Last weekend we got to spend the weekend with our friend Ellen in Hillsdale, Michigan. The trip was prompted by Ellen inviting me to give my lecture on “Quantum Mechanical Ideas and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” to her senior English class. I had developed the idea for the lecture a few years ago when Mer still taught the play, and Mer used to have me speak on the topic as well. (For those interested, I talk about quantum mechanical ideas that pop up in the play – things about uncertainty, dual states, the importance of location, and so on.)

Anyway, we used the Monday lecture as an excuse to go out for the whole weekend. So, we headed out about 4:15 on Friday. We were a little anxious in that the weather forecast called for some locally heavy snow, but we did not hit any snow until we had about fifteen miles left to go on the highway (about forty minutes from Ellen’s). The main road off of the highway was a bit dicey since Michigan does not really plow roads much anymore (at least as far as I can tell), but the traffic was light and the road was straight. We were at Ellen’s about 7:45 or so, which was pretty good time. Ellen, ever a gracious hostess, was making a mac-n-cheese casserole that turned out mouth-wateringly good. We ate late, about 8:30, but it was worth it. Ellen had even laid in some ice cream supplies for dessert – very nice.

Saturday was mellow. I had intended on going for a run, but when I saw that it was a wind chill of minus-8 outside, I changed my mind. Instead, I made brownies, which did not firm up right away (they actually were not really firm until Sunday after church), but they were still very good in a soupy kind of way. Ellen stocks dark cocoa, so I used some of that, and the brownies were really dark. We used them later that night as part of large sundaes.

After an afternoon in which I blogged and read, Mer graded, and Ellen handcrafted Valentines that would have made Michelangelo mutter in envy, we went to supper at the nearby Saucy Dog barbeque restaurant. It is a good comfort-food place, and we ate well. We followed that at home with the aforementioned sundaes, which we happily munched on while watching the modern Ethan Hawke version of Hamlet. Although Ellen does not teach Hamlet, she wanted a good version to show her students as part of their study of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which is a play based on the action in Hamlet. I had forgotten how bloody that version of Hamlet is, but otherwise it is very well done and very creative.

I also spent sporadic time during the movie working on Ellen’s Macintosh laptop, which had crashed during an update that I insisted she needed. It all turned out well, but there were some tense (on my part) moments. I did not get everything fully working again until Sunday afternoon.

Sunday we went to Ellen’s church, where we heard a sermon on a passage in Acts, where an Ethiopian official is instructed in the Scriptures by Philip. The pastor pointed out that God instructed Philip to go way out of his way and risk some danger in order to save one man. It was a good point, and a nice picture of how much God values us.

After church, we ate leftover mac-n-cheese casserole and ice cream and brownies. I napped and puttered on Ellen’s computer and then went for a short walk to get some air. I found a very nice park that I want to investigate when the weather is good. Ellen was very anxious to see a movie called The Tree of Life, so she tried to get it from the library. She succeeded, but it was a BluRay disk, and we could not play it. She ordered the DVD from Amazon, thinking she would get a link for a free download, but she did not. So she finally punted, and we rented it from Amazon and watched it streaming over my computer (hooked to a twenty-four-inch monitor).

The Tree of Life is quite a film. It is very artsy, with a lot of time showing the grandeur of the creation while referring to scriptures from Genesis and Job. The film then shifts largely to following one family, and the troubles that family has. I’m not sure what I thought about the film – it was not easy to follow, and I had a mild headache from my poor diet of the weekend, so I was having a hard time keeping up with it.

Ellen had to pause the movie to make supper. She had invited a friend over from church, and so was making supper for all of us. It was a great meal, and Ellen’s friend Richard is fascinating. He has a PhD in history, and is a WWI buff, so we got to spend a lot of time talking about France. I think the meal lasted over two hours, and I did not notice. Usually, I get restless at a kitchen table after an hour (or even sooner). It was a good time.

Richard had to leave because of work the next day, but we went ahead and finished up the movie before going to bed.

