I started Saturday off with a 17.5-mile run with Nate and his friend Ben, and my boss Jim joined us partway along. It was a beautiful morning, and I was able to finish the last two miles quite strongly.

For the social part of the day, Mer and I headed up to the west side of Cleveland, right up to the lake, where we hiked the Edgewater Park Trail. The trail is a good little trail in that it starts on bluffs overlooking the lake and city, and takes you down to the beach, and then out to a pier and breakwater. I was a bit amazed in that the day was pretty nearly perfect, with lots of sun and around eighty degrees, but the beach was not crowded. There was still a good number of people around, but it was far from packed.

There seemed to be a festival or competition going on – there was a PA system, and tents set up all over a field near the beach, and lots of people wandering around in matching t-shirts. I stopped and asked a friendly group of people, and they said it was the Cleveland Corporate Challenge. It seems there is a competition every summer involving a wide range of activities, and this particular Saturday seemed focused on tug-of-war and things of that nature. They certainly had a good turnout.

Mer and I wandered the pier and out on the breakwater as far as we could before the path disappeared. It was a fun place to watch people and boats, and we did not rush along. We then took the rest of the path back to the car, and headed home.

I had planned on going to see our friends’ band, Bethesda, give a concert at a coffeehouse, but I had some stomach issues, probably from dehydration from the run in the morning or the walk in the afternoon. So, we stayed home, and I wanted to see if there was a movie I could rent from Amazon.com. It had a recommendation of the animated version of Batman: Year One, which was based on a comic book I had loved back in the early nineties. That made for my plans for the evening. Based on renting that, I also saw a recommendation for the animated version of the comic book Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, so we watched that as well. Mer was a good soul and humored me, and it was much fun to see those stories “come to life” in an animated film. I’m sad to have missed Bethesda, but it was a nice substitute.

On Friday, Mer and I headed down to North Canton for a dinner date with Aunt Mary. Since it was Hall of Fame Weekend in Canton itself, we decided to stay north of the city, and so we went to Menches, which claims to have invented the ice cream cone, and has excellent burgers (and it offers fifty different ones on the menu). I think Mer and Aunt Mary were shocked when I passed on dessert, but then assumed all was well when I suggested we go to the North Canton branch of Handel’s ice cream, which was only a mile away. We ate well.

After supper, we went back to Aunt Mary’s, where we watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! While the shows were on, I installed Aunt Mary’s new printer/copier and tried to get her laptop to run a little faster. It could still use some work, but that means another dinner date!

On Wednesday, we had a dinner invitation at the house of our colleague Lesa and her husband Jay, along with their daughter. It was a lovely evening, cool but with sun, and we spent the time before dinner out on their back deck. Lesa even brought the supper table out on to the porch so we could dine al fresco. Supper was excellent, and afterwards Lesa and Jay broke out three different kinds of ice cream, along with the peanut butter bars I had brought. It was certainly good living.

After supper, the five of us played Apples to Apples, a game in which players submit a card in their hands in an attempt to get a judge to agree that it is a good match for a subject card (like “New York”). It is a well-designed game, with people getting good fun out of some of the lengths to which people go to try to match things up. I eventually won the game by getting to seven cards first, so that was a bonus to a fun evening.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my former student Skyler saw me after the youth production of Oliver Twist on Friday, and we arranged to have a game night. Skyler saw that through, and so we hosted a fun little evening of games on Monday.

All of the students who showed up were former members of my improv club, the Royal Fools, and/or members of my now-defunct Irish dancing club at CVCA. Skyler was there with his girlfriend, Micaela, and Skyler’s sister Zivana was there with her boyfriend George. It was just the right-sized group – six of us in all; it was big enough to feel festive while still feeling intimate.

We played a total of three games. We started the evening with a game that Skyler and Zivana brought with them, a game where you had to be the last person to come up with a word from a category that began with a particular letter. So, you might have “Movie titles” as a category, with the letter “B.” It sounded easy, but turned out to be harder than I thought it would be.

We then played a new-to-me-and-Mer game called Funglish, where you had to get the others to say specific words as you described the object using words printed on 120 different tiles. Again, it was trickier than I thought it would be.

We finished the evening by playing 25 Words or Less, a great word game where you try to get your team to say words on a card, but the catch is that you are limited in how many words you can use to describe the words on your card. So, you might only have ten words you can say to get your team to guess all five words on the game card. It is a very clever game, and it is a lot of fun to play or watch.

