Last weekend was a fun and busy time, as most of June has seemed to be. Meredith writes down what we did each day on her calendar, and in June there was only one day out of all 30 where the day was blank (meaning we did not do anything noteworthy, on the 20th). For comparison, March had eight blanks and February, thirteen.  It has been a busy little month, and has been hard to keep up with here in the blog!

Last Saturday, we met up with Meredith’s parents and Aunt Mary and about six other former CVCA teachers for a reunion/lunch at Olive Garden. The food was good and there was a lot of reminiscing going on. The lunch did go a bit long – over two hours, and so I had to get up and walk around a couple of times since the wooden chair was not playing nice with my back.

After Olive Garden, we had one graduation party, in Kent. The party was one of Meredith’s students, Kaity, and the party was much fun. There was a ton of good food (as if we needed yet more food), and Kaity’s friends are a lot of fun. We spent quit a bit of time talking with Sarah, one of Mer’s favorite students who graduated two years ago. Kaity also had an adult-sized bouncy house, which we tried. It turns out that bouncing around in the house was a good time, but requires a lot more effort than I would have thought. Mer and I also played a very pitiful game of cornhole (a bean-bag toss game), that I eventually won, but with no great skill level. It was a great party, and I was glad Kaity was able to have such a good time. Her brother, Mark (one of my students), had been fighting leukemia for over a year, and was in the hospital at the time, and Mark ended up dying early the following Monday morning. It sounds terrible that I would be happy that Kaity would have such a great party at a time like that, but her family had gone through so much grief that I was glad they were able to celebrate something like Kaity’s graduation.

Mer and I then headed over to Porthouse Theater near our house. Porthouse is an open-air theater on the grounds of Blossom, an open air concert space where the Cleveland Orchestra plays during the summer. Porthouse was doing the musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Yes, it is a dorky thing to have a musical about, and it was a really good time. The show was mostly fluff, and the music was very modern (only one melody you could leave the show humming), but it was a funny show (on the whole).

The set was a school gym, which was pulled off well. The contestants were all fairly nerdy, and were the source of most of the humor of the play, although much merriment was given from the definitions and/or the “use it in a sentence” for the spelling words (“Although she insisted her casserole did not contain an indigenous South American frog, the casserole still tasted like crapaud” – pronounced “crap-o”). As an added twist, there were five people from the audience who were on stage (their friends or families had made a donation of $100 to get them on stage), and that was very funny as the MC of the evening kept on making up fun-facts about each person as they came up to spell (“She advanced to the bee from Hudson Middle School by spelling her winning word, ‘filthy rich.'”).

Each character had a back-story to add interest to the play: one student was being driven too hard, one was haunted by failure from the previous year, one got there after the two top people from his school could not go, etc.). It was probably a bit saccharine of the play to do it, but I thought it worked, and it made the play be a comedy instead of a farce.

Meredith, being Mer, kept track of how she would have done on the spelling words. She went down on some very long and technical word. I, being me, could not even remember what the spelling word was 30 seconds after it was announced, let alone spell it.

It was a beautiful evening out, so it was a fun time to see a play at Porthouse. It had been a busy Saturday, but a good one.

Sunday, we headed down to Aunt Mary’s, where we had lunch with Aunt Mary and Dale and Carlene. It was a good visit, and Carlene proudly showed us her two new books on decorating cupcakes; Carlene is a pretty incredible baker, and these books had given her some new ideas (in fact, she made cupcakes that looked like fruit pies for a party at out house later in the week).

After lunch, we headed north to a graduation party that was in a pavilion at a park. It was actually a grad party for three CVCA students, but Mer only knew one of the students and I had not had any of them in any of my clubs, so we were there to see Mer’s student, Keanna. The food spread was ridiculously huge, including an enormous spread of desserts. Mer and I ate and chatted, and kept a wary eye on a line of clouds that were bearing down on the park. It did not take long to realize a storm was coming in faster than we were eating, but we figured we would be okay because we were in the pavilion, with ten or twelve feet of roof over us on either side. We were wrong. The storm came flying in with torrential downpours and wave after wave of high winds. The rain was coming at us sideways, and was having very little difficulty in bridging the twelve feet of space under the roof. It was kind of fascinating, and everyone in the pavilion took it in stride. It was kind of like being on a water ride at an amusement park. Although we got wet, we did not get soaked because of the roof, and after about 15 minutes most of the storm had blown over. So, Mer and I were able to laugh about things with Keanna, and we headed home for a change of clothes.

