Friday – out to Mom and Marc’s in St. Jospeh’s

Saturday – in to Chicago to see Shannon and Jo – walked in park, then to Andersonville to George’s for hot chocolate or baked goods, then Chinese for supper (Mer – deep dish), then Merry Wives at Chicago Shakespeare

Christmas Eve – Church and then games with Ken and Janet – spent the night there

Christmas – Served meals in Alliance, then Christmas dinner with Aunt Mary, Dale and Carlene

Saturday – Akron Art Museum, then games at home (Wheel on Wii and then Super Munchkin)

Sunday – Walk on really warm day (50s) in Kent Bog (on boardwalk)

Friday – Hilary and Ryan’s wedding in Barberton

Saturday – Academic Challenge meet at Copley, then Leap Year movie with Mer and then Lost  finale over at Zach’s house with Mer

On Friday we had the first Royal Fools improv comedy show of the year at CVCA. We had a good crowd of around 100 people, which was quite good considering the roads were a little slick from some early evening snow we got.

I like this group of Fools. I’ve had more raw talent in a group before, but the chemistry and enthusiasm in this year’s group is among the best I’ve had in ten years of coaching the Fools. This was the first show for many of the group (14 of the 18 Fools are new this year, although only 15 of the Fools could make this show; so, 11 of the 15 had their first show).

We had a very good show. As an added fun bonus, we had musical improv for the first time ever in one of our shows. A CVCA alumna from 2009 had done improv in college, and she wanted to practice her musical (piano) improv skills. Allie was back in the area and she asked if she could help out, which I was thrilled with. We were able to add real music to Foolish Idol (a singing competition game where both contestants lose) and we added a musical game, “Sing It!”, where I could yell, “Sing it!” at any moment during the scene, and the last thing said on stage would be the first line of a song. These games added a fun aspect to the show. Allie also joined in on a couple of improv games, and she is really talented, so that was great. The show went about 1 hour and 15 minutes, and we had a fun time.

Saturday was “Mer’s day,”, and she shocked me by taking me to Canton, to the Football Hall of Fame. She had won tickets to the Hall at last spring’s auction at CVCA, and she needed to use them or they would expire. I had been to the Hall about 17 or 18 years ago, but the Hall had just finished a major renovation in the last year, so it was a new experience.

The recommended tour through the Hall is well laid out, and the information is presented well, and there are a number of interactive exhibits. The Hall was not crowded, and we took our time poking around. There were three live presentations – one on defunct football team names, one on the history of the football helmet, and one on curious items from the storerooms. Those were intimate and fun. We did miss the theater portion of the Hall – it was closed when we got there, but that was okay – we had a good time without feeling harried, and I never lost sight that my wife took me to the Football Hall of Fame.

In the evening, we got together with our colleague Brandon and his wife Jen to go see Actors’ Summit’s production of The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society’s Production of ‘A Christmas Carol’. It is a farce on A Christmas Carol, and since Brandon had just directed Carol at CVCA, I really wanted him to see it.

It did not disappoint. The “ladies” of the play were all played by men, and the only male part was played by a woman. There were fun sight gags, like one lady who kept getting more and more hurt throughout the play, and the woman in charge appearing in every scene with her purse still in tow. It was completely ridiculous, and I loved it.

After the play, we headed south with Brandon and Jen and met them for dessert at Waterloo. Restaurant. At least that was the plan; it seemed like everything we tried to order was “fresh out” and we would have to try again. After three tries, we finally all got something to eat, and the entire process extended our visiting time together. After dessert, we headed home after a full, but happy, day.

A week or so ago, a former student of mine, Chris, Facebooked me to ask if there were any 5k runs in the area on or around Thanksgiving. I sent off a list of a few, and mentioned that the Berlin Amish Country Half Marathon also had a 5k race the same day, and that I was running the half. Chris asked if I would mind if he joined me for the half, and I was very happy to say he’d be welcome to join me.

We drove down to Berlin early on Saturday. It was cold and windy, but was not snowing, so that was a plus. It had snowed a little, but the roads were clear, so the race footing would be fine. I found out on the way down to the race that not only had Chris never run a half-marathon before, he had never run a competitive race before. So, he had chosen a long distance (13.1 miles), on a hilly course, in cold and windy weather, as his first race. I was impressed.