Skyler also added a twelve-pack of tacos to the mix, and I made cookies. We ate and laughed a lot and had a wonderfully good time.

Saturday was Mer’s day, and she had us head down to Canton around 10:30. We went to the McKinley Memorial and Presidential Library, which sounds really odd if you are not familiar with the library. It somehow grew to be a museum with a science wing, a planetarium, a museum about Stark County, and a space for rotating exhibits. Mer and I had become members of the museum about a year ago, and she wanted to get in one last visit before our membership expired.

I’m glad she did – the science wing had been renovated recently, with some added exhibits about robots, including a couple of interactive exhibits where you got to operate a robotic arm. It turns out that Mer is pretty good at running the arms, even when they are controlled with two joysticks. Much of the rest of the museum was the same, but it included some fossils of dinosaurs and mammoths and saber-toothed tigers, so that was pretty great.

We took in a show at the planetarium, which was about the current summer night sky, with an emphasis on how there is nowhere in Ohio where the real night sky can be seen because of light pollution. The astronomer running the show was funny and entertaining, but it was kind of sad when he said only ten percent of Americans have seen the Milky Way, and only one percent has seen the Andromeda Galaxy, which used to be bright enough in the night sky to cast shadows. I know I have seen the Milky Way (in Maine, in my Dad’s driveway), but I’m not sure if I have seen Andromeda.

We finished the visit in the Stark County section, which sounds tame, but has some interesting exhibits on President McKinley, and on industry in Stark County. We finished the entire museum just as it was closing at 4:00.

Mer then took me to Aunt Zovie’s house; she lives in Canton. Aunt Zovie is an old family friend of Mer’s, and we had not seen her in a couple of years. Aunt Zovie recently tripped on her dog and broke her leg, so she was recovering at home with the use of a walker. As an added bonus, her daughter Marian was home, and Marian is a professional singer who spends much of her time in New York. She is bright and funny, and mixes with interesting people, so she is fascinating to listen to. Aunt Zovie is world’s most gracious and positive person, so she is a delight. An old family friend of Aunt Zovie and Marian’s was also there; Erma works in computers and networking at the University of Cincinnati, and although she is quiet, when she does speak, it is usually pretty funny. All in all, the two hours we spent there flew by. What a great family!

On Sunday, we headed down to New Baltimore with Dale and Carlene to see more old family friends – the George clan was celebrating Ray’s seventy-fifth birthday. Mer and her family have known the Georges since Mer was three, so the families have been close for over thirty years. I have known the Georges for about twenty years, and they are grand people. The party was full of folks from church as well, so it was a festive occasion. All of the George children made it back for the party, and most of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren. As if that was not enough, there were nine kittens in the barn to watch romp around and occasionally scoop up. Aunt Mary was there as well, and so we got to visit while kitten-watching. It was a fine afternoon; we headed home after a couple of hours to get Dale and Carlene back to Cardinal in time for supper.

On Thursday, we got a chance to go out with Zach and Londa. They took us up to Cleveland, first to go to supper at Piada. Piada is a fast food Italian place that is made-to-order Italian food along the lines of Subway for sandwiches or Chipotle for Mexican food. It was really good, and both Mer and I were pleased to be introduced to a new restaurant.

After supper, we headed over to Cain Park, which is a public park on the west side of Cleveland. The park has two amphitheaters for various performances, and we went to the bigger one; we were there to see the dance company Inlet Dance. Inlet Dance was started by a man who used to go to Zach and Londa’s church, and they had seen several performances by the group and thought we would like them. They were right. We saw several smaller groups perform, and all were excellent. They even had the entire group dance a fully improvised dance to the audience suggestion “escape from the zoo.” It was hard to know where to look on that one, there were so many impressive dancers on stage at once.

Normally, when I see dance, I am impressed by the women because they are beautiful and graceful, and that was true with Inlet; however, on this night I was blown away by the men. There were two pieces danced by a trio of men and a pair of men, and both were jaw-dropping for the controlled power. I actually gasped a couple of times at the strength displayed, and it was all done slowly and with grace. Amazing.

We headed right home after the show, which is not normal for us – we love dessert, and usually go out for some after an evening out. Zach and Londa tried to take us to a tavern that had wonderful chocolate beet cake (really – they swore by it), but sadly, the tavern had gone out of business. We could have stopped at the Cheesecake Factory, since we went right by it, but I felt we had to get home to give some medication to our recovering sick kitty. I’m sure the lack of calories did not hurt me at all.