Last week saw us catching up with lots of folks we had not seen in awhile. Having sold the house, Mer and I now feel we can be more social, and not only go out with friends and family from time to time, but even initiate outings. Such was last week:

On Tuesday, Mer and I caught up with our pastor, Ken, and his wife Janet. It was Janet’s birthday, so Mer and I invited Janet and Ken out to eat to celebrate. Janet decided she wanted to go to the Golden Corral in Canton, so off we went. The Golden Corral is a buffet, so rest assured that Mer and I had way way way too much to eat. We had a great time eating and chatting, and then we went back to Ken and Janet’s house, where they demonstrated Tetris Attack (at our request). Tetris Attack is a 1995 Nintendo game that we had heard Ken mention a lot, and it is a head-to-head competition about keeping rows of blocks from getting too high on your side of the screen. It was much fun to watch those two go at it.

On Wednesday, we headed up to Beechwood (a suburb of  Cleveland) with Zach and Londa. For months, Zach has been touting the gastronomic wonders of an ice cream parlor up there called Mitchell’s. The ice cream was quite good, although probably not as good as Handel’s. However, Mitchell’s had great ambiance and outside seating, and had a 30-minute drive each way in which to visit with the Churchills. It was a good time.

Thursday, Mer went down to Aunt Mary’s to welcome her parents, who were arriving in town. They were not  going to get in until 8:00 or later, so I passed on going with Meredith since I had to work on Friday. It turns out that they made very good time and made it to North Canton a little before 8:00, and Meredith was home just as I was going to bed, so I could have gone after all.

Friday, we headed down to the old stomping ground of New Baltimore to party it up with the extended (and I do mean extended) George clan. The Georges used to be our neighbors, and have known Meredith since she was 3 years old, so they are very close and dear to us. All of the out-of-town children and grandchildren were in town, so the Georges threw a get-together. There were the Georges (Ray and Sara), and six children (or spouses of children), twelve grandchildren, Dale, Carlene, Aunt Mary, Meredith, and me. It was a busy household! I had made a pan-full of chocolate-peanut-butter bars, which proved to be a pretty big hit. I ate some amazingly good pulled pork, and chatted with Sara about her dad for over half an hour, which was pretty fascinating. Meredith got to visit with her girlhood friend Melissa, and they got to play Dutch Blitz (a game involving speed and multi-tasking that I will not play with Meredith). Most people spent a lot of time visiting around the Georges’ large dining room table.

Not a bad little week!

Last Friday, I took Meredith out for dinner to celebrate us selling the house on Wednesday. I wanted to take her somewhere nice. A few months ago, I got a promotion in my e-mail from Restaurants.com where I could buy $25 gift cards for $2 each (the catch is that you have to spend $35 total at the restaurant), so I bought seven of them, three for restaurants I already know, and four for new (to me) places. I looked through the four new places, and they are all nice, but they also have fairly snooty menus with things I probably would not like to eat. One of them had a chicken dish, so that was where we went.

Richfield is a little town about 15 miles northwest of us, and I have never paid it too much attention. I called up the Richfield Taverne and made reservations for the outside patio, and we headed out that way. The Taverne is very nice – the inside is spacious and has an old-time feel, including a decorative tin ceiling. The patio was very pleasant, with only about ten tables. We both ordered the chicken dish, and enjoyed the evening air. The food was good, but not necessarily stunning. As we were finishing up eating, a duet set up and started playing light jazz, which was very fun. I was not enthusiastic about the dessert selection, but I needed to spend $2.00 more to get my discount, so we tried a chocolate-and-berry cake that turned out to be very good. Normally, I do not like chocolate and fruit mixed together, but this one had the fruit drizzled just on one end, so I was able to split most of it with Meredith. All in all, it was a good way to celebrate.

Saturday was “my day,” as long as we still made it to our two scheduled graduation parties. I wanted to check out a trail in the Valley that we had not yet tried, and so we headed off to the trailhead. The trail is called Wetmore, which I joked was probably a warning. It was. The trail was also primarily a horse trail, and it turned out to be over 5 miles long. And it was hot. Still, ignorant of the arduous walk ahead of us, we plunged in. At first, the major issue to watch out for was horse droppings, but then we got to the first very shallow stream we had to ford. No problem. Over the whole trail, we had to ford four or five streams, and none was very difficult, but they were usually very muddy on the banks. Mud kept cropping up on the trail, and the horses had churned it up quite a bit. Still, we kept on until we figured we were well over halfway back to the car. At that point, there was about a mile-long stretch that was more churned-up mud than dry ground, and we had a tough time picking our way along the side of the trail in an effort to stay dry and fairly clean.

We cleared the worst of the mud, and we ran into a very nice man whom we had seen at the start of our walk. He stopped to chat and found out where we’d parked, and informed us we were about halfway back to the car. I think he meant to be kind, but that came as a bit of a blow. The happy news is that the back half of the walk was fairly dry, but it compensated for that by being really hilly. We got back to the car tired and hot, and went back home to each take our second shower of the day.