We stayed inside the high school in Berlin until there was less than ten minutes to the start of the race, and then we kept on our outer layers until almost start time. I threw the sweatshirts over the fence next to the track where the race started, and was pleased they were still there when we got back over an hour and a half later.

The race went pretty well. Chris and I deliberately walked the five biggest (longest) hills. I am pretty used to running in the cold, but I think it got to Chris some – at one point around mile nine, Chris stopped to retie his shoe, and he had trouble getting his hands to work, even though he had been wearing gloves. I felt bad about that. The wind was okay for much of the race, but really hit us on the tops of hills. And, of course, the race finished on a long hill up to the high school.

I like this race. It is challenging, but very pretty. It is well run and fairly small (around three hundred runners), and the finish line has extravagant food (cookies and sandwiches and noodles), although both this year and last I bypassed the food line because I did not feel like eating after the race. The race does not have many spectators, but the spectators who do come out in the cold include the Amish, and they are very friendly. This year, a car full of cheering girls rode by a couple of times, and that was fun.

Chris did pretty well. The race pushed him pretty hard, but he managed the run correctly – he finished strong, but out of gas. That was quite the introduction to racing, and I when I asked him if he would do it again, he said he might need a day or two to think about it. Here is hoping he will.

We finished the race in 1:52:52 (8:37/mile), finishing 70th and 71st out of 310 finishers. Chris’s family and girlfriend had driven down to see him finish, and so Chris went home with them, while I drove home by myself.

In the evening, I decided I wanted to watch a couple of romantic Italian movies with Mer. She loves Italy and Italian, and so I rented (online) a couple of English-speakers-in-Italy movies, Avanti! and Stealing Beauty.

These movies had a different notion of “romantic” than I did. Avanti! was about a son going to Italy to bring back the body of his father, who he finds out was having a multi-year annual affair with a woman who also died in the car crash with the father. The woman’s daughter was there to bring back her mother’s body, and through much mayhem and Italian red tape, the two end up having their own affair together. I loved the scenery and liked the characters, but the morals of the movie were wanting.

I did find it interesting that body types have changed since the movie was made in the seventies. when Twiggy and the flat-and-emaciated look were apparently still the rage. The main woman of the film looked very normal to both me and Mer, and she was quite pretty in her summer dresses, but it was a major point of the film that she was fat and struggled with her weight. I don’t usually feel as if we have done well for women in the area of body types, but I feel we have come somewhere from the seventies, anyway.

As for the movie Stealing Beauty, it was also not romantic in my book. The movie centered on a young American going to Italy to find her father – she finds out she was the result of a one-night stand. While there, the young woman, who I think was supposed to be eighteen, decides she needs to lose her virginity, and tries to hook up with three different men. She succeeds with the last one, who is the sweet one, and I suppose that is why the movie is deemed romantic. At least it had really stunning scenery.

I had determined a couple of weeks ago that I would run the Berlin Amish Country Half Marathon on Thanksgiving Saturday, which meant I needed to run down to Berlin to pick up my race packet on Black Friday. Since Berlin is in the heart of Amish Country in Ohio, Mer and I decided to make a day of it, and we invited our friends and coworkers Liz and Dubbs. Liz teaches English at CVCA, and Dubbs teaches Latin, and they are both funny and entertaining people.

We started our tour of Amish Country by stopping for lunch at the huge Amish restaurant Der Dutchman. The were featuring a soup-and-sandwich bar that included chili, so I was sold on that, as were Mer and Dubbs. I think Liz got fish. It was an excellent meal.

Not to waste any chance of getting food in Amish Country, we headed over to the nearby chocolate store, where we picked up chocolates. We finished our food gathering with a stop in Der Dutchman’s fine bakery, where we got yet more food. Amish Country has a way of doing that to me and Mer.

We then drove the short distance to Berlin’s high school to pick up my race packet, where I picked up a packet for a former student of mine who was running with me. That went very smoothly, and I was in and out in under five minutes.

We headed home to watch parts one and two of The Hollow Crown, a British production of a film version of Shakespeare’s Richard II, Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, and Henry V. Liz had family commitments and could not stay, but Dubbs made it through both Richard II and Henry IV, Part 1, although I think she may have drifted a bit toward the end. None of us had ever seen Richard II before, and it was really well done. This Richard was an effeminate and moody king, and was often heavily portrayed as a Christ figure. It was a thought-provoking production. Henry IV was very good, with my only complaint being that the combat scene at the end felt much longer than it needed to be – lots of fighting with no dialogue. We are planning on eventually getting back together to finish the last two movies in the series, and hopefully Liz can join us for those.

