Third time is still charming (see below) – Mer and I stayed late at school on Friday for the CVCA Open House. We have two open house programs per year, and it is a chance for the school to show prospective students (and parents) what we offer. Mer (along with another teacher)  was at the school representing the English Department, and I was in the clubs/sports section for Fools and Ceili Club.

Anyway, we got out late (around 7:15), and after a quick change of clothes, we headed back to Mustard Seed Market for dessert and music. As Mer noted, we had not been to Mustard Seed in years (over a decade), and now we had been three weeks in a row. Never too much of a good thing!  In this case, we were going to hear Celtic music, which turned out to be a woman who played recorder, whistles, and guitar, along with a man who played guitar and keyboards. As luck would have it, they took a break just as we arrived, and when they came back after 10 minutes or so they did several numbers that were covers of pop tunes. They finally came around to several Celtic tunes that were very good, and that made for a fun time. When you add in excellent desserts, all is well. I had some chocolate-and-TONS-of-whipped-cream French dessert that was good (although I would get it with no strawberry sauce next time), and Mer got a very light-tasting cheesecake with chocolate sauce. I also added a peanut butter shake for good measure, and it was okay, but I liked the chocolate shake I had tried last week better. Still, good music and good food – Mer said if you’d added the Irish drum she would’ve expected pizza (a reference to going out for pizza and Irish music at Martyr’s Bar in Chicago when we still lived there).

Saturday was a very puttery day. Mer got her hair done and I ran and then napped. We listened to Wait Wait.  We headed out in the afternoon to go meet Aunt Mary at her church for a church dinner. We got there about the same time, but the doors were locked and the parking lot was empty – turns out we were a week early! Still, we seized the moment and went looking for a restaurant. Restaurant waiting times continue to defy recession talk. Our first stop was Olive Garden and they had a two-hour wait for a table. We quickly moved on to Macaroni Grill and they had an hour wait. Cheeseburger in Paradise finally came through for us with a 20-minute wait. We had a good meal while getting caught up with Aunt Mary.

I wanted to take Mer to see a movie, so we skipped dessert (for the time being), and we headed over to the cheap theater to see The Tale of Despereaux. We had seen a preview for it and it looked fun. It was. I am a HUGE sucker for fantasy worlds, and the creative minds that came up with Mouseworld and Ratworld were really something. The story was simple and clean and engaging, and it played into my predisposition to believe that people (or mice) can do these huge things. The characters were well drawn, both literally and metaphorically. I really loved this film. Mer was very taken with Ratworld and how creepy it was, and we both liked the mouse teacher who was trying to teach the young mice how to behave like mice.

After the movie, we made a detour to get ice cream at Handel’s. Just because it was freezing cold with a nippy breeze was no reason not to get ice cream!

So, another pleasant weekend in the Riordan household. And we may have a church dinner to go to next weekend!

Yesterday was my (38th) birthday, and it was also a Mer-in-charge date day, so she planned a nice day for me. We slept in (or at least as much as we could given having cats that want attention and walk on you to get it), and so we got up around 8:00. Mer announced we were going out to breakfast, and so we went out into a fairly solid (but fairly short-lived) snowstorm to go a few miles to the Hamburger Junction.

The Hamburger Junction is a mom-and-pop restaurant that is in a small mall plaza that we go by when we go get groceries or go to the bank (or go to get ice cream!). On their sign they offer “Vegas-style breakfast” and I had been mentioning how I wanted to try it “someday.” Well, Mer made sure someday was yesterday. For those who have been, the Hamburger Junction is fairly reminiscent of Sammy’s Restaurant in Michigan – it had a small counter area and some tables and booths and looked as if it could seat about 60 if packed out. They had a quite large breakfast menu, and offered many things in combination. As such, Mer was able to get a granola French toast, strawberry crepe, and silver-dollar pancake sampler, while I was able to get French toast, scrambled eggs, home fries, and bacon and sausage for mine (along with a pretty decent cup of hot chocolate). It is a good find.

We ran a few errands after breakfast and then spent a mellow late morning/early afternoon (I puttered and napped while Meredith exercised on the treadmill). Mer then told me we were going to a fancy restaurant and so I should get ready to go out, including wearing my spiffy double-breasted suit.

Once again, Mer has been an attentive listener. There is a nearby restaurant that I have been wanting to try but have not made it to because it is expensive. Only about two miles from our house in an oddly un-swank area is Russo’s Restaurant, a (naturally) Cajun/Italian place that is fairly upscale (at least for the Riordan household). I was able to get a very good gumbo and homemade pasta in the same meal, and you don’t get that everywhere! The service was quite good, but we felt very unhurried (the meal took almost two hours). The food was very fresh tasting, and my dessert (peanut butter pie) was drool-worthy. Mer took her chance on a not unpleasant but not really authentic gelato.

After we left the restaurant we went to Hudson. We had tickets to go to Actors’ Summit theater to see four short Chekhov plays, but we got there about an hour early. Since we had some time, I parked the car at the theater and announced we could window shop in the shopping district about a half mile away. Did I mention the temperature was in the low teens with a breeze? I have a very patient (and cold) wife.

We stopped by a high-end grocery store first, and while this may not seem like an exciting choice, the bakery was excellent and has made my list of special-treat locations. All of the cookies, cakes, breads, and pastries  looked quite wonderful. We spent a good 15 minutes ooohing and ahhhing in the store. We then made brief excursions into a couple of clothing stores before heading (quite briskly in all senses of the word) back to the theater.

As I mentioned, we saw four short plays about love by Chekhov, as follows:

“The Cat” – a play about a Russian tomcat telling how hard he had to work for his brief encounters with female felines. This was a world premier for an English-language version of this play, so that was fun. This was probably the most natural sounding (least sounding like a translation) of the plays.

“The Retired Officer, or the Dimwit”: – a play about a retired officer who was looking for a wife who was plain in looks, not rich, and not too smart. One of our favorite actresses played a wonderfully grotesque matchmaker who described a dimwitted woman in great detail only to have her rejected. It was probably the funniest of the four plays. This was also an English-language premier.