We then headed to Silver Springs Park in Stow, a park not too far from where we live. There was a graduation party going on there, and we had never been to the park before. It turns out they have a great playground for little kids. Anyway, the party was in a pavilion and the food was great (burgers and such, with cookies and cupcakes). While we were eating, I saw two students come walking out of the woods, so I figured correctly that there was a trail in the park. Since it was a park, I figured that the trail must be fairly short. I was not doing too well on my figuring. We decided to give it a try, and the trail turned out to be over two miles long, with a few muddy sections, and Mer was in sandals. We ran into another kind man who helped us choose the right paths to get back to the party, and 40 minutes after we set out we got back in time to have some cake, which had been cut while we were walking. All in all, I figured we walked about 7-8 miles on Saturday, in addition to the 12 miles I ran in the morning. I was pretty tired.

We then went to a second grad party that was very close by. It was at the house of a colleague, and we had some good food and a good visit with a teacher friend. We were also entertained by the casual but competitive all-ages volleyball game that went on the entire time we were there. We then went home, full and tired.

On Wednesday, around 4:00 in the afternoon, the deed for our old house transferred to the new owners. After 2 years, 11 months, and 2 weeks, we became a one-house household again. I will post soon about the lessons I learned over the last three years (God had to use a fairly big spiritual two-by-four on me), as well as the tons and tons and tons of blessings we received. It has not fully sunk in yet, but I am taking Mer out tonight (Friday) to celebrate. Many thanks to family and friends who wished us well and prayed for us and showered us with support for three years.

(Oddly, it turns out that this is the best picture I have of the house. I guess I never took pictures of it.)

Last Friday we headed over to Aunt Mary’s spiffy condo. She had invited us over for pizza, along with “Aunt” Zovie (not a real aunt, but a life-long family friend), and the “Hubes” (short for Hubeles, other long-time family friends). I had not seen Aunt Zovie in two years, since Uncle Bob died, and it had been a full year since we had seen Don and Donna and their family. The get-together was a great time. I like getting together with Aunt Mary, and Aunt Zovie is a lead contender in any competition to determine the world’s most gracious person. Don is just drop-dead funny, and Donna and the children are delightful. Don kept us laughing recounting his experience playing the semi-bad guy in The Fantasticks (he said playing a guy who is cynical and likes to mess with youth was a “real stretch”). The pizza hit the spot, and Aunt Mary served up the same light-but-great cake that we got her for her birthday. What a wonderful way to spend a Friday.

Saturday was again dedicated to making the rounds of graduation parties. We had three on Saturday. We started off the day at a grad party by a lake in southern Akron. We sat on the dock, eating Asian food (a rarity for mid-west grad parties) and cake (quite common, but welcome). We saw several of our students, and we saw fellow teachers the Schillings and the ever-expanding McSparran clan.

Grad Party, the Sequel, was held in a back yard in Hudson. It was strange in that we had been to the same place for a grad party last year for the older brother’s graduation celebration. It does drive home how fast the year goes when you repeat visits like that. There was some excellent comfort food (hot dogs and sloppy joes) as well as cake and several kinds of bars. We had a very pleasant visit with the older brother and the father (the graduate at these kinds of parties is usually too in-demand to talk to any one person for too long).

Grad Party III, the Expansion, was at another house in Hudson. This was the first grad party I had ever been to that involved multiple schools. In addition to CVCA, there was a graduate from Walsh Jesuit High School and one from Ursuline High School. This meant the party was huge and crowded, and it meant this was the first CVCA-affiliated party I had ever been to where there was a full bar. But, more importantly, they had the biggest and best dessert buffet table I have ever seen. There were buckeyes, and cookies, and cake, and more. They also had a ton of real food, and I had a barbecue sandwich that was probably the best I have ever had. Happily, since this was the third party of the day, I was fairly full and could not make myself sick at the dessert table.

Sunday, we had one grad party, here in Cuyahoga Falls. This was an interesting one in that the student we were helping to celebrate was not in Mer’s classes and was not in any of my groups. Jimmy is a very friendly young man, and we both met him on a Diakonos spring break trip three years ago, and he kept stopping by to say hi to me and to Meredith. I was very pleased that we were able to celebrate with Jimmy. There were Italian sausages and hot dogs for real food, and cookies and cupcakes and brownies for dessert. I handled myself with a little more dignity than I had on Saturday. We had a long visit with one of my Royal Fools and Ceili Club students and her family, and we got to see the McSparrans as well.