Thanksgiving was a pretty mellow family affair. It started out by having me and Meredith hosting brunch for Aunt Mary, for which I made egg burritos and chocolate chip muffins. After brunch, we played Trivial Pursuit, which, to my amazement, I won, beating Aunt Mary for the first time ever. Poor Meredith had all six pieces of pie while I still only had three, but she could not get to the center of the board and answer one last question to win, which allowed me to get back into the game and eventually win it on my very first try in the center of the board.

We went over to Dale and Carlene’s place at Cardinal Retirement Village for dinner in the late afternoon. The good staff of Cardinal put together a traditional meal, but getting just one generous plate of food kept me from overeating, which was a happy thing. The only thing missing was stuffing, which Mer loves, but the meal was otherwise excellent.

After dinner, Mer and I headed home, where we ate cookies and watched our DVD version of the TV show Lost. As I said, it was a mellow day.

I started Saturday off with a twelve-mile run at Sand Run, which features a really long (one-and-a-half-mile) hill on the six-mile course. That run went well, and convinced me I would be able to try the Berlin Amish Country Half Marathon again over Thanksgiving weekend.

In the evening, Mer and I went to CVCA’s fall play, which this year was actually two holiday plays – Yes, Virgina, There Is a Santa Claus, followed by A Christmas Carol. Yes, Virgina was a junior high play, while the longer Christmas Carol was done by high school students.

Yes, Virgina was done with a minimal set, since Christmas Carol was the more elaborate play. The play was cute, if a little rough in places with a few dropped lines and some actors being nervous. The girl playing Virgina was very talented and did quite well.

I am not normally a big fan of A Christmas Carol because I think it is done too much and has become trite. I got excited about this production because of the vision that the director, Brandon Davies, had of trying to stress the industrialization of society in the play and for trying to make the ghosts convincing and distinct. Brandon also got me involved by mounting two projectors to project different moving backgrounds onto “windows” in the buildings at the back of the stage. There were some challenges to that process, but it worked, and worked pretty well. Brandon also had me teach the students an Irish group dance for a party scene, which was fun to do.

The actors of A Christmas Carol did very well, especially the young man playing Scrooge. He did a great job of being a curmudgeon. As for the ghosts, the Ghost of Christmas Past glided in on disguised roller skates so she would appear to glide, the Ghost of Christmas Present was able to manipulate Scrooge like a puppet on a string, and the Ghost of Christmas Future was huge (the actor was on stilts under a huge robe). I have to say I really enjoyed the production.

Our church recently hired a new youth pastor, and he started work about a month ago. He is very friendly, and he and his wife seem like fun people, so Mer and I decided to invite them up our way to help them get to know us and a little more of Ohio better.

We took Tom and Kelsey up to Hudson, so they could see what a cute town it is, and we took them to Aladdin’s, so they could eat at a local restaurant chain (it specializes in Mediterranean food). Of course, we managed to see half a dozen CVCA-related folks at the restaurant, since the CVCA fall play was that evening and the CVCA folks were grabbing dinner before going to the show. That probably made me and Mer seem much more happening than we really are. We had an excellent meal and got to hear a little more about Tom’s and Kelsey’s backgrounds and how they were finding Northeast Ohio.

For the entertainment of the evening, we drove the short distance over to Happy Days Visitor Center at the edge of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. We were there to see our friends’ band, Bethesda, but it also introduced the park to Tom and Kelsey, who said they enjoy parks. That was great.

It was wonderful to finally hear Bethesda in a non-bar venue. The audience was older than that at most Bethesda shows, and they were very respectful. Since Bethesda was playing a two-hour set, its members were able to take their time and tell some of the stories behind some of their songs; many of the stories were new to me, and I have been going to Bethesda concerts for over three years. Whoever was running sound did a great job – the group sounded excellent, with the exception of the really high notes on the lead guitar – those were occasionally piercing.

Tom and Kelsey said they really enjoyed the show, and we had a good time getting to know them better. When things warm up and dry out in the spring, Mer and I will have to introduce them to some more of the excellent parks in the area.