We had a three-day weekend this weekend because of Martin Luther King Day, AND it is Mer’s birthday today, so it seemed we should celebrate over the weekend. So, we jumped in the car Friday and drove the three-and-a-half-hour drive to Hillsdale, Michigan, to see our good friend Ellen.

We like to get away for mini-vacations. If we stay home, we tend to fill the hours with chores and errands. Ellen is much fun, and her house is not too far away, and I had many plans for Mer and for Ellen this weekend.

We got to Ellen’s about 8:30. One of Ellen’s friends, Heidi, was there, and had been there all week. She was leaving early the next morning to go back to Texas, but it made for a merry group. Ellen does not have any dull friends (yes, other than me, Shannon), and Heidi had a great sense of humor. One of my early plans for Mer’s birthday weekend was to take her to a restaurant near Ellen’s called Marcella’s. Ellen asked around and the opinion of the place was mixed, but the ice cream was held in very good regard. So, at about 8:31, I suggested we go out for ice cream. Everyone laughed, and we brought our stuff in and settled in to Ellen’s very pretty living room. At about 8:45, I mentioned how good ice cream would be. A story reminded me to speak up about ice cream around 9:00. 9:15 passed, and people seemed to have forgotten about ice cream, so I aired my view that the confection would be pretty good right about now. I think to shut me up, everyone agreed to go get ice cream.

Marcella’s was only about 15 minutes away, and as it was after 9:30 (the place closed at 10:00), we had the entire restaurant to ourselves. I liked the place. It had wooden floors and a high tin ceiling, and they were playing swing music and other tunes from the 30s and 40s. The overall experience was a bit mixed. The service was a bit slow for us, maybe because of the late hour. Meredith had to ask for a glass of water, and then the waitress only brought one glass, just for Mer. The ice cream was quite excellent, but Mer, Ellen, and I all ordered the same thing, and they came back 5 minutes later with two of them, explaining that they had run out of pecans, and had not made one for Ellen (we all had different flavors of ice cream). That can happen, but I was a tad miffed that they had not asked who would like to change their order (I would have, because I am not that picky with ice cream). Anyway, the atmosphere was great, the service so-so, the ice cream fantastic, and the conversation much fun. Not a bad jaunt out.

We went back to Ellen’s, and Mer opened her birthday gift from Ellen – a game called Bohnanza, where the object is to raise various kinds of beans and cash out the crop for as much money as you can. It sounds exciting, I know, but it turned out to be much fun. However, Mer was not feeling up for a new game (since it was now 10:30), and having three English nerds (and me) all in one room meant that we had to team up and play Dark and Stormy, a game about identifying books by their first line or first few lines. Mer teamed up with Heidi, and I teamed up with Ellen. After a hard-fought game, Ellen won (I mean, Ellen and I won). I actually did contribute 1 out of our 8 books we needed to win. Yay, team! After the game, we all retired and slept.

The next morning, Ellen took Heidi to a town about an hour away to catch the shuttle to the Detroit airport. Mer and I got to sleep in a bit, and we showered and got ready for the exciting birthday day by the time Ellen got back. Ellen, ever hospitable, made us breakfast, and then we broke out and played Bohnanza. It took a bit to figure out some of the basic strategies, but we eventually caught on. In the end, Ellen and Mer tied, and I did not.

We puttered around some, and then all got spiffed up for the big birthday outing. I like surprising people, so I escorted Mer and Ellen to the car and just headed off. About an hour and fifteen minutes later, we drove into downtown Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan. Turns out that Ann Arbor is a good-sized town, and the downtown is very happening. So happening that I had trouble finding a parking place. I circled around the block and was going to let the girls out in front of the restaurant so they could hold our reservation. I was waiting behind two cars at a red light, about a block from the restaurant, when my car lurched forward. We had been hit from behind – not super hard, but enough so that my fedora went flying into the back seat. The next day, Ellen’s back would hurt her a little, and my neck has been stiff yesterday and today, but at the time, everyone seemed just fine. I pulled over and got out and walked back to the car behind me. It was a young woman (20?) who was a crying, shaking, apologizing mess. I felt bad for her. The damage to our car was a scuff on the bumper (and today we found out the locking mechanism on the trunk needs to be treated with much more force than it used to to stay closed). The damage was nothing on a car with 180,000 miles on it, and I did not want to miss our dinner reservations, so I checked that the girl was okay, told her everything was fine, and got back in my car. Incidentally, the girl said she thought I was moving ahead. How that was supposed to happen at a red light with two cars in front of me, I’m not sure. Still, I am very thankful everyone was okay and the cars were fine.

I dropped the girls off at the restaurant – Gratzi. Gratzi is in an old converted theater, and must be fancy since they have paintings of naked people on the main wall which looked as if they were left over from the original theater. After I parked the car (which was easy once I turned left at the end of the block instead of right), I joined Mer and Ellen. I was very pleased – the atmosphere was elegant and the service was friendly, prompt, and very helpful. I’m pretty sure our waitress spoke Italian since she did not bat an eye when Mer ordered her dish using correct Italian pronunciation. If the waitress did not know Italian, she certainly knew the menu. We all had very excellent and very fresh dishes, and Mer got free cannoli for her birthday.

We were on a bit of a schedule, so we walked out to the car to go to the next destination. It was not too far – about 1-2 miles up the road, to the University of Michigan’s campus. Turns out that parking is not super easy there either, but we found a parking garage and found a space on the 5th (out of 6) floor. We walked across the street to a very crowded theater, only to discover it was the wrong one. They directed us to the correct theater a block further into campus.