On Monday, Mer and I packed up the car before following Ellen to her school, Hillsdale Academy. Hillsdale Academy is the K-12 school associated with Hillsdale College. The Academy is small, with only about twenty students per grade, so Ellen is the only English teacher for grades ten through twelve. The building is very pretty, all brick and carpeted. They do a nice job there, as far as I can tell.

Ellen gave me two periods to lecture to the same class – I think she co-opted the students’ science class to give me more time. The students impressed me. They listened politely to everything I had to say, and several anticipated points I was going to bring up, so they were tracking with the lecture. The lecture was split – I taught first and third period, but that worked fine. I had a good time.

We got to see Ellen in action – her second period class was studying Dante’s Inferno, and Mer got to read a little in Italian to give the class a sample of what the original sounded like. Ellen’s sixth period class was studying To Kill a Mockingbird, and it was hard for both me and Mer not to shoot our hands up in the air to answer questions. Ellen is an excellent teacher, and she runs a tight classroom.

Ellen has a free period 4th period, followed by lunch, so we went to a local deli for lunch. More good food, more good chatting. This is a happy re-occurrence in our lives.

After sixth period, Ellen was done for the day (as far as English goes – she may have had one more Latin class), so we decided to head out. It was a smooth drive home, and the kitties were all well, so it was a very successful weekend. Although I’m still waiting for my honorarium.

Last Wednesday (last week – the 8th), Mer and I invited over our colleagues Dubbs and Craig, and our friend Anna. Anna has spent the last several years in Geneva, Switzerland, working on her Master’s degree in French, so it was good to see her again.

I made dinner and dessert for everyone (burritos and peanut butter bars, respectively), and Dubbs and Anna both brought chips, so we were not hurting for food. Anna is sharp and witty, so she easily fit in to the group dynamics of CVCA folks.

After dinner, I broke out my new trivia game, Bezzerwizzer. Bezzerwizzer has a huge array of trivia categories, twenty in all, covering arts, fashion, science, sports, food, and more. The twist is that you have tiles that allow you to try to “steal” your opponents’ question (if they get it wrong), and you have one tile that lets you trade categories with another player or team. In our game, we played me and Mer versus Anna, Craig, and Dubbs. We played three games, and they were all close, but Anna and company won two games to our one. We still had a great time – with Dubbs and Craig in the same room, it’s pretty hard to not laugh. Sometimes it’s pretty hard to breathe while you are laughing. It was another very successful evening, and we even stayed up past 10:00 on a school night. Wild us.

Last Saturday was my day. I did not have anything too special planned, but wanted to have a puttery day. I went running in the morning, and then came home and showered and took a nap. I then took Mer to Howe Avenue in Cuyahoga Falls, to eat at Five Guys. While not even close to a fine restaurant, they have really great burgers and fries, and it certainly hit the spot. On the way home, we stopped by Handel’s for ice cream, so it was a great food day.

Once home, we popped in Super 8, a science fiction film that our friend Clarice had recommended and then lent to us. Super 8 is set in the late 1970s, and focuses on a group of young people trying to film a short film for a student contest. While they are filming late at night near a train station, a train goes by and hits a truck. The train derails, and turns out to be an Air Force train, carrying mysterious cargo. The kids try to deal with things as people begin to disappear and the military moves in. I won’t get more specific than that, but Clarice was spot-on about the film. It was really excellent, and well shot and told.

On Sunday, Mer and I went to church, came home for lunch, and then went to calling hours for a former colleague who had died from cancer. That was sobering, but it was happy to see how many people came out to support the family (we waited for over an hour to get to see the relatives).

In the early evening, we headed over to Zach and Londa’s house for their Super Bowl party. Zach’s brother, who lives with his young family in Israel, was in town, and so Zach’s family was there. Zach and Londa also invited eight to ten friends over, and so it was very festive feeling. There was too much food, as usual, and I ate too much, as usual. But, although I was sad about the result (the Patriots lost), the football game was entertaining, the food was great, and the company was much fun.

