very odd but funny man when talking between songs. It was also fun for me to hear the two women sing Gorka’s songs. I think I liked Lucy Kaplansky slightly more than Eliza Gilkyson – she played some very pretty piano songs. The group played two long sets – it was well over two hours, including the intermission. Liz seemed to approve, and Mer especially liked the piano songs that Kaplansky and Gorka played. It was a good time, and a great start to the weekend.

Last Wednesday, I took Mer on a rare mid-week date. Sadly, because we are still on our diet, I could not take her out to eat. We had out fruit smoothies at home and watched an episode of the television show Doctor Who. Once we were done with “dinner,” we headed south to Akron, to EJ Thomas Hall, where I surprised Mer with tickets to see the Irish music and dance show Riverdance.

The tickets were not cheap, so we had balcony seats. That was okay, though, because balcony seats let you see the whole stage at once; when you are too close, you have to focus on just part of the stage. We tend to like balcony seats for musicals and other big productions, and we like to sit as close as possible for smaller shows.

Neither of us can remember if this is the third or fourth time we have see Riverdance. The first time we ever saw it was back in Chicago in early 1997. Meredith took me and her then-roommate, Laura, to see Riverdance at the Rosemont Horizon out near O’Hare airport. I had never seen anything like it, and I came out of the theater just flying. It was not too long after that that I started taking Irish dance lessons.

Anyway, we do know that we had not seen the show in years, so it was great to see it again. It still has wonderful music and amazing dancing and very pretty singing. The show lasted over two hours (with a fifteen-minute intermission), but it went by very quickly. Even though we can’t go out to dinner for another few days yet, it was still good to go out on a date with Mer, especially in the middle of the week. It felt like staying up late on a school night (which it kind of was, for me at least).

Mer and I just finished up three weeks on the Clean diet, so it is time for an update. As of this morning, I weighed in at 160.0, which represents 14.5 pounds lost in twenty-one days, which is simply remarkable. It also puts me just 0.5 pounds away from my all-time lightest adult weight, with a week still to go. (As an aside, the body does shift as it gets older. I found a pair of suit pants that I bought when I was twenty-four years old. I am now as light as or even lighter than I was then, but the pants are a good two inches away from fitting.)

As far as some of the benefits Clean is supposed to impart, it has been hard to say. I do not feel as if I have tons of additional energy, but I also still have not had my typical mid-day “sleepies,” where I get tired in the early afternoon, so that has been okay.

Clean also mentions that the feeling of hunger goes away as you are on the diet. I have found it to be just the opposite. This last week has been difficult for me in that I have been hungry fairly often – usually once a day, and sometimes more. Clean also indicates that typically your cravings for “bad” food will go away, and that has very much not been the case for me and Mer. We have been both craving various foods, and have avoided certain social situations in order to keep away from tempting food.

Running for me has also been very difficult. In part, that is because I took a lot of time off in January and February. Still, when I run, I’ve struggled with stomach cramps and a pretty large lack of energy – it is hard for me to push the pace at all. I think some of that comes from the diet – I’m probably not getting enough calories for sustained exercise, and I am not eating foods that can be quickly converted to energy.

Mer and I have both been counting down the days until we can eat freely again. That has been disappointing, because we are not normally like that – we don’t usually try to rush time, wishing it were days ahead, except on rare occasions (when we have something very special planned for the weekend or the like).

So, on the whole, we have both found Clean to be increasingly difficult. Since there are two of us holding each other accountable, we have not cracked and eaten a ton of ice cream or the like. The weight loss has been wonderful, and I have been pleasantly surprised that I have found ways to prepare vegetables that I actually like (olive oil and pepper and then stir-fry). My guess is that I would not do a full-fledged four weeks again, but I can see myself doing a Clean-style diet for a week or two every now and then when I feel as if it is needed.

Last Saturday was “my” day, and it was not too exciting during much of the day – we mostly took it easy around the house. That evening, though, I took Mer to see the movie The King’s Speech. We had first heard about The King’s Speech from a student who was on our J-term London trip. He had seen it just before coming to London, and he highly recommended it. I figured it was time, and that an artsy movie two months after it came out would let us have an uncrowded theater mostly to ourselves.

Boy, was I wrong about that – the theater was packed. Mer offered the theory that people wanted to see it before the Oscars next week, and that sounds right to me. I’d say the theater was over 75% full, for a 7:00 showing of a movie two months after it came out.

Anyway, the movie was excellent. It stars three actors whom I like very much – Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, and Helena Bonham Carter. They were pretty fantastic. The movie is based on the historical settings around the time that George VI came to the throne, after his brother Edward abdicated. George VI had a stammer, which I had not known, and the movie follows his attempts to rid himself of the speech defect. It does not sound like much for a movie, but it was riveting. I highly recommend the film, and I would be very pleased if it won Best Picture and if Colin Firth won Best Actor.

Last night, Mer took me to Weathervane Community Playhouse to see the musical Quilters. We joined several of our colleagues that are in Mer’s Bible study at work, so there were six of us in all (me and five ladies!). Quilters is a play about the history of an entire family for four or five generations, as told though the making of a giant quilt. The play is an all-women cast of six, but they do occasionally play men for brief times as the play requires.

I had seen Quilters at Actors’ Summit Theater a few years ago, and although I though it was well done, I had come away feeling rather flat about the play – it did not grab me. I was originally going to pass on going this time, but my friend Brandon designed the lights and told me he thought it was excellent. So, I decided to give it another try.

Weathervane’s production was very impressive – they played up both the humor and the sorrow more than I had remembered at Actors’ Summit. The pit orchestra was excellent, and the acting was very good as well. The simple harmonies the women sang were beautiful. I’m really not sure what more the theater could have done to produce the play better. Still, while I enjoyed parts of the play very much, the overall experience left me feeling flat again. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m just not into the play, as has happened on occasion with other plays (most notably, Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona). Still, I am glad I gave the play another chance, and it was fun being with our colleagues.