“The Proposal” – a play about a man calling on his neighbor to ask for the neighbor’s daughter in marriage. The father agrees and the daughter comes down and the protagonist and his possible wife get into a long argument about a disputed piece of land. After a tremendous blow-up, the matter is cleared up when the daughter finds out a proposal of marriage may be at stake, and she calls the young man back to try again, only to get into an argument about who has the better hunting dog. This one had some brilliant physical comedy as the young man complained about more and more stress-related physical ailments, but was the play that sounded most as if in translation (the father of the woman kept using terms of endearment for the young man, such as “beloved” and “darling” and others that may have made sense in Russia in 1900 but sounded odd to us).

“The Bear” – a play about a woman who had been mourning for her dead husband for seven months when a rude man calls on her to collect some money that her late husband owed. The two fight verbally and then the man challenges the woman to a duel. When she accepts and she revels in the idea of shooting him, he falls madly in love with her, and he convinces her to love him back. This play had some wonderful lines and lots of elevated feeling, but still had odd moments of dialogue that may have been the result of translation.

Mer and I discussed the plays afterward, and we decided the plays could have used some tightening up. For example, after the long argument scene in “The Proposal,” where the couple argues for probably ten minutes about the piece of land, the young man is encouraged to come back and try again to woo the girl. They sit side by side and have a pleasant conversation that turns to hunting and to hunting dogs. The young woman comments that her dog is much better than the young man’s dog. If this had been an improv show, I would have yelled “Scene!” At this point the audience knows what is going to happen, and the implied forthcoming argument is wonderfully funny. In the play, however, Chekhov decides to show us the argument about the dogs in full, and it is almost identical to the argument about the land. It has the same gags, the same pacing, and even the father shows up to join in as he did in the first dispute. Even if you did decide to show both arguments, they both felt longer than they needed to be. The same reasons for both positions were repeated several times, and it made the scenes drag a bit. It is probably how real life arguments work (lots of repetition), but felt odd on stage.

The language sometimes felt very odd, and it was not clear if it was Chekhov himself or the effect of translation. A good example occurred several times in “The Bear.” The rude man who wants his money tells the audience several times, “I am so angry!” It felt a little odd, but talking directly to an audience can feel that way. What really stuck out was when he was in the middle of a sentence to the widow, and he suddenly proclaimed (as an aside), “I am so angry!” and then picked right back up where his sentence left off. We could see the man was angry – it was odd for him to stop his thought to tell us he was angry. Also, the porter for the widow exclaimed at one point as he ran off stage, “What has brought this disaster upon us?” That just felt artificial to both me and to Mer, and we have seen and studied a fair amount of theater. Again, it may have sounded fine in Russian, or it may have been normal 120 years ago. I’m just not sure.

Happily, the plays were still very entertaining. There was also a girl scout troop at the theater (to earn theater badges), so the actors answered questions after the play. I love talk-backs because I get to see how theater works and how individual shows and characters are moulded. One thing that was pointed out was something we had noticed and thought was very funny – a picture of the dead husband from “The Bear” was a photograph of the theater’s artistic director, Neil. That was a nice touch.

Food, sleep, theater – a good birthday for me.

End of a busy work week? Tired? Ha! All the more reason to go out! Last night after we got home, Mer and I trundled across the Valley (there is NO good way to get to west Akron from our house) to go to the Mustard Seed Market. Not only did we want a decent dinner that was all-natural and that we did not have to cook, but the musical entertainment of the evening was a woman singing songs of the 30’s and 40’s.

We had about a 20 minute wait for a table, but since the music was already flowing, it was just fine to wait. The woman singing had a good voice and she had a nice stage persona. She was backed by a keyboards player (whose keyboard did a mean imitation of an upright bass) and a drum player. The music of the 30’s and 40’s is infectious – lots of jazz and swing rhythms, and fun lyrics that sometimes hint at racy without being tasteless. I literally spent the entire hour-plus swaying back and forth in my chair (Mer and I have a theory that most untrained white people can dance from the waist-up only, so we need to be seated to have any chance at all). The music made me smile – it was wonderful.

The Mustard Seed did alright by us on the food front as well. I got a pretty good shake and a burger (that was a tad over-done, so I need to get medium-well next time) and Mer got a really good looking pasta primavera with broccoli, red peppers, and cauliflower (bleh). We picked up a package of chocolate chip cookies on the way out for dessert, so it was a highly successful evening.

In the on-going birthday irony, this was the sonnet I read to Meredith on the eve of my birthday (it was the next one in line) – Sonnet 65:

Since Monday was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s (observed) birthday, Mer and I had the day off. With all that time, Mer naturally graded and I tidied the house (which badly needed it). However, in the early afternoon, I decided I needed a break, and so I went and took a tromp in CVCA’s woods.

Most of ye olde woods trail has been cut down to make way for more athletic fields, and that is fine (we need the space). Happily, about a third to a half of the woods remains, and it does succeed in feeling fairly isolated, so I went a-trompin’ in the snow. We have roughly a foot on the ground, and so it was a decently challenging walk. I was somewhat (but not entirely) surprised that at least one person (and maybe as many as three) had already been out on the trail, but not in the previous few days (the footprints were visible, but filled in with fresh snow).

It was a quiet and pretty jaunt, and I was gone less than an hour, so the house cleaning effort did not get set back too much.

Needless to say, some members of the Riordan household had no interest in going out in the snow.

Today is Meredith’s 36th birthday. Happy birthday, love!

Since Saturday is our date day, I asked Meredith to trade days with me so that I could have the planning for yesterday and she could have the planning for next Saturday for my birthday. She agreed, so I put together a nice little day for Meredith, at least as best as I could afford.