I had wanted to take Mer and Ellen to see some theater, and I had two choices. The first was K2, a story about two men who were trying to survive on the mountain K2. The website warned of strong language, and the tickets were pretty expensive. I could have handled the expense, but it did not strike me that Mer would love having the F-bomb lobbed about all evening on her birthday. So, instead, I took her to the burlesque show.

Or near enough. We went to see the musical Nine. Nine is based loosely on
8-1/2, by the Italian film director Fellini. Nine takes place at a spa in Venice, where a director named Contini is trying to save his marriage, come up with a plot for his next film, and juggle at least one (and maybe two) mistresses. Reality starts to break down for Contini, and he starts seeing all the women in all of his life everywhere he goes. This goes all the way back to his first encounter with a worldly woman when he was nine (hence the title). Anyway, Contini does find a plot for his movie, where he plays himself as a kind of Casanova, but he loses everything else in the process.

It was an odd little play. I did not like most of the characters. The acting was excellent, but Contini was a self-involved adulterer. His mistress was married and looking for a divorce. Most of the women in his life were just there as sex objects, and dressed down for the part. I did like Contini’s wife and his mother – both strong and interesting women. Even though I did not like the characters, and much of the music was average (or even forgettable), I still found the play interesting. I was not riveted, and I do not need to see it again, but it somehow held my attention, which surprised me. Usually if I do not like the main characters, I have no interest in what happens to them. And Nine is not short – it came in at a full two-and-a-half hours.

The lead actors were strong, and had very good voices. The choreography was also well done, and the orchestra did a fine job. Some of the technical things were a bit off – there was some over-driving of speakers on some songs, but not too many. The staging was simple, but effective – three levels of marble blocks and pillars to suggest a spa.

So, Nine was okay. I’m not sure taking your wife to see a play with a dozen barely clothed women in it qualifies me for Husband of the Year, but Mer says she is glad she saw it, and had a similar reaction of being interested without being grabbed by the plot. Ellen was not overly impressed, but was still happy to have a night out on the town. I’m pleased that this gave us all a chance to scout out Ann Arbor, which looks very worthwhile, especially when the weather gets better (or when they put on a safer play!).

Sunday we all slept late, and then went to Ellen’s church. I wish I had taken pictures of the church – it is small, but beautiful inside. It is all wood and post-and-beam construction and very pleasing to the eye. The service is very formal and liturgical, and I did get a bit lost flipping around in books trying to figure out where we were. The music was simple (just organ and voices) and very pretty, and the homily (short sermon) was very solid, being on remaining in God’s will in the circumstances you are in, and not making God’s will all about you and your interests, but about what God wants.

After church we went back to Ellen’s, where we had some of my homemade bread (I set it to rising before church), followed by brownie sundaes and then long naps. After we all got up around five, Ellen made us a good supper of grilled turkey sandwiches and cheesy potatoes, and then we played Bohnanza again. Mer won, Ellen came in second, and I lost again. Oddly, I seemed to spend too much on getting the beans I wanted, while Ellen and Mer saved up for theirs. There is probably a lifestyle correlation in here somewhere.

Mer also graded quite a lot on Sunday, and I read my homework. We were going to see Ellen teach today, so I wanted to read what was going to be covered. So, I read the first four Cantos of the Hell part of the Divine Comedy. It surprised me – I found it quite interesting. I had to read it out loud (Mer was very patient with that) in order to understand it since the line breaks ran all over the place, but it really is quite interesting stuff. I then followed Hell up with the first three chapters of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Who says English majors can’t have a good time? I found the first chapter of The Jungle hard – it was in present tense and had lots of foreign names and words. The second and third chapters were much easier, but were starting to foreshadow the inhumane treatment of both the people and animals of the book. I was not sorry to put it down.

I also made myself useful in trying to help Ellen around the house. She had a screw loose on a light switch, so I thought I would fix it for her. Turns out the screw was too long for the socket. In the process of figuring that out, I managed to strip the other screw and had the screw driver slip and gouge Ellen’s fairly new paint job. I’m always glad to help where I can.

Today we did go in to Ellen’s school, the private Hillsdale Academy. The Academy is the K-12 school associated with Hillsdale College, noted for being one of two schools that will not take any government money (they do not want any government regulations). The Academy is fairly small, with about 20 students per grade. The building is a very nice red brick, and the inside is all carpeted. There are no bells – the teachers dismiss the students (more or less) when they are supposed to. It all makes for a very quiet school.

Ellen runs a very good and tight classroom. She lectures from the front of the class, with the students in a “U” around her. She lectures, but does ask the students a lot of questions – she even called on me in one class and Mer in another class! Ellen calls all of her students by their last names (Mr. or Miss So-and-so), and it gives the class a very formal feel. It works pretty well.

The discussions of the literature were much fun. I had forgotten how much I like analyzing great literature. I had strong, text-based opinions, and it was hard for me not to blurt out a bunch of my ideas during both of the classes I sat in on. Miss Condict would have reprimanded me, so I behaved myself. The students did pretty well, although the class discussing The Jungle was a bit subdued. Ellen thought it was because it was a Monday, and said they are usually livelier.

Ellen had an hour for lunch, so she took us to a sandwich place, where we had good food and talked more about the books and about teaching. I know it was nerdy to go to school on a day off, but I enjoyed it and I think it helped Mer out to see another classroom.

So, after the afternoon class, Mer and I took our leave from Ellen and headed home around 2:00 or so. We were home by 6:00, after stopping for supper on the road. I’m not sure this would have been a great birthday weekend for everyone, but it was a darn good one for Mer. Happy birthday, love!