After the grad party, we headed over to the square, down by the river in Cuyahoga Falls. We wanted to check out the last day of the (free!!) three-day Cuyahoga Falls Irish Festival. We started at the back stage (of three stages), and we met up with the woman who leads the Hibernian Club Ceili Band. She was there selling music and whistles and such, and she gave me a dance CD for Ceili Club. We then took a seat in front of the stage and heard a great band. They were very much in the Irish tradition, but played almost all original songs. The had a guitar/banjo player, a guitar/bagpipe player, a pipes/whistles player, a percussionist, and a bouzouki/mandolin player. They had a great sound – probably the best band I have heard at the festival in the three years I have gone. We stopped by to say goodbye to Mary Ann (the band leader), and headed over to the second stage, via the river walk, which is pretty.

The band at the second stage was okay. They were a bit heavy on guitars, but they got on my good side early by singing a song about Portland (Maine, not Oregon). Sadly, they had completely inane banter in between songs that was really irksome, and so after 4 or 5 songs, I asked Mer if we could go. She agreed.

Sunday officially ended the great ten days of eating out. Hopefully, I can do better in the coming weeks at not eating quite so much.

The great food and social quest continued last Wednesday and Thursday. Every spring break for the last five years, I have gone with CVCA’s service group, Diakonos, to help out a community project, usually Habitat for Humanity. Last Wednesday, our friend Lesa held an end-of-year party for the Diakonos kids at her house. Mer was a bit reluctant to go along since she had not gone on the trip, but I convinced her that spouses were welcome. She ended up having a pretty good time, since about 3/4 of the students at the party were hers.

There were about 15 kids at the party, and tons of junk food. The real food was roast-your-own hot dogs, which were fun and tasty, but the real prize of the evening was the dessert spread. Whoa. There were warm chocolate chip cookies, the best no-bake cookies that I have had in years, s’mores, my chocolate-peanut-butter bars, and other various cookies and treats. I was better than I could have been, but it was not a temperate evening.

We had fun eating and chatting, and then we headed inside to watch the DVD of all the movies that had been taken on the trip. It was funny to watch the kids ham it up for the camera. We also watched the annual talent show that had been taped, and that went well. Some of the individual videotaped “confessionals” where students could say anything they wanted went a bit long for a party atmosphere, but it was still a nice evening. Mer and I had to leave toward the end of the video because it was getting late for me (I had to work the next day).

Thursday we headed over to Clarice’s place for another game night with Clarice, Matt, Josh, and Kristen. We started the evening with Tribond, a game where you have to guess what is the similarity among three words. That turned out to be a frustrating game. My team only got to go twice – Mer’s team won by going twice, almost “running the table.” It is not a whole lot of fun to sit for 30+ minutes not getting to play. If we play the game again, we need to have three teams of two, and not two teams of three. It turns out that out of all the questions asked that evening, our team did not know two of them – the two questions we were asked and missed. Ah, well.

We then played a semi-improv game that Shannon and Jo had given us called Don’t Make Me Laugh. To a large extent, it was like charades, but with very weird things to act out (like “Be a buoy in a kiddie pool”). Since five of the six of us have done improv before, we had a really great time with that game. It was a nice bonus that Clarice and I ended up winning, but even before we knew that, we had a great time.

Mer and I almost broke the food chain after the party, but I had a Dairy Queen craving, so I stopped. That kept the (what ended up being) 10-days-of-big-eating-in-a-row steak going.

Last Monday, Mer and I were invited over to our friends’ (Eric and Shanna’s) apartment for dinner and to meet the new kitten. Eric and Shanna are both dog people, but they are not allowed to have a dog, so they decided to adopt a very cute kitty that they named Atlas. Atlas is a black-on-black kitty, and he is very energetic and playful and seems really healthy. It was a delight to get to hold a kitten again and have him zonk out on my lap. Good kitty!

Eric and Shanna have a very cool apartment on the ground floor of a house. It is very much a Chicago-style apartment, with nice woodwork and very high ceilings. Eric and Shanna were allowed to paint the place, and they chose great colors. They were also able to put out an elegant and pretty and matching table setting at the (roughly) ages of 25. Mer and I still can’t put out an elegant table setting at pushing 40.

They made some very good Italian food – two kinds of pasta and a tasty garlic bread. Eric remembered that I like Sprite and made sure he had some on hand for me, which was very considerate. Shanna had procured cookies and cream ice cream and hot fudge for dessert, and even had some ice cream cookies in stock as well. Our reputation for hearty dessert eating apparently went before us.