It all started with sleeping in. We slept until about 8:00, when we both woke up with a little assistance from the kitties. Since it was Meredith’s birthday celebration day, I decided we would start with a romantic little destination – the nearby DMV. It turns out that our licenses would expire this year, and they would expire on our birthdays, so Mer reminded me of that fact on Friday evening. So, to get that out of the way, we got ready and headed off to the DMV around 9:15 or so. That turned out to be happily efficient, and we were on our way, new licenses in wallets, around 10:00.

We had a little extra time (the restaurant I wanted to take Mer to for brunch did not open until 11:00), so I drove us around random roads in the valley. Everything was very pretty with the snow – we have upwards of a foot in most places, and the woods were beautiful. Mer did not know that I was stalling, and so she also enjoyed trying to figure out where we were going. After 30 minutes or so of sightseeing, I got on the highway and drove us to Mustard Seed Market.

Mustard Seed Market is a natural foods grocery store that also has a cafe. I had thought I had never been, but when we were leaving the place I saw a (former) movie theater and remembered that I had been to the restaurant 15 years ago with Meredith’s dad, and then went to see the movie version of Richard III. Mer also thinks we were there with her family when we went to see Much Ado About Nothing, so I may have been there twice. However, since both times were 15 years ago or more, it was essentially a first visit.

We were still early for the restaurant, and had about 20 minutes to wait, so we used the time to wander the aisles of the grocery store. Many of the offerings looked very fine, but where they appeared to excel was their selections of bread (and maybe coffee – they had a ton of fair trade organic coffees). They must have had a dozen different types of fresh breads, all of which I like very much. I will need to keep that information stashed away for future use.

We finally wandered upstairs to the cafe, but still had a few minutes before they would seat us. We used the very nice bathrooms, and then Meredith read about the cooking classes that were offered while I read about the live music the cafe offers on weekends. Coming up in the next few weeks is a woman singing songs from the 20s and 30s, an Irish group, and some guitar players. I also need to tuck that information away.

We got a seat at a table that overlooked the store itself, and we ordered. I got an excellent breaded chicken with rice and Meredith got a ham and cheese omelet. The store offered three types of drinks that I love – hot chocolate, smoothies, and shakes. I tried the hot chocolate, and, not surprising for a natural foods store, it was pretty poor hot chocolate. Natural hot chocolates are low in sugar and sometimes in cocoa, and while this hot chocolate was not gross, it just tasted like warm milk. The food itself was excellent, and the portions were normal sized so we did not feel bloated as we left. I did swing by the bakery and picked up four chocolate cookies as we left. They were very good.

We drove home, where we proceeded to rest and semi-nap. This caused us to miss part of Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!, but it dawned on me that I could stream the show from the laptop that Shannon gave me a year ago. Duh. I have a headphone jack that plugs into my stereo system that I bought for my iPod, but it works with the laptop as well. So, we happily got cozy under a blanket on the couch and laughed through the show, which included a dumb criminal story from Stow, Ohio. The man wore his burglary mask in the bank and then waited in line with the mask on. The police were called and caught him. Stow is only about a mile from our house. We made national news! Umm, yeah.

After Wait Wait, we played nerdy book games, and I gave Mer her present. I ordered her the Teaching Company’s 48-lecture course on British literature. We already have the lectures on American lit, so this was a happy find in the last catalog I recieved just before Mer’s birthday. After she opened her gift, we played the game that Mer got for Christmas in which you have to guess the book or author based on the first line of a book. Mer beat me 8-3 (ouch!) and 8-5. We then played a book game from Amazon that Mer got a few years ago in which you guess the book or author based on clues. I was winning the game with only one more book to go when I hit a space where you had to give up a book. Mer ended up winning 7-5. Sigh. So much for beating her on her birthday!

That took us to almost 5:00, when I had invited a bunch of people over to go up to the Cheesecake Factory to celebrate. Sadly, Ombudsman and his wife Karen could not make it, but Zach and Londa, Nate and Rachel, and Nate and Ami all were able to come. Weirdly, it had been Rachel’s birthday on Thursday and it was Ami’s birthday yesterday, and with my birthday next Saturday, we were celebrating four birthdays out of eight people.

We split into two cars for the drive up, with Nate and Rachel going with Zach and Londa, and Mer and I went with Dubbs (Ami) and Nate. We had a good time during the 30-minute drive, talking about school (of course) and other things. When we got there, Zach had already put our group in for a table, and while most folks were looking at an hour wait, we were told our table would be ready in 15-30 minutes. While that number turned out to be closer to 35 minutes, it looks as if big groups get a jump on the queue. As a happy bonus, we were seated at a round booth in a corner, so we were actually able to talk and hear with no problems.

We had a good time. The food was tasty, and we laughed a lot – so much so that the people in the booth next to us wanted to know what we were drinking so they could get some too (we were drinking soft drinks!) and they wished us a happy birthday. Our server had candles in the whipped cream of the cakes and cheesecakes of the birthday folks, and we had about eight servers singing “Happy Birthday” in a magnificently terrible way. It was much fun, especially where we had heard them singing “Happy Birthday” to another table and Ami absolutely did not want to be sung to. Anytime you can slightly embarrass Dubbs is a good time. Sadly, I forgot my camera and so have no photos of the evening.

So, dinner and dessert took about two hours, and then we dispersed into the evening to find a fairly heavy snow-belt snow. Ami’s car has moderately bald tires, so that made for a few exciting turns on the way to the highway, but we soon drove out of the snow belt and got home just fine.

Since Dubbs gave me her old iPod Touch a few months back, I loaded the entire works of Shakespeare on the device, and I started reading a sonnet to Mer each night as we went to bed. After weeks of doing this, on the eve of her 36th birthday, I got to read to her Sonnet 60, which is this (this made both of us laugh):

It may be nigh on the middle of January, but here at Mu-sings it is still Christmas!

Mer and had planned to do a Michigan-Chicago Christmas tour this year since we thought a Maine Christmas would be too expensive (because of tolls, gas, and two hotel nights). So, we stuck around Ohio for a few days and we planned on heading to our friend Ellen’s new house in the evening on Tuesday (the 23rd).