Last Friday, Mer and I got together with our friend Craig, and we headed down to Akron to Actors’ Summit Theater to see the one-man show Bully. Bully is the story of Theodore Roosevelt, and Craig teaches social studies at CVCA, so we figured he would like it. It turns out that Craig knows a ton about Roosevelt, having read several biographies on him. I am fond of Teddy since he fought against trusts and set aside national park land, and Mer and I both like getting our history from theatrical performances. So, we expected it to be a good evening.

It was. The actor playing Teddy, Neil Thackaberry, did a very fine job. I’m always impressed with one-man shows, since I’m not sure what happens if you forget a line as an actor – there is no one on stage to help cover for you. Also, during the performance we saw, a man in the audience passed out briefly. He was able to walk out of the theater with the paramedics, and we were told after the show he was fine, which was great news. But, what impressed me from a theater viewpoint was how Neil came off stage, helped the man to the lobby, made sure he was all right, and then came back in and picked up the play from where he had stopped. It was pretty impressive.

Also impressive was Teddy himself. He was quite a man, and quite complex. He fought in war and wanted the U.S. to go in to Europe in WWI earlier than we did, but he won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating peace between Japan and Russia. Teddy loved to hunt, but set aside park lands. He was widely read, and spoke several languages. He lost both his mother and his first wife on the same day, which was Valentine’s Day. He married again, and lost a son in WWI. It was a fascinating life to watch on stage.

The set was simple – it was a fairly faithful reproduction of Teddy’s study in his home. There were several levels to the study, so it lent itself to other locations (such as the back of a train).

There was a brief talk-back after the show, where the audience got to ask Neil questions, and Neil was joined by a local news man who is an amateur expert on Roosevelt. I do not remember too much of the specifics of the talk, but Mer and I always like such talks – they put the play into more perspective.

After the show, Craig went with us to Friday’s for dessert (we had a gift card). Craig’s family was out of town, so he was free to stay out as late as he liked. Craig is a very funny and creative man, so we had rather a good time talking and laughing over our Brownie Obsession desserts. We did not get home until past 11:00 – it was a very fun evening.

Last Saturday, it was Mer’s turn to take me out for my birthday. She picked a restaurant in Ravenna, and it was a small Italian place called Cipriano’s. It was a very cute restaurant that looked to be a converted home. That gave it a very cozy feeling. Mer had invited our friends Eric and Shanna along for supper, and that was a great addition. We had not been out with Eric and Shanna since our cave exploration back in the summer.

Eric and Shanna are in a band, Bethesda, and they are gearing up to make a new album. Eric teaches junior high history at CVCA, and Shanna teaches English and speech at Lake High School in Hartville. So, we had lots of band and school things to chat about.

The service at the restaurant was very good, and the food was excellent. Mer had gotten the place based on a recommendation from Aunt Mary, and Aunt Mary had steered us well.

After supper, we headed home. We briefly considered trying to go to a concert at the nearby Happy Days Visitor Center, but we figured (correctly, as it turned out) that the concert would be sold out since the venue is small. We had a quiet evening in, which suited me just fine.

Last Friday, Mer took me up to Cleveland for the second part of my Christmas present. We went back to the 14th Street Theater to see Joshua Seth, a “psychological illusionist.” Joshua claimed to be able to use psychological tricks to pick up on details about individual audience members and to share information with the audience. I was looking forward to the performance, as I like unusual things like this, and I like to try to figure out how things work.

The show started a bit late because the theater was having trouble with the sound system. They got that figured out, and Joshua came on stage and started the show by saying he could share a number with us. He said he was thinking of a number between eleven and fifty, where both digits were odd and both were different. The number thirty-seven popped into my head, and I remembered to look at his hands. His right hand was by his waist, but had three fingers extended. I did not get a chance to see his left hand before he asked how many of us were thinking of thirty-seven. Most of the audience applauded. It was a great example of how the brain can notice and process a ton of information without our being consciously aware of it.