After supper and dessert, we gushed over Atlas, and then played an English-nerd game, Bethump’d with Words. Bethump’d with Words asks about the history of the English language and the definitions of words and the difference between American and British English. It is quite a fun game for word-nerds, and it was made even more fun by playing with Atlas while playing the game. Sadly, I had to call the game short before it was done because it was getting late and I had to work the next day.

Tuesday evening I “produced” my first concert. I organized a teacher concert at CVCA as a dry run for a potential fundraiser for next winter. It grew out of my desire to hear Eric and Shanna’s band, Bethesda, outside of a bar setting, but it grew into quite a nice little event. My fellow CVCA teachers, Matt and LT (known as the CVCA-only semi-real band The Flealands), opened the evening by playing acoustic guitars, mandolin, and djembe drum, and they sang. LT and Matt are both talented musicians, and they had a very nice sound together for two guys who don’t really play together. They did about 45 minutes’ worth of music, and then we turned the stage over to Bethesda. They took about 15 minutes for setting up and for a sound check (we ran out of time before the concert to do a full sound check), and then proceeded to do a 45-minute set as well. The sound was occasionally spotty for Bethesda; it turned out that the guitars were overwhelming the soundboard and messing up the vocal balance. Because of the quick sound check, each instrument was checked by itself, and so when the entire band was playing louder songs, the soundboard kind of freaked out. Still, the sound was more or less corrected at the cost of just one or two songs, and even then just at the cost of a clear vocal balance.

The crowd was much fun – there were about 100 people there, which is very good for a random Tuesday in June after school has let out, and with a minimum of advertising. The students seemed to really enjoy the evening, and that made it a success in itself. Regarding the concert, I learned several things, and that made it valuable to me – I learned we needed to start 30 minutes earlier for the sound check, and we needed two sound techs instead of just one (one led to too much running around, up and down stairs to and from the tech booth and stage). I’m hoping this will translate into a concert worth paying $5 for next winter.

After the concert and the clean-up, Mer and Dubbs and I went to Friday’s for dessert. I generally need some unwind time after evenings where I am partly responsible for the event, and so we went out to talk, laugh, and relax. All in all, it was a very good evening, even without the presence of Atlas.

Last weekend was pretty much about celebrating graduations with our seniors. Friday we went to two graduation parties (a midwest tradition of lots of food and cornhole and students). The first graduation party was at a park pavilion, which was nice since it was a pretty day. They had four (yes, four) cakes, so Mer and I ate too much and then actually managed to win two cornhole games, which is very unusual since we normally stink at the game. For those of you who don’t get to grad parties, cornhole is the game of throwing beanbags through a hole in a board. It actually is pretty fun, in a bocce or croquet sort of way.

The second grad party was at the student’s house, and was full of CVCA people. The father is on the CVCA board, and the mom substitute teaches at CVCA, so they know everyone at the school, and most of the school seemed to be there. The food was plentiful and excellent. The student (a very nice young lady) had spent a good amount of time carving out a cool path through the woods on their property; she then had the path lit by tiki torches and a bonfire. It was much fun.

As an aside, Friday was the first day of ten (yes, ten) straight days of going out for me and Mer, and most of the events involved food. It is amazing that we both don’t weigh 250 pounds.

Saturday I went running with Jason and Nate, and then (after I showered) Mer and I went to the Crooked River Grill to meet up with several fellow CVCA English teachers for breakfast. We were celebrating a former English teacher being back in town. Beverly, the teacher in question, was only at CVCA for one year, but she was (and is) an excellent teacher, and we were all very fond of her. She moved back to her home in Kentucky after her husband died from cancer, so we lost her. But, she was back in town to see “her kids” graduate; that is how much she loved her students – to come back four years later to see them graduate. Amazing. Anyway, we had a great time catching up (and eating an excellent breakfast), and Beverly expects me and Mer to come and visit her this summer.

After breakfast and a nap at home, we went to two grad parties. The first one was at a very cool house where most of the rooms had doors that opened right into the back yard, which overlooked a river and woods. There again was lots of good food, including a sundae bar (yum!). The house was full of students whom Mer and I knew, so we had a good time.

The second grad party was lower key for me – I did not really know the girl being celebrated; she was a student of Mer’s. The food was more of the snack type, which was good since it could have otherwise been the third big meal of the day. I did have a piece of cake.

Not to be worn out by three social outings, we went from the grad party back to the music club Musica. We have had some poor experiences at Musica, but we were giving it one last try since our friends’ (Eric and Shanna’s) band, Bethesda, was playing there that night. Happily, for us, Musica got it right this night. There were two bands we saw besides Bethesda, and we enjoyed them both. The sound was mixed pretty well, and one band was mostly electric but had a good sound, and the second band (on after Bethesda) was just acoustic guitar and banjo. They sang a lot of older folk songs and original songs in the folk tradition. It was a nice surprise from a venue that is usually much more hard core. Bethesda put on a great show, about 30 minutes long, and they sounded pretty good. The only mixing issue was that I could not hear the pedal steel guitar, but given that the rest of the band was blending well, I was happy to take that. We stuck around for one song of the headline act, a woman indie country singer who is well known nationally, but whose name I forget. I was tired (it was after 10:00), and her sound did not excite me too much, so we left. It had been a busy little day.