I worked a day Monday since Mer was planning on grading all day. My knee (which, if you remember, I injured while running on Saturday the 20th) was aching, so I wore shorts to work so as not to irritate it. I got a bunch of comments, and a few people thought the lower leg was too red to be good, but I spent the day going up and down ladders so I am sure that helped matters. I was planning on working Tuesday as well, but I had not done any shopping, plus my lower leg was really red and the area around the wound was swollen, so I took the day off and went to a quick-care doctor. After a two-plus-hour wait, I got in to see the doctor who was able to diagnose an infection before he even sat down to talk to me. I had x-rays on the knee to make sure there was no bone damage (there was not), so the doctor gave me a prescription for two antibiotics and a nurse gave me a very painful shot in the butt. That hurt for hours! After a mere three and a half hours, I went home to eat and then went out to shop for Christmas. Seeing as the doctor told me the infection was not going to clear up on its own, and I was leaving town for seven days, I was pretty happy that I had decided to go to the doctor.

Mer and I did head out around 5:00 that evening to go to Ellen’s place, which is in Hillsdale, Michigan. According to our computer directions, it was about a three-and-a-half-hour drive to Ellen’s, but it was starting to rain and the temperature was about freezing, so I was worried we would have road trouble. Happily, we had no problems with the road ourselves – I never felt the car slip, although I took it really easy, especially after we stopped for supper. There certainly was ice building on the highway, and as we approached western Ohio we saw a car off the road on its roof. We got to just a few miles from our exit when all traffic came to a halt. We then sat essentially still for 90 minutes. It turns out that just a mile or so ahead of us there was a two-car-two-truck accident, and it had shut the highway down.

Once we got past the accident, we made it to our exit, and we turned north toward Michigan. I was happy to be off the highway, but that also meant that the roads were not so well taken care of. There were two things in our favor, though – the road was just as straight as could be, and the freezing rain turned to all snow within just a few miles. It did turn out that Michigan had not bothered to salt or even plow, but we took it easy and had no real difficulty in getting to Hillsdale. By the time we had arrived, it had taken about six hours to get there.

Ellen, who is also a teacher and thus was on break, was still awake and willing to stay up for a short while longer. We moved our luggage into the house (we do not travel light), and then Ellen showed us around her very cool house. Ellen got a job teaching at Hillsdale Academy back last summer, and largely bought her house unseen via the internet. I can see why – her house is really cool. It is a pre-1900 house with high ceilings and wooden floors, and had woodwork frames around all doors and archways. The back door leads in to the kitchen, which then leads through two rooms that are still evolving identities. Ellen has been busy stripping wallpaper and repainting everything, so these rooms are still in process. The last room on the ground floor at the front of the house is Ellen’s living room, which is cozy and wonderfully sans television. There are stairs that wind up from the living room to the three bedrooms upstairs, which have happy nooks, and two of them (not Ellen’s room) have huge closets. There is a large bathroom with a claw-footed tub upstairs, and a very small but fully functional shower bathroom downstairs. Her house is wonderful and evoked more than a little coveting on my end.

After the tour we talked a little and I hit up Ellen for some food since my medication was supposed to be taken with food. She was kind enough to share some goodies someone had given her, and Mer and I liberally (or, in Hillsdale, conservatively) helped ourselves to the snack plate. We chatted for awhile, and then headed gratefully off to bed sometime just before midnight.

The next morning, there was about six inches of snow on the ground. I took it upon myself to shovel the walk and to break open the end of the driveway, which I was able to do. This sounds magnanimous, but Ellen paid dearly for it by having to listen to my 10-minute rant on the back-breaking properties of her straight-handled shovel.
 
Ellen and Meredith are both English teachers, and I like Englishy things, so our conversations and ideas of entertainment can be a bit, well, nerdy. After a yummy breakfast that Ellen made (a potato-ham hash), Mer settled down to grade papers, so I challenged Ellen to a game based on Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice. It turns out that Ellen loves that book. Sigh. Still, I was ahead for some of the game, and I finished just one space away from getting to the church (the goal of the game) when Ellen staged her come-from-behind win. She then impressed us by going through every trivia card in the game and getting them all correct. Egad.

We then had a time of cultural exchange. We introduced Ellen to Slings and Arrows, which is one of our favorite  shows (about an acting company), and she introduced us to the American version of The Office, of which she had season three. We enjoyed The Office very much – it is funnier and far less painful than the British version that was the genesis of the series, and Ellen seemed to enjoy Slings and Arrows (or at least humored us). Somewhere in there, I took my first of only two naps of the trip.

Ellen whipped us up a supper of fresh bread and ham and potato slices, and thus fortified, we went to Ellen’s church for Christmas Eve service. The roads were still very slick, but the drive was short, so we got there just fine. Ellen goes to an Anglican church that is fairly small inside (it looks as if it could hold about 100 people), and had beautiful exposed wooden beams. It also has tastefully modern and artistic stations of the cross around the sanctuary. The order of service was formal, and was based largely on the 1912 version of the Book of Common Prayer. There was lots of music and prayer and Scripture reading. I had not packed any formal clothes, but Ellen had assured me jeans would be fine. The priests were very warm and greeting, but I did notice that no one else was dressing down on a high-holy day.

The only slight problem with a formal liturgical service that is essentially Catholic is there is much (and I mean much) sitting then standing then kneeling. The astute reader will remember I had an infected knee and lower leg that was not going to kneel and was not very happy about going from sitting to standing. I muddled though as best I could, and figured praying pain-free sitting was better than trying to block out pain kneeling.

We went home after the service and chatted more and ate more. Ellen had tried making a candy earlier in the day that had not turned out correctly, and appeared to be fused to the pan. That was sad. However, that meant she had a pot of chocolate on the stove that we used as a dipping sauce for EL Fudge cookies. Very tasty. Since this is two weeks later, my recollection may be faulty and this may have been an afternoon treat, but they were still satisfying.