Later in the show, he did something similar where he told the audience he was thinking of two shapes, one inside the other. He asked how many people were thinking of a triangle inside of a circle, and most people applauded. He shared that he had made a circle with one hand and briefly made a triangle with both hands near his waist, and he used that as an example of how his art worked.

He did another illusion, where he put band-aids over his eyes, and then put on a metal eye shade so that he could not see at all. He then had an audience member come up and draw five random cards, which he then named. He had a woman come up and write a word on a small whiteboard. She wrote “car,” and he then took the board, and drew a very rough-looking car before writing the word “car.” It was impressive.

He ended the first act by having all members of the audience write down names, a number of significance, and hobbies or jobs. He said that the “vibe” was easier to pick up if people wrote the information down. He had us put all the slips of paper in envelopes, collected them, and then put them in his bag on the stage. He then proceeded to call people up by name or by profession, which he claimed to be “seeing” in his mind. He would then ask them to think of their number or some other fact they had written down, and then would concentrate, and then “zoom in” on the information by getting closer and closer (like, “I’m sensing a fall month, like October…the middle of the month…the 13th or 14th…the 14th!”). It was excellent showmanship. He did it successfully six or seven times, and did have one audience member where he failed to guess anything, for which he apologized, saying his technique was not one hundred percent effective. It was very entertaining.

There was an intermission, and after the break, Joshua switched over to hypnotism. He had ten people come on stage, and he tried to hypnotize them. Of the ten, he succeeded really well with two of them. He put the two people though the paces. He made them be at a beach and be hot, and then made the temperature drop suddenly (the woman of the pair curled up in the man’s lap at that). He made them conduct an orchestra and play various instruments. The man on stage was deeply under, and so Joshua made him forget the number six, and then had him count his fingers. He made the man talk in a gibberish language, and made the woman an expert translator. He made the two of them drive their dream cars at three hundred mph (the woman put on eye makeup in the rear-view mirror going three hundred mph), and made them get pulled over by a cop, and try to get out of the ticket. At that, the woman pulled down her outer shirt (happily she had on two shirts). The man hit on the cop (who was played by Joshua), which was amusing. When Joshua woke them up, they remembered nothing at all. I am glad I was not on stage for that – it would seem a shame to pay for the show, but then not remember it.

It was a fantastic show and very entertaining. Over the next two days, I tried to figure out how he was doing some of the things he did, which could not have all been done by reading body language or the like. Here is my theory:

For the bit where Joshua was telling people their names, hobbies, numbers, etc., he was probably getting the information from a confederate backstage. Joshua wore an over-the-ear microphone that looked normal. But, it would be a piece of cake to put a small speaker behind the ear at the base of the microphone. Joshua had a remote on his belt that controlled background music. He always turned the music up when people came on stage. It is my theory that the music was being used to cover up the slim chance that an audience member on stage would overhear the small speaker. Also, the remote had too many buttons for simple volume-up, volume-down, and skipping to the next track. I think some of the buttons controlled a speaker behind his ear.

Also, Joshua made a big production of putting the envelopes with the audience information into his bag, which was near the back of the stage. He then came to the front of the stage and moved around a lot with a flourish. It would have been very easy for a confederate to pull the envelopes out of the bag if the bag had a false back. The confederate could then simply read the information to Joshua, who could make it more dramatic for showmanship purposes. I’m guessing that the one time he got it wrong with an audience member, it was probably a case where the woman had the same first name as someone else, and the confederate got the wrong card.

As far as the card trick and the word “car” on the board, that would be easy to spot by confederate using a camera or the like. In fact, Joshua said the man holding the cards was shuffling them too quickly for the images to register in the mind. I think the card shuffling was making it too hard for the confederate to see the cards using whatever method he was using to see them.