Sunday was church and then a nap – pretty typical occurrences for me on a Sunday. That evening was the formal ceremony of graduation for CVCA’s seniors. Faculty (like Mer) are required to go, and I go along since I usually know some of the kids and I can sit next to Meredith. Besides, the reception before the ceremony has really good desserts, including chocolate mint brownies that are quite tasty. Graduation was pretty typical – awards and speeches and the calling of names and giving of diplomas; it went by pretty quickly, and we were leaving just after 8:00. We ate a quick supper and watched a Quantum Leap episode on DVD, and then went off to bed.

Last week was a puttery little week.

Monday – Mer was gone on Senior Trip, so I was left to batch it. This meant homemade pizza and Spider-Man 2.

Tuesday – Aunt Mary invited me to her place, and we got take-out from Grinders. We then watched competitions on the Food Network, which I enjoyed. I especially liked “Chef vs. City,” where two teams of chefs had to do various food-related things in Chicago. It was fun to see Chicago from a food point of view.

Wednesday – I went down to Atwood Lake for the last evening of Senior Trip. I get to see Mer and hang out with her, and there is always a special dinner and “senior share” where the seniors get to say what they like (as long as it is positive). The weather was great, the food was very good, and the kids were kind. This year, the praise and thanking of classmates and teachers was more frequent than in past years, but it was also more general; they students tended to thank “the teachers” and “my classmates” and very few singled people out. This is not a bad thing, just different from past years.

Saturday – Mer and I had two graduation parties, one at The Ledges park nearby, and one at a very nice home in the area of Canton about 40 minutes away. We ate well at both. We were planning on seeing Aunt Mary, so we made it part of the trip to the greater North Canton area. We had a good visit for about 45 minutes or so.

Not a bad little week!

Last weekend, I made a “Big Date” for Meredith. I used to plan elaborate and expensive dates for Mer, but with the two-house situation, those dates dried up. I finally snapped. I thought the other house was going to sell over a month ago, and so a month ago I set in motion a Big Date as a way of celebrating the house selling. It still hasn’t sold, but the Big Date went on anyway. If the house does not sell for some reason, it will have been a 12th anniversary celebration instead.

I got Mer out of CVCA fairly efficiently on the Friday of last weekend. I had told her to pack for three days, and we had everything ready to go. We were on the road by about 4:30, and I headed north and then west. Mer kept guessing where we were going, and she did a nice job. She did guess Cedar Point amusement park, but I threw her when I got off the highway and took some other major roads – they were supposed to be faster.

Anyway, Cedar Point was were we were headed. I had booked a cabin for Friday night and Saturday night, with the goal of being in the park all day Saturday. The cabin helped make it feel like a special weekend, but it also allowed us to hit the water rides without fear, knowing we could run back to the cabin to change if we were not getting dry. The cabin also came with early admittance to the park – we could get in an hour before the park opened for the general public. That was very cool, and I thought Mer would like it.

We got to Cedar Point, and Mer was a bit confused as to why were were going to Cedar Point with the park only open for another 5 hours (it closed at 10:00). She was surprised and delighted when we pulled into the cabin areas. I checked us in, and we headed over to our lake-front home for the weekend.

The cabin was small, but really cute. The designer made great use of the space. It was very comfortable, and certainly met our needs for the weekend. I unloaded the car and we settled in on the porch to watch the water and so Mer could plan her tactics for the park. Something we had not known was that the early-park admittance was great, but only four coasters were open – the small(ish) Iron Dragon, and three of the big ones – the Maverick, the Raptor, and the Millennium Force. Mer and I usually start small and get bigger throughout the day, but that was not going to be an option. Mer had some serious planning to do. It was strange to look out at the peaceful lake and hear screams from the park every minute or two. It was still relaxing and nice.

We had been sitting on the porch for about 45 minutes when part two of the surprise showed up – our friend and colleague Eric and his wife Shanna showed up. I had invited them along to make the weekend more festive. Again, Mer was surprised and thrilled. It turned out that Eric was speaking Saturday night at a youth gathering, so they would have to leave the next afternoon rather than spending the entire weekend, but that was okay. We were both just happy they could make it.