Friday, after school, Mer wanted to go see Oliver Twist, the CVCA youth drama camp musical production for this summer. The play is only performed once, and is the result of just two-and-a-half weeks of rehearsal. It is for ages of about five to about twelve, and they did a creditable job. There were no major gaffes of lines, and the musical numbers often had as many as twenty-five kids on stage at once, and they did well. Mer and I knew three of the children in the production, as they are the kids of colleagues, so that was fun. Also, the camp counselors are made up of recently graduated CVCA drama students, and it was good to see them.

After the show, Mer and I chatted with some of the folks we ran into. One was Skyler, a student who just graduated. Skyler had seen a recent Facebook post of mine talking about games, and he suggested a game night. I told him I thought that was a great idea, and told him to organize it, which he said he would. We agreed on getting together on Monday. So, a social evening out led to a social evening in.

Yesterday, Wednesday, was a beautiful day. It has been hot here, and the heat finally gave way to temperatures in the seventies. I could not stand the idea of not being out in “the nature,” so Mer and headed over to nearby Twinsburg, to the Center Valley Trail, on which we had never been. The main trail of the Center Valley Trail is paved, and about a mile-and-a-half long, but there are lots of side trails into the woods, and Tinker’s Creek runs through the park. The park is surrounded by housing developments and schools and roads, but it does a great job of making you feel isolated from all of that.

We had a ton of rain last week, and Tinker’s Creek was swollen. That was pretty, but meant that two of the main side trails were closed because of high water. We did find a pretty trail that meandered through the woods on high ground that was dry right up to the last ten feet, where we had to pick our way along through a muddy area. We also jumped on a side trail that I thought would take us to the north end of the paved trail, but I kept getting distracted by interesting other trails. We came out on the paved trail, and I was feeling smug until I saw a sign that identified the bridge over Tinker’s Creek as the South Bridge, near where we’d started. Ooops. We retraced our steps along the paved trail, and finished up the hike to the end of the trail, where we turned and headed back to the car. In all, we were hiking for about two hours, which was a wonderful escape in the middle of the week.

When we got home, we ate supper and watched an episode of the TV show Lost. We followed that with a game night – I challenged Mer to Trivial Pursuit – Book Lovers’ Edition. Mer has her master’s degree in English and reads all the time, so when after fifteen minutes we had only answered two questions correctly between both of us, I decided the game was too hard to be entertaining, so we quit and switched gears to True Math, a game about math. I did win, but not by so much as I would have hoped, being a math and science nerd going way back.

Yesterday (Saturday) was an odd day in that it got off to a really late start. I was supposed to go running with Nate, meeting him at 6:00 on the Towpath Trail, but when I got up, it was pouring and in the middle of a thunderstorm. So, we cancelled the run, but then I could not get back to sleep. After an hour, I gave up trying to go back to sleep, and I noticed that the rain had stopped. I checked the radar online, and I guessed I had about forty-five minutes to go running, so I went out and ran 4.3 miles, getting back to the house just as the next wave of storms came through. I showered and got on the computer and got caught up on writing blog entries, and by then it was about 10:00 and I was sleepy. I headed back to bed, just as Mer was waking up; she was happy in thinking I had finally gotten a good night’s sleep, when in fact I was going back to bed. I got up to help Mer with a grocery list and ate some breakfast, and then I went back to bed around 11:00. I was then interrupted by two robo-calls on the phone, and I finally fell asleep at some point, waking up around 2:00 just as Mer was returning home from visiting her parents and going to the store. So, “the day” started around 2:00.

I wanted to get out and about, so I wanted to go hiking in a nearby park over in Stow, the next town over. We went there and set out on the trail, but we had to turn back after about five minutes because the bugs were so thick. Usually, this time of year the bugs are not an issue, but this month has been unusually rainy, so the mosquitoes were out in force.

My Plan B evolved on the fly as I remembered it was the Italian Festival in downtown Cuyahoga Falls, so we headed over there to wander through the streets. There were a good number of people, and there were lots of “fair food” carts, some real Italian food offerings, and even some carnival games. We got to the far end of the grounds when we heard a band playing in the bandstand, so we walked toward it as Mer realized they were playing “It’s a Grand Old Flag,” which was an interesting choice for an Italian festival. We stopped and listened to the very excellent band for about thirty minutes, and they played mostly patriotic songs and musical medleys. Mer accurately noted that the Italian Festival has better food, but the Cuyahoga Falls Irish Festival has more culturally relevant entertainment.