Christmas day arrived, and for the first time ever in my life I did not open anything. That was fine – the company, hot chocolate, and food were all agreeable. We had talked about going to Mom’s place on Christmas Day, but my (turns out faulty) memory thought they were not going to be there until the 26th, and Ellen was not able to get away because of an upcoming conference in Chicago, so we decided to hang out at Ellen’s for another day.

The big outing, on Christmas Day, over Christmas break, will surprise no one. Deep in every student’s being, the suspicion has always been there. Yes, on Christmas Day, what do two teachers and a school staff member do? They go to tour Ellen’s school. Hillsdale Academy is small – it is a K-12 school, and is self-contained on two floors of one building. It sounds as if the school has about 400 students total with another 200 on a waiting list. The school is on the campus of Hillsdale College, and the suspicion is that it was founded as a place for faculty kids to go. Still, it is a very pretty building. Ellen’s classroom was very spacious and had one wall of windows. If the school has a knock against it in my book, it is the lack of classroom technology. The rooms do not have audiovisual systems, and the entire school could have been outfitted with them for about $40,000. Portable projector carts are available, and Ellen told us she uses one quite often. Still, it is far easier to use equipment that is available all the time and has zero set-up requirements. All in all, though, the school facilities look very nice.

We took a small look at the college itself. Ellen had to return a video to the library (which was shockingly closed on Christmas day), so we got to see the college from the road to the library and one quad of the college on the very treacherous icy walk to the library. Ellen dropped her video in the return slot, and we beat a slow retreat back to the car.

We spent the rest of the day on Christmas puttering. Ellen made another attempt at her candy (a resounding success this time!). I hooked up three more speakers to Ellen’s surround-sound stereo. Mer graded. We all played a Shakespeare quotation game (I think Mer won). We watched videos. There was hot chocolate and more food and large-scale consumption of the chocolate and buttery brittle candy that Ellen made. It was quite a pleasant day.

Mer and I planned on leaving early the next morning, but we awoke to the sounds of ice pellets hitting our window. There was ice all over everything, and the driveway was hazardous, and the roads looked only marginally better. We decided to delay our egress and we kept an eye on the weather. If things improved, we figured we could leave in the afternoon. This gave us good opportunity to finish off Ellen’s homemade candy and to watch more videos. By early afternoon, I figured we would give the roads a try, so I chiseled my way into the car and loaded it up. We said goodbye to Ellen and headed out around 2:30 or so. Staying with Ellen was much fun, and we hope to get back to her (cute) place soon.

The roads were not great, but they were passable. We were able to get on a major highway (I-94) after about 45 minutes, and the highway was in okay shape. I think the additional several hours we waited were helpful – it let the salt crews have time to work. Mom later told us that I-80 had been shut down in Indiana in the morning, and that I-94 (which they can see from the house) was crawling during the morning.

We got to Mom and Marc’s place in the early evening. It was then that I discovered that they had gotten back from visiting my sister on Christmas Day, and so they had wondered where we were. Ooops. That was unfortunate. Mom and Marc interrupted their fiercely-fought Scrabble game, and we sat by the gas fire and talked for much of the evening. Mom and Marc gave us a wonderful calendar of pictures of sunsets that they had taken over Lake Michigan, from the beach that is only a brief walk from their house.

I love being at Mom and Marc’s house. It is peaceful and quiet, and Mer and I sleep like rocks there. We had a great night’s sleep, and then Mom made us French toast with real maple syrup. We had promised Shannon and Jolene that we would be in Chicago that day (Saturday the 27th), so we knew we had to head out. That worked out okay since Mom and Marc were also leaving to go to see Marc’s family. So, we all left mid-afternoon. Mer asked if we could go down to the beach, so we did. It was windy, and so cold, but the edge of the lake was piled up with ice cliffs, which were pretty. We wandered sown the beach to where a stream comes out of the woods and empties into the lake. Because of all of the freezing rain and melting snow, the stream was very full. Because of the ice on the edge of the lake, the stream was having a hard time emptying into the lake, and so it was spread out over a wide area of the beach. It was neat, but cold, so we made an efficient tour of the area.

The trip to Chicago was uneventful, and we made it to Shannon and Jo’s by early evening. We were both amazed at the number of new high-rises that are under construction in downtown Chicago, including the amazing doubling-in-height of the existing Blue Cross and Blue Shield building. The skyline is going to change dramatically from even just five years ago.

Shannon and Jo welcomed us, and informed us we would be going out later in the evening. We had a mini gift exchange (in that our gifts for Shannon and Jo had not arrived in the mail):  they gave us a movie DVD, and they gave me season four of Doctor Who, and Mer got a really great game about identifying books by their first lines. Shannon and I went and bought four pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream for the next night (although I found out that Mer had a sample of hers that same evening). We hung out until about 6:00, when James arrived, and we piled into Jo’s car to go have a large and tasty meal at the Essence of India restaurant. After the leisurely meal, Shannon and Jo took us to a theater I had never been to in order to see Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol.

I have to confess that I do not like the standard story of the Christmas Carol. I think it has been overdone, and it seems as if every TV show ever made does some variation on the tale. So, I was very skeptical going in to this play. Very quickly, my skepticism disappeared. It was a one-man show (the one man also happened to be the author), and it retold the Christmas Carol story from the perspective of the newly dead Jacob Marley, Scrooge’s partner. The different take and the enthusiasm and skill that the actor had were enough to breathe new life into (what for me was) a now-bland tale. Having Marley try to change Scrooge from his ways using methods that tied into the original story (ghosts and pseudo time travel and so on) was much fun. It was a good evening.

The next morning was relatively nice, so we decided to walk the two or so miles to Andersonville to go to Ann Sather’s restaurant. Mer and I love Ann Sather’s for brunch food. The meals are reasonable (usually about $8), and you get a ton of food, including two cinnamon rolls which are drool-worthy. Add in the option to get muffins with the breakfast (in this case a chocolate chip muffin), and all is yum. The walk back was into the wind, and thus was a bit brisker. I like the walk, though – it is through a bunch of residential neighborhoods and one decent-sized park.

