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.

Tuesday was quite busy – I even took a half-day off from work. We started by going to get Cessy, our sick kitty, from the animal hospital. He was feeling much better, but we will not know how he is doing in his lung until we get the next x-ray, and that will be on Monday. We got Cessy stashed in our room and bathroom, and I stayed with him for a few hours, mostly in the form of my napping.

In the late afternoon, we headed down toward Canton to visit Aunt Mary. She had recently been to the 150th anniversary celebration of Gettysburg, and we got to hear all about her trip (it sounded like a good one). We only got to visit for about forty-five minutes, because Aunt Mary had to get her two cats to the vet for a check-up, and we had to get back to Cardinal for our Tuesday supper with Dale and Carlene. We helped Aunt Mary get the cats into separate boxes, and then got them into her car, and we headed northward.

After we checked on Cessy and gave him his medication, we went over to Cardinal for supper. We like the Tuesday night supper tradition – we get to visit with Dale and Carlene, and we like the food at Cardinal. After supper, Mer visited with her mom while they took care of pill-sorting for the week, and Dale and I retired to the library for brandy and cigars. Actually, we just visited in the library, but we did not miss the accouterments. We usually stay for Jeopardy!, but we could not on this Tuesday, as we were meeting a former student at our house.

We had seen Ingrid a week or so ago at a graduation party for her brother. She had just graduated college and is going off to teach French in Virginia, so we wanted to see her before she heads out. Ingrid likes art, and we had been talking about the artist Caravaggio when we saw her last, so we all ate ice cream and watched the Power of Art episode on Caravaggio. I had to go to bed pretty soon after we finished watching the show, but Mer and Ingrid visited together until almost 1:00 am. We are both looking forward to hearing how Ingrid’s first year in teaching goes.

This last weekend was our busiest weekend of the summer, as it concerned graduation parties – we had four parties in two days. We started the food fun on Saturday with a grad party for Jake and Katie, two fraternal twins of a great family we know from church. It was out past church, so it took about an hour to get there, but they have a lovely home and yard, and fed us well, and Mer got to beat me in two games of ping pong.

We headed back to our area, near our home, to the Octagon shelter in the Valley. Mer’s student Talia had her party there, and we ran into our colleague Jennifer there. I did not know Talia well, but she was very gracious to me at the party, and she really loved having Mer as a teacher.

Our last party on Saturday was Abby’s party. Abby was Mer’s student for two years, and she was in my improv group at school for a year, so we both knew her. Her home was large and beautiful, with a huge enclosed porch on which Mer and I sat. We knew many of the kids at the party, and several current and former CVCA parents joined us on the porch to chat for about an hour as evening fell. It was quite relaxing.

Sadly, our evening was not done. One of our cats, Cesario (“Cessy”), had been hiding in the basement for about a week. We had thought it was because of the Fourth of July fireworks and because of the heavy thunderstorms, but we had gotten concerned that he had been down there so long. Since our normal vet was closed, we took him to the west side of Akron, to an animal hospital that was open all the time.

We got right in to see a vet (it was about 11:00 pm, so they were not too busy), and they found Cessy had a fever. They did several tests, one of which was an x-ray of his body, and discovered one of his lungs was cloudy – about a third of his right lung. They wanted to keep him for observation and more tests, to which we consented. We left Cessy at the hospital and went home, getting to bed about 2:00 am. (For those wondering, it turns out Cessy has an abscess on his lung, which we are treating with medicine; the medicine may or may not work, which may or may not make surgery the only option – time will tell.)

On Sunday, we had one grad party – a student both of us knew well – Skyler. I have known Skyler since he was in eighth grade and joined his older sister in my Irish dancing club at school. Skyler was also in the Royal Fools improv club for two years, and Mer knew him through my clubs. Skyler’s party was at his mom’s house, in their huge back yard. Skyler’s older sister, Zivana, was there, as well as George (Zivana’s boyfriend of several years). Again, there was a bunch of students we knew well, and we had a good time playing bocce with some of them. Skyler also had his land tortoise roaming in the back yard, which was cool to watch. I picked him up at one point, and he is rather heavy.