Since it was now about 6:30, food was the first thing to attend to. So, we walked 15 minutes or so over to the other side of the park, to Friday’s. Not surprisingly, the menu was about 50% more expensive than a regualr Friday’s, and the menu was smaller as well. Still, Friday’s has good food, and we had a great time listening to Eric and Shanna tell us how Eric proposed (he made a big production of it, involving many of Shanna’s friends and a candle-lit path in the woods, and a homemade bridge that failed and a ton of bugs – romantic, creative, and funny). The only downside to the evening was the service – we had a waitress and a trainee, and both of them seemed to be very uninterested in our table. They were not rude or anything like that – they just seemed to want to be anywhere else and gave off waves of boredom. They kept getting my drink order wrong, and then charged me for a drink they had brought but that I had not ordered. It was a little frustrating, but not enough to take away from the occasion. We headed back to the cabin, which required a 100-yard dash (or fast walk) through a very buggy section – the downside of being right on the water in late spring.

We settled in the cabin and Eric and I took on Mer and Shanna in Dark and Stormy, the game where you identify a book or author by the opening line or lines from the work. Mer and Shanna are both English teachers, so Eric and I went in expecting to lose, which meant that we could only go up. The game lasted a long time – about an hour-and-a-half, which is twice as long as it usually takes. Eric and I did win by two books, but we also got 4 of them on really easy questions, where the title of the book was given in the first sentence. Mer and Shanna gave us the last book, even though we were missing a word (we guessed Horatio Hornblower, when it is Captain Horatio Hornblower). We were all pretty tired at that point. Eric then ran out to get some things from his car. What none of realized is that 80% of the mosquitoes in the state of Ohio were waiting on the porch. A bunch came in when Eric went out, and more came in when he came back in. There were probably close to 200 of them in the cabin now, so Eric and I (mostly Eric) spent about 30 minutes killing bugs. It did take away some of the fun of the evening, but makes for a good story. Sadly, I had brought big peanut butter cups from Hartville, and in the bug killing spree, a couple of dead ones fell on Eric’s open but uneaten peanut butter cup. Eric stoically tried to eat it, but gave up after eating a dead mosquito.

Eric and I had brought our guitars, and so we played them for about 15 minutes before going to bed. Eric and Shanna are founding members of the band Bethesda, and they were good enough to sing a new song they were working on – it was very good. Eric then played a couple of songs I had brought, and played them much better than I do, even though he did not know them and was only reading the chords as we went along. Eric has been playing for 6 years and I have been playing for 12. I think I need to go back to lessons!

We got ready for bed. Mer and I took the main bed; Eric and Shanna passed on the mosquito-laden futon in the main room, and they jumped in the bunk beds instead. As we were falling asleep, Eric asked, “Why do they call it a rainbow, anyway?” At that time of night, it was hysterically funny.

Mer and I woke up a few minutes early the next day – the curse of the late-30s bladders and the excitement of the day. Eric and Shanna managed to stay in bed until the alarm went off, despite my telling them they had to get up to go to school. We got ready pretty efficiently, and headed out to find breakfast. We found it in the form of a breakfast buffet in the Breakers Restaurant. The food was decent and plentiful. I ate the last of the French toast, figuring they would bring more out, but they had run out, so Mer did not get any. I did feel bad about that.

After breakfast, we made our way into the park. The weather had been calling for showers and thunder showers all week long. The only thing I could do was pray, and I don’t know how God works these things out, but there were a few drops of rain as we walked to the park, and then it did not rain again. In fact, by the afternoon, it was beautiful, with lots of sun. The threatening weather kept the crowds away, and we never had more than a 30-minute wait for any ride, and many waits were less than 10 minutes. It was great.

We started the day on the smallest coaster running – the Iron Dragon. It was Cedar Point’s first suspended coaster, and there are not many like it – it is a full car suspended from the track. It is a smallish coaster, but designed really well, and it is my favorite ride in the park. That went well, and then we headed to Cedar Point’s big suspended coaster, the Raptor. We only had to wait about 10 minutes to get the front car, which makes you feel like you are flying. It was a very cool ride. I used to be terrified of the Raptor, but one day Mer told me to pretend I was Batman on patrol, and ever since then I have loved suspended coasters. My wife understands me.