Back at the apartment, we broke into Mer’s new book game, and it really goes without saying that the literary genius of Shannon and Mu won the first game. (Never mind that Mer and Jo won the next game the next day, and since then my record against Mer is on the order of 1-15, although I am usually competitive, usually losing eight books to five). We puttered around, and then Shannon and Jo took us to Molly’s Cupcakes, where we had some gourmet cupcakes (and a cookie). We went back home and finished the evening by watching some early (second Doctor) Doctor Who episodes that were quite well written and eating Jo’s lasagna and our Ben and Jerry’s.

Mer and I left dark and early the next morning. We got on the road a little after seven, successfully beating the Chicago traffic. We headed back to Mom and Marc’s house. We took the early start of the day as an opportunity to stop and eat breakfast at the gut-expanding Sammie’s Restaurant. What Ann Sather’s is to cinnamon rolls, Sammie’s is to breakfast egg creations. Lots of food for very little money. Happily full, we drove the last mile to the house where we promptly napped for two hours.

We spent the day puttering. We played Mer’s new game, we read, we had our own gift exchange (Mer got me a couple of DVDs and some brownie mix and an Italian book), we ate too much, we went back down to the beach to see the ice cliffs, and we settled down in the evening to watch my DVDs – Finding Nemo and Monsters, Inc. One of the great reasons we like to get away for breaks is to get away from the ever-present to-do list. The Monday we spent at Mom and Marc’s house was a perfect realization of that principle. 

We did head back to Ohio the next day (Tuesday the 30th) – we had a former student throwing a holiday party that evening, but we did make one more stop at Sammie’s for breakfast. One last tank-up before the new year caught up with us.

Oh – and I forgot my razor, so I had about ten days’ growth of “beard” by the end of our vacation.  

Last Saturday was our usually scheduled “date day” where one of us is in charge. Last Saturday was Mer’s turn, and she decided to start it in style (at least for us). She trundled us off to have a brunch at Bob Evans’s.  We hope someday post-house that we will be able to have brunch out most Saturdays. We both love hearty breakfasts. In the meantime, we occasionally cheat on our budget and go our for an unauthorized meal. It was a good way to start the day – good food and hot chocolate and good company.

We then ran a few errands and I spent some early Christmas cash on an iPod Touch charger so I would not have to keep my computer on for four hours just to charge the battery. Not a super-exciting outing, but again, the company was most pleasant (although she was not going to be bothered to go into a nerd-intensive store like Radio Shack when I went to get an RCA cable so I could plug the Touch into my stereo).

We puttered around back at home, and had a good time with out usual Saturday pastime of listening to Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! Mer had more food in store, though, so after Wait Wait we headed south toward Canton. One of Mer’s old friends had rediscovered her through Facebook, and she was throwing an informal party at a local buffet restaurant. Mer wanted to go, and I am an easy sell for buffets. Our budget allows for us to be invited out by other people, so we were okay with this outing.

I had never been to this restaurant before – it is a local chain called Golden Corral. It was not cheap (about $12 per person), but I have never seen a buffet like this before. The buffet line stretched the length of the restaurant – about five separate sections. I guess Midwesterners like to eat!

I got to meet Mer’s friend, Jennifer. In the wonderfully odd world of technology, Jennifer and I were already “friends” on Facebook because of Mer. It was nice to meet her in person. She seems very nice. She has three kids, and we got to see pictures, and Mer and Jennifer generally caught up (having not seen each other in about 18 years). We were later joined by one of Jennifer’s friends, David, who had gone to CVCA through eighth grade. We spent the better part of two hours chatting and eating and eating and eating. Mer and I made sure we got our $12 worth! Since our evening was not done, we rolled out to head home around 6:00.

We were meeting Ken and Janet at our home so we could take them to Actors’ Summit theater. The theater was putting on its Christmas play, which this year was The Sanders Family Christmas. It is a sequel to the play Smoke on the Mountain. It is a play set at Christmas time in 1941, 18 days after Pearl Harbor. It is set in a small mountain church, where the Sanders Family bluegrass band has come to play for us, the congregation. It is very light-hearted, with occasional moments of seriousness (with the war background present through much of the play). There are lots and lots of bluegrass numbers performed through the play – about 20 or more total.

We had seen this play years ago with Ken and Janet at Malone College. We thought it was wonderful. It pokes gentle fun at small Southern churches without mocking them. Ken, who was raised Baptist, found himself thinking a lot of times, “Yeah, that is how it is.” They did a nice job. Rumor had it that the Malone production took a year to prepare for – one of the main characters uses sign language through much of the play (her character can’t sing well, so she signs even though no one is deaf). That must have taken some time to learn, and supposedly the actors had to learn the songs as they did not initially know how to play their instruments. The sister who signed had stolen the show in the Malone production, with lots of over-the-top moments that were great fun to watch,

Actors’ Summit’s production was excellent, but sadly, they cannot prepare for a whole year, since they turn plays over every eight weeks or so. The actors were great, and the music was very fine (including an actor playing dobro!), but they had to compromise with the sister who signed. She only signed through the first part of the first act; after that, she sang with the ensemble, and they modified the script to go from her saying she could not sing to her saying she could not sing solo. It was completely understandable, but it was too bad, since much of the fun when we first saw the show came from watching the exaggerated signing for the lyrics of the songs.

Having said that, the play was still quite funny, and the music made for  a fine evening. The song selection did a good job balancing well-known songs with ones that are not played anymore. It was also great fun to get to go out with Ken and Janet – since we don’t live near them anymore, we only get to see them outside of church a couple of times per year.

If you ever do get a chance to see The Sanders Family Christmas, I recommend it. It is not terribly deep, but it is entertaining, and not a typical Christmas-style play.

Irony: The state of amusement that comes from the contrast of a situation with the surroundings of that situation. (Riordan Dictionary)

So I decided to go running this morning. It was cold (26 degrees), but I figured that I would stay warm enough if I ran. I like running outside, and I tend to go 1-3 miles further outside than I do on the treadmill. So, out I went with my iPod for company, playing Christmas music.