After the party, Mer and I went home where we had a mellow evening playing games. I won a literature game called Dark and Stormy, while Mer kicked my butt at a cultural-literacy game called Finish Lines. We finished the weekend that way.

Downtown Kent, Ohio, has undergone quite a transformation. The city and some developers have built a new section of downtown full of restaurants and small shops, and it has made downtown Kent quite the destination for people wanting to go out to eat. We were among those people – on Thursday, Zach and Londa invited us to go with them to Kent, and we happily went along.

They took us to a Mexican food restaurant called Fresco, where it was counter-ordered food, but the food was made to order; it was sort of an upscale Subway for Mexican food. We sat inside, since it was quite hot out, and the food was very good; the only slight downside was that the restaurant got two of our four orders incorrect. I ate mine, since it was just a matter of getting chicken instead of beef, and they quickly made Zach his correct order and let us keep his mistake for free, so they corrected things well.

After supper, Zach told me we could wander, so I happily took everyone down to Kent’s riverside park, passing a live brass band concert in a park as we went along (well done, Kent). The park is not all that new, having been built five or ten years ago, but it was new to me this spring when Nate and I ran there. The park is very pretty, with a beautiful fountain and a high river overlook, and a path along the river that is softly lit by classy streetlights. As a bonus, because of the heavy rains we had had, the river was full and running fast, and it was fun to look at it from the overlook. Mer and I struck up a conversation with a couple, the woman of which liked to canoe through Kent, and was able to tell us about how the river used to be before the construction of the park and the tearing down of a small dam.

After our walk, we headed back up to the new section of downtown, to the College Creamery, where we got ice cream and ate it in the brick alleyway outside the shop. It was cooling off, and it was a pleasant place to sit. We started to head back to the car when I mentioned to Zach that he had mentioned Insomnia Cookies, a cookie store that is open (and delivers) until 2:00 am. Zach laughed, but said he was game, so we went for a second dessert. I’m afraid Mer and I bought and ate five cookies between us – it was not a very reserved evening, but the food was excellent, as was the company.

Wednesday was a pleasant evening to stay inside:  we had torrential rains. That ruled out going mini-golfing with our friends Matt and Clarice, but happily we still got together to watch a movie. Matt got pizza, and Clarice had a co-worker over to wait out the rains, and we watched After the Thin Man, the sequel to The Thin Man, an older detective film. After the Thin Man followed the lighthearted, heavy-drinking Nick and his ever-patient wife, Nora, and they solved the mystery of who shot the jerk husband of Nora’s cousin. It had a wonderful balance of humor and mystery, and I did not guess the solution to the mystery. Great film.

After the movie, we sat around and chatted for about an hour, touching on nerd-topics like the TV shows Doctor Who and Lost. Mer and I had to head home after that because I had to work the next morning, but it was a good midweek getaway.

Sine last fall, one of the history teachers has come over to watch the WW2 series Battlefield with me and Mer. Jordan likes the in-depth approach of the series, and so he came over on Sunday to watch the fourth show in the series, on the Battle for North Africa.

But Jordan is also a runner, so he brought his running stuff with him, and we drove over to Kendall Lake. We ran a loop across the street from the parking lot, then the hilly section of the trail, and finally the short section around the lake itself, for a run of about six miles total. It was not a fast run, given the hills and the heat, but it is always nice to have company when running.

We went back to the house, and we took advantage of the house’s two full bathrooms in order to get cleaned up for supper and the show. I made chicken fingers and cheeseburger bread and cookies for supper, and we settled in for the two-hour analysis of the tactics of North Africa in World War 2. It more or less boiled down to supply lines – when the Germans would make gains, they would have to stretch their supply lines to a breaking point and could not continue. The Allies had a base on the Mediterranean island of Malta, which helped them harass the Axis supply lines by sea. The Americans had their first action of the war in an amphibious landing in French-controlled Africa; none of us had realized we had actually had to fight the French during the war; granted, the resistance was only halfhearted, but I had not known we had to fight the French at all.