Mer and Shanna were shaken up a bit by the Raptor – it was bigger and rougher than they had remembered it. Since I was Batman, I loved it and had not noticed these things. We headed over to the Millennium Force, the 300-foot megacoaster of the park. The first drop is at 80 degrees and you get up to 90 mph on it. I passed out the first time I rode it, from hunger and the G-forces. This time, Mer and I both got tunnel vision twice, but avoided passing out. Shanna decided to pass on this ride since she was still feeling queasy from the Raptor. She was a game soul and waited for us. Again, it was a fairly short line, and we got on pretty efficiently, although we did not wait for the front car (we did not wait for a front car again for the rest of the day). By this time, the first hour was almost up, so we headed over to the Maverick. None of us had ever ridden the Maverick before – it was built in 2007. The idea behind the ride is that you are trying to tame a bucking bronco, and the coaster holds to that. It is fairly small, at only 135 feet. But, it is something else – the first hill is at a 95 degree drop, which is a very interesting feeling. The coaster then twists and turns like mad, and you go into a long dark tunnel where you get launched again at 70 mph. It is pretty intense. There were a couple of downsides to it – the constant turning strained my neck, and poor Shanna was terrified. She had maintained all morning that she was fine as long as the ride did not go past 90 degrees. Somehow, she missed that information on this ride until she was strapped in the coaster. I felt really bad – I wanted people to have fun, not be scared.

Anyway, we had ridden four coasters in 85 minutes, and so we decided to slow things down by ridding the very calm paddle wheel ride. That was what the doctor ordered – a pleasant ride around the park lagoon while the captain kept making puns about everything on shore.

After the paddlewheel, we rode:

The Corkscrew – a small but kicky coaster that was the first in the park to throw you upside down.

Disaster Transport – a small indoor coaster that takes place mostly in the dark or twilight.

The Space Spiral – a surprisingly fast observation ride that takes you up 285 feet high and lets you see the whole park.

That gave us eight rides, and so we decided to take a lunch break. We headed back over to Friday’s, where we had much better service. We just got lunch there, and then headed over to an ice cream parlor for ice cream. We sat outside and ate and talked and laughed. By then, it was after 3:00, so we walked Eric and Shanna back to the cabin and saw them off. Mer and I then headed back into the park, with Mer firmly in control, with the exception that I would not ride the 400-foot Dragster coaster, and I was not in the mood for the Power Tower, where you blast straight off the ground up to 240 feet in the air.

We headed over and rode:

Magnum – A 200-foot steel coaster that has a terrifyingly long ascent hill. It was a beast in its day (late 1980s) and is still a great ride, with lots of mini hills that give you “air” several times at the end of the track.

Blue Streak – A small wooden coaster, it is the oldest coaster in the park. It is a straight out-and-back ride, but it gives you lots of little bunny hops that are fun.

Wild Cat – this is a classic fairground coaster, where you ride in a car that can hold four people. Because of the limited capacity, this was the longest we waited for a ride, about 30 minutes.

Thunder Canyon – a water ride where you shoot rapids and may get soaked by one of four waterfalls. I got hammered by three of them and was dealt a glancing blow by the first. The two girls opposite of me barely got wet at all. Mer got fairly wet, but had fewer direct hits.

Snake River Falls – a huge log-flume ride, where you drop 80 feet into a small lake, and get soaked. We were in the last seat, and we got hit by four different waves from the drop.

Cedar Creek Mine Ride – the smallest coaster in the park, but a good one.

Gemini – a wooden/steel hybrid coaster that is much fun – it runs two coasters side by side so you can race, and this is one of my favorites in the park.

The Mean Streak – the mammoth 3-or-4-minute-long wooden coaster that tries to vibrate you apart. After experiencing much physical pain to my back and neck on this ride, I told Mer it was off my list for the future.

Since I had had such a rough ride on the Mean Streak, we took a break for supper. We headed over to the main hotel and ate at Perkins. We skipped dessert for the time being and headed back into the park, where we rode the Iron Dragon again. Even this coaster now hurt to ride, so I told Mer that I was probably done with coasters for the evening. Besides, it was almost 10:00, and I thought the laser light show was about to start. It turns out that I was wrong – the show starts up this weekend, but I kept us circling back to the show area to see if it was going on. That prevented us from trying some of the smoother and smaller coasters again. However, we did ride the Cedar Downs Racing Derby, which I thought was a merry-go-round. I was wrong. It is only one of two “racing carousels” where the horses move backwards and forwards while the carousel goes around. The carousel also goes 14 mph, which is enough to make you feel the outward force as you go around. It was fun.

We ended the evening by riding the Sky Ride – a cable gondola that takes you above the midway of the park. Mer loves the magic of an amusement park in the evening, so we watched all the pretty lights, and I managed not to be scared of the height. It was a good way to end the evening in the park, and we added in a quick trip to Friday’s for dessert. We walked back to the cabin, which was mosquito-free because we had left all the lights off (we need to remember that for next time). We got ready for bed and fell asleep pretty quickly. We slept in the next morning (check-out was at 11:00), and we left happy and tired. It was a good weekend. Happy house-sale, Love!