Everything was fine, and just shy of one mile in, while running up a hill, I felt my foot slip a little on some ice. It was a good warning, so I decided I’d need to keep away from the edge of the road where water runs and can freeze. I’d also have to keep an eye out for ice in general. I trotted on.

Just over one mile in, I was going down a hill. I noticed a slight discoloration in the road. Just as my right foot hit it. I had a brief thought of “that’s ice” before I went down really hard. Happily, I twisted as I fell, and caught most of the fall with my hands, although I did slide a little on my right leg, as you can see. The great part of all this – the song playing on the iPod was “White Christmas.” The irony was not lost on me.

I hobbled back home, and decided my new cut-off for running outside is 32 degrees. As I got back, Paula Radcliffe (a British marathoner) congratulated me via my iPod on achieving a new personal best in the mile. Maybe sliding down the hill helped my speed!

Last Friday we had the opening of the Fools’ 2008-2009 season. I have a large group this year (10 at the moment, but may grow to 12 after the Christmas break), but in this show only 6 of the Fools could make it. That was still plenty of Fools to go around, and since I had a 7th Fool unable to make it after I had created the show, I was able to jump in for four games instead of my originally scheduled one game. I have to admit that I like stage time, so I was excited to be able to have a larger role.

Because of some traffic issues, a couple of the Fools showed up late, so we just had time to go over my stage notes and play a very fast warm-up game (“Bunny Bunny”) before people started showing up. On the plus side, the traffic issue made the scheduled basketball game start later than it was supposed to, so we had a chance to finish the show roughly about the time the game started, so people did not have to choose between us and the game.

As is our tradition, I had the Fools greet people as they came through the door. We had a great mixed crowd – current students, parents, staff, and a good number of Fools alums. By the time the show was under way, most of the seats were filled with people standing as well. Since we had seating for 75, I’m estimating that we had about 90 people in attendance. They were a good crowd – quick on the suggestions, and LOTS of energy and laughter.

As usual, we played about 11 games, which made the show about 1 hour and 15 minutes. Also as usual, I do not remember too much about the show. While a game is going, I usually am thinking about the next game and what needs to be done, plus I have enough nervous energy that I can’t always remember what goes on.

Some things I do remember:
– a criminal who burned down Parliament in Detroit with a CVCA English teacher
– a dating game with a right-leg amputee (“It’s hard for me to make snow angels!”), Michael Jackson, and Martha Jones from Doctor Who fame
– the solution on how to fix the economy from a grumpy old man (“It’s fine!”)
– a person making ketchup packets in Tibet who was run over by a reindeer
– a trip to Mars on a rocket powered by toast
– a Genre Rewind that had two college students and an author transformed into Power Rangers
– The Fools ranting and raving about MC Hammer

I was very happy with the show. People have given me good feedback, and I remember the audience laughing a lot. The Fools have even been invited to be the entertainment at a church for a Valentine’s Day dinner! Our first gig! I’m looking forward to the next shows in February and March.

Day 6 – Monday, December 1st – Travel day

We woke up early and packed. It had taken us two hours to get to the hotel from the airport, and I wanted to have at least two hours to get through security, plus a little fudge time if needed, so we were out of the hotel around 8:00. We headed to our good friend the Tube, and headed into the city. We only needed to make one transfer, and that went fine. The trains were crowded, so having luggage was a little burdensome. I can’t imagine what it would have been like closer to 9:00!

We knew the general direction to get to Heathrow, but there are five terminals there and the Tube makes three separate stops. Sadly, there were no signs or announcements telling you which terminal to get off at for a particular line. There was a phone number you could call, but that did not help us much. The sign said terminals changed all the time and so you should call. You mean to tell me that United flies into a different terminal every month? That seemed shady. Anyway, I used my amazing deductive abilities to determine we should go to Terminal 5. When we had come from the airport, the train was at a terminus, and Terminal 5 was clearly a terminus. Voila. Ipso Facto.

We got off at Terminal 5, and it did not look quite right. Still, I figured it was because we were going in to the airport, and after a few confused minutes of trying to figure out how to get to Departures (Heathrow has a dearth of signs), we found our way up to the gates. For British Air. The entire terminal was for British Air. Even given the unlikely event that Aer Lingus flies into terminals based on whimsy, you would think that if Terminal 5 was for British Air exclusively, you could take a risk and label that terminal “British Air.”

In an attempt to find out which of our other two choices for terminals was correct, we asked two British Air employees where US Air flew out of. One indicated a different airport. After we made minor protests about flying in to Heathrow, the second lady told us Terminal 4. Good. We headed back to the elevator bank. One set was for the Tube, and the other was for the express train to the city. Neither seemed like a good bet for an inter-terminal rail line, so we asked a custodian nearby. She expressed some confusion, then hazarded a guess we would want the train line. So, we got into that elevator with another man who, turns out, had missed his flight and was trying to get to Terminal 1. He had wandered the airport for several minutes trying to find a way out of Terminal 5. He also complained about the lack of signs. We mentioned our dilemma of trying to find US Air, and he said he thought we needed Terminal 1. Oh oh. We rode the elevator down one level, and we waited to go down one more level to the trains. The elevator then went back up. Huh. After some muttering on all three of our parts, we went down one floor, and then successfully made it to the train level.

Mer and I started looking for signs for an inter-terminal rail line, and you will be shocked to hear we did not find any. We asked an employee about our terminal, for which she had to radio to another employee, who suggested Terminal 1. It would appear British Air is a bit fuzzy on the airlines of the colonies. Armed with our destination, we asked how we got there. They told us to wait for the city express. Since I did not want to go to the city, I asked again, and they told us to sit in the front of the train when it got there. In 10 minutes. You have a world-class airport, and your inter-terminal rail line is a commercial train line that runs only 4 times an hour? Amazing. We waited for the train to pull up and for the people to get off. We filed on. We were then shooed off by a train worker, because the train was not ready for boarding yet. 30 seconds later, they announced we could get on. We got back on. After a few more minutes, we rolled out of Terminal 5 and headed to Terminals 1,2, and 3. The train was quiet and comfortable, and they did not charge us for the trip (thank goodness!). We got out at Terminal 1. All the fun we had in finding and getting to our correct destination made me grateful we were somewhere that used English. I cannot imagine how we would have found our way if we did not speak the language. Between lack of signs and confusing layouts and weird transit schedules, foreign travelers must get very confused.