We wrapped up the show around 8:00, but kept talking until well after 9:00, when Jordan had to get home to help put his kids to bed.

One of my colleagues, Adam, has a wife, Allie, who has been struggling with leukemia for over a year and a half. Those sorts of medical battles come with expenses, even with insurance helping, which is why I was very pleased to hear about the “Rallie for Allie” 5k race and 2-mile walk on Saturday. In addition to helping raise some funds for the family, these events are a great way to show love and support for people who have been going through a difficult time.

The race was at 9:00 am, and was in Keyser Park, which is only a few miles from our house. Mer went with me to cheer me on, and she ended up helping out with keeping track of people at the finish line, which was very good of her. At a guess, I’d say there were about four hundred people there, runners and walkers combined. I read on Allie’s blog that it was an enormous encouragement to her and her family, and that was the point.

The atmosphere was great – I knew about twenty different people from CVCA, which included both staff and students. That made it feel like a community event for me. Zach and Londa were there to walk, and my boss Jim was there to run, and there were a bunch more people to whom I got to say hi. The race was pretty well run, especially considering it was the first time it had been put together. A police officer kindly donated his time to help with traffic. The race course went more or less around a giant “block” – four roads, with a slight detour into a housing development. It was moderately hilly on the front half, but then was flat. It was a pretty hot day, so it made for slow conditions.

I felt pretty good. I started out hard in an effort to get clear of the pack of people, and I surprised myself by finding myself in the lead pack. I was able to run at a pace I felt was fast and sustainable, and I actually finished fourth, in 21:48. I received a great compliment from the runner behind me, later in the day – he said I was a good runner, and he had expected to catch me, but could not. That meant a lot to me.

The “Rallie for Allie” was a perfect run for me – a good cause, good people, and a good time. I hope it is a blessing for Adam and Allie to look back on as they continue to fight the cancer. God bless them both and their family!

Mer and I decided later in the day to go for a short hike. We had more graduation parties to attend, so it could not be a long trail. I looked in my hiking books, and stumbled across the Deer Run Trail, down on the far side of the Valley, out toward where my friend Jason lives. It was supposed to be an hour hike with hills and a stream, so we went there.

It was really quite hot, even in the shade, and on the hilly sections on the back half of the hike, we were both sweating. The hike was pretty, especially down by Deer Run, a pretty stream that ran by a section of the trail. We had to take a small side path to get down right next to the stream, but you could still see if from the main trail.

The hilly sections were pretty with limited overlooks of the valley – it must be very pretty in the fall when the leaves change colors, and the views must be far-reaching when the leaves are down. I hope to get back there in the fall to see if I am right.

We went home and got cleaned up before heading to the two grad parties of the day. The first one was in a park in Silver Lakes, and it was a fairly new pavilion we had not even known existed. This party was for Derek, whom Mer and I both knew – Derek had been in Ceili Club as a junior high younger brother to his sister Ingrid, who loved to dance, and Derek had been in Mer’s Honors/AP program for two years. We got to visit with Derek and his older brother some, but we spent a long time visiting with Ingrid, who just graduated from college and is going to teach French at a high school in Williamsburg. It was wonderful to catch up with her again.

The second party was for Andrew, who again was known by both me and Mer. Andrew was in my Connections group and was in Honors/AP English. Andrew’s mom works part-time in the accounting department at CVCA, and Mer had taught all four of the boys over the last ten years. We had a good time visiting with Andrew, but we also got to catch up with his older brother Jonny, who recently decided to become an English teacher, largely based on being in Mer’s English classes. That was great.

As we left the party, we spied a ping pong table, and Mer handily beat me after I had a 6-0 lead. She is quite good at the game, and proved it was not a fluke by besting Andrew in the next game. I have been told by the mother that Andrew was deeply impressed.