We wandered along the river after the band wrapped up, and we saw there was equipment next to and even on the river, getting ready to take down one of two dams along the Cuyahoga River in an effort to return the river to a natural state. It will be interesting to see how the river changes. We wandered down to the Sheraton Hotel, and then up to the street level. I thought I had seen a boardwalk along the river from the highway, and so we continued along the street until we came to a small park about which we had not known about – the Highbridge Glens park. The park was small, but quite interesting, with a footbridge over the river (the footbridge was blocked on the far side by the highway) that offered amazing views of the river and the gorge below. There was also a small boardwalk that wound down to an observation platform. We even saw a bridal party having pictures taken in the park. It was a good find.

We made our way back to the street and then back toward the car. Along the way, we stopped at the entrance of the Italian Festival to watch the bocce tournament going on. It was being played by eight middle-aged and older men, and they were really competitive. It was amusing to see how seriously the game was being taken.

We went home, where I made supper, and we watched two episodes of Lost on DVD. We managed to have a pretty good day, given how late we started.

Today (Sunday), we had the last of this year’s graduation parties. The party was for Joseph, and we were very close to Joseph’s older sister while she was at CVCA, and so we’ve known Joseph for the last three years or so. We also know Joseph’s extended family pretty well, with one of his relatives teaching English at CVCA. The party was small, but quite fun, with a very talented three-man band playing music mostly from the 50s and 60s. We got to catch up with our colleague Lesa and her husband Jay, and we ate quite a bit of good food. We got to dance to two of the songs played, and we talked for some time with Joseph and his sister. It was a mellow ending to “the season.”

After the party, we swung by Dale and Carlene’s place to visit. We only stayed for about thirty minutes, but that is the joy of having Mer’s parents so close at hand – we can visit whenever we like, so there is no pressure to fit in long visits every time we see them. The “drop by” visit is pretty satisfying in its own right.

We ended the day by finishing off some ice cream we had on hand and by listening to Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!

Last night, Friday, we got a chance to head down toward New Baltimore to visit some old (younger) friends. About a decade ago, we became friends with a family at church, and really hit it off with the two eldest children, who were both in high school. Since then, we have stayed in touch, and Zac has gotten married to his wife Erica and moved to London, and they now have two young sons. Anna has earned an advanced degree in French and studied in Switzerland for years before taking a job in Boston. This is not typical of rural Ohio children, and you can see why we love these folks. The two younger children of the family are now in Columbus, one working to renovate homes for the poor, and the youngest still in school. It’s a remarkable family.

Recently, Zac’s and Erica’s visas ran out, so they returned home. They are in Northeast Ohio for a few weeks before heading off to California to be near Erica’s family. They invited us down for supper and swimming and ice cream, and we eagerly accepted. We thought we would get to see Zac and Erica and their family, and Zac’s parents as well (who are very good people and much fun), but we were quite pleased as the rest of the clan drifted in over the evening. Anna was in town to see her nephews and to buy her first car, and even Joel and Becky pulled in just before we left to go get ice cream. It was really good to reconnect with everyone, even if it was only briefly.

Mer and I did join Zac in the bath-like pool (the water was close to ninety degrees) for quite awhile, while Erica and the boys stayed poolside. After the swim, we changed back into normal clothes, and we went to New Baltimore Ice Cream with Zac and Erica and the elder boy, where we got to visit for another half hour or so. Since the ice cream stand was on the way home for us, we said goodbye to them there. I’m sad for Erica and Zac that their visas ran out, but it was great to see them again.

Wednesday found us back in Kent again, this time visiting with Eric and Shanna, who live in Kent. They took us to the gourmet burger restaurant Bar 145. We spent a leisurely time over supper, chatting. Eric and Shanna are founding members of the band Bethesda, and they recently did a short tour of the Southeast, so we asked lots of questions about that (they said they really loved Ashville, North Carolina). We also filled them in on our recent vacation in Italy.

After supper, they took us to an ice cream stand on the edge of Kent called Katie’s Korner. We got ice cream, which was quite good, and sat outside in the finally-cooling-down evening air, where we talked more about band life and teaching (Shanna and Eric are both teachers as well). We headed back to Eric and Shanna’s place after that, where we said good evening.

That probably should have been the end of the evening, but I could not resist being so close to Insomnia Cookies without stopping by there. Having learned from my gluttony the last time we were in Kent with the Churchills, Mer and I settled quite happily on two cookies.