Our checking-in process went well and quickly, and the only hiccup we had was Mer forgot she had water in her water bottle, which is a no-no she likes to try most times in security. Once the water was dumped in a nearby bathroom, we breezed through security – I was even able to leave my laptop in my backpack.

Once on the other side, we looked for our flight gate. Apparently  Heathrow is guided by whimsy, because any flight that was more than 90 minutes out had no gate. I guess you get a gate when you need one, and not before. Mer settled down with the backpacks, and I went in search of food. I quickly returned because I had found a restaurant that served real breakfasts, and we still had over two hours to go before our flight. We had a nice breakfast there (including the mandatory nice but foreign waitress – where do the English work?). After breakfast, we still had a few minutes before we were told what the gate lottery results were, so I took the opportunity to spend most of my remaining pounds on chocolate in the airport store.

We found our gate number and headed in that direction. We came to a sign warning about how there were few bathroom facilities past that point, so we turned around and used the restrooms. We went on, and went through a second security checkpoint, and got settled in at the gate. After a short bit, I decided that with a nine-hour flight ahead of me, I should use the bathroom one more time, and prepared to walk back to the central area. I saw a bathroom symbol near our gate, and investigated. It led to a huge, well-stocked, and fully functional bathroom. It appears that when Heathrow does put up a sign, you may need to be careful about believing it.

We still had about 30 minutes before we could board, so I used a pound coin on a nearby massage chair. It actually worked pretty well, and helped loosen the knots in my back. I gave my last pound coin to Mer so she could try it. With that, we were able to board.

Our flight took off a little late, and on the far end in Philly we had to circle a bit because of backup from a wind storm that had come through. All in all, it was about a 9.5-hour flight, which is a long time for me and my back. Mer graded for most of the flight, and I passed the time as best I could. I read some of Fitzgerald’s short stories, then I watched Iron Man because I could. Then I watched Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Wow. The only way I can recommend this film is if it is free and you are trapped in an airplane. What. A. Bad. Film. Ewwwwwww. Even Harrison Ford could not save this film from being unbelievable most of the time and boring for much of the time. I vastly enjoyed seeing Iron Man for the second time much more than seeing the Kingdom of the Crystal Bore.

We got into Philly, and because of getting in about an hour late, Mer and I were concerned about our flight to Cleveland – we only had about an hour to get to the gate (which was well labeled on a nearby monitor). Since we were near the front of the plane, we got through customs quickly, and went to retrieve our luggage.

Now, we are not total fools. Since Mer’s suitcase had fallen apart on the way to London, we did not pack anything in the main section of her suitcase. We crammed most of our things into my suitcase for safe keeping. The luggage carousel soon started regurgitating suitcases, so I took up my position to retrieve our things in an efficient manner so we could make our connection. I waited. Suitcases went by. I waited. More suitcases went by. I waited. The same suitcases went by again. After a very long time, Mer’s suitcase appeared. Success! Mine would surely be coming behind. I waited. And waited. And waited. A nearby baggage handler asked me what my suitcase looked like, and I described it. He looked at the 4 bags left on the belt, and shook his head. He asked where I had come from, and upon hearing that I had come from Heathrow, he told me that Heathrow messes up luggage all the time. So, Mer and I went to the baggage office and filed our second luggage report of the trip.

Once we were back underway, with Mer’s nearly empty bag now re-checked for a domestic flight, we hustled toward the most distant terminal in Philly, from which our flight was to depart. We were going to be pushing things very closely, and the monitors all indicated an on-time flight. Happily, Mer saw a sign for a Terminal-toTerminal bus (that ran every 2-3 minutes! Ha!), and we jumped on that. We got to our gate just at the scheduled take-off time. I breathlessly asked the attendant if we had missed the flight to Cleveland, and she gave me a bit of a funny look. She indicated the plane was not even at the airport yet. In the 5 minutes we were on the bus, the plane had gone from “on time” to a delayed flight. This is a slight pet peeve of mine. Airports are pulling this stunt more and more in my experience – they are posting a flight as on time right up until it is supposed to take off, even if the plane is still in Chicago. Still, I should be grateful – the delay made it sure that we would make our flight back to Cleveland.

The remainder of the trip was without incident – we got to Cleveland just a bit late, and the car was there and started, and we got home at 9:30 pm, just 18 hours or so after leaving the hotel in the Docklands. Weird.

Some general musings, in no real order:
London’s (and Paris’s, for that matter) subway system puts our mass transit to shame. The Tube is easy to use, and goes everywhere. You don’t have to go downtown and then go back out to the suburbs – you just take a direct line. We could learn a lot from the Tube.

Heathrow needs to be more user-friendly.

The British are wonderfully non-American in consumer areas. The stores in the malls were closing at 5:00 and 6:00 on Friday and Saturday heading into the holiday season. And one evening, Mer and I bought a “plain chocolate chip” cookie. Tell me where in America you would ever use the word “plain” to describe anything for sale.

Pedestrian bridges are pretty and pretty useful. Chicago should take note.

Londoners seem pretty friendly and helpful.

In five days of being in London, we only saw one beggar and one homeless man. I do not know where all the homeless are, but somehow the British keep them away from the tourist areas.

London is amazingly cosmopolitan. I really do think that at least half of all people we interacted with in London were not English.

Travel is good. We were watching a Doctor Who tonight that had a climatic battle on Canary Wharf, probably two blocks from out hotel. We recently watched the Bourne Ultimatum, some of which took place in Tube stations and in London. It is really cool to get excited about looking for places we have been. Travel often!