Lastly, it was interesting to me that the theater was having trouble with the sound system before the show. I think that Joshua’s wireless system for his speaker was causing interference with the theater’s normal channels for their sound system.

All of this is just a guess, but it explains everything plausibly. It does not take away from the fun of the evening, and the hypnotism part was quite real (I’ve seen a hypnotist before). I had a good time.

Tuesday was my forty-first birthday, and although we celebrate birthdays on the next weekend, Mer at least wanted to take me out to eat. She had a coupon to O’Charley’s, which is a new(ish) restaurant on Howe Road in Cuyahoga Falls. So, she took me there. Despite the name, O’Charley’s is not an Irish restaurant; it serves mostly American foods, and oddly has a lot of hearty soups. I am not normally a soup guy, but they had several soups that sounded good. I got a burger and fries with a soup appetizer, and Mer got “endless soup,” so that she could try at least two kinds. The food was very good, and I liked the ambiance – the restaurant was decorated with pictures from the late 1800s and early 1900s that depicted local people and places. I found them very interesting. I like to eat out, and I like spending time with Mer, so it was a good birthday dinner.

For our respective birthdays, we always “officially” celebrate the weekend after. Last Saturday was my day to take Mer out for her birthday. I wanted to do something special, but my week leading up to Saturday had been hectic, so I was scrambling to pull something together. I wanted to take Mer and our good friends Zach and Londa to an amazing Italian restaurant (and winery) in Canton, called Gervasi’s. It is very upscale, built in an old barn with lots of exposed wood, and the food is excellent. It is also on extensive, pretty grounds, but that is less appealing in January.

Anyway, I called to see if I could get reservations, and because it was last-minute, the best I could do was 8:30. I took that, and arranged things with Zach and Londa. They came over at 5:30 or so to visit, and we actually all went downstairs to the music room and sang for about an hour. Londa plays piano really well, and Zach and I passed the guitar back and forth. We had a really good time.

We headed out for supper and found the place with no problems since I had my GPS (the winery is tucked away in an area of Canton to which I do not often get). We were seated efficiently, and happily next to the fireplace, which was warm and atmospheric. We ordered and chatted. It was a fantastic meal, and very leisurely – we were at the table for almost two hours. Good food and good friendship made for a good way to celebrate the birthday of a good wife!

On Friday, we headed up to Cleveland for the second time in four days. For Christmas, Mer had gotten me tickets to a couple of shows at Playhouse Square’s 14th Street Theater, which is a small cabaret-style theater. This evening, we were there to see Last Call Cleveland, a sketch comedy group.

As some readers of ye olde blog know, I coach an improv comedy group. Improv comedy is where everything on stage is made up off the cuff. Sketch comedy, on the other hand (or the other stage), is where the group does short skits that were written and practiced before the show (think Saturday Night Live). I haven’t had much experience with sketch comedy, so I was looking forward to the evening.

Before the show, we had supper at Otto Moser’s near the theater. Otto Moser’s claims to be the oldest restaurant in Cleveland. Neither of us had ever been before, and we liked it very much. It was mostly pub-grub (burgers and such), but they did it well.

Last Call Cleveland had an opening act of a stand-up comic. I was delighted – I had never seen a stand-up comic before, and was excited to see one live. The man was very good. His parents were Puerto Rican and Mexican, so some of his humor was ethnically based. He did have some swearing and some off-color humor, but much of his humor was pretty clean and very funny. Our favorite skit was where he was coming up for slogans for JoAnn Fabrics; we especially loved “For homeschool kids, it’s called a field trip!”

The stand-up comedian’s act was about fifteen minutes, and then Last Call Cleveland took the stage. They were very energetic; the group was made up of four guys in their early thirties. They set up a recurring skit for the evening in that they were given the task of going back in time to save Cleveland from itself by stopping the river fire, the Municipal Stadium beer riot, and the last-second Michael Jordan shot that beat the Cavaliers when it looked as if they would go to the NBA Finals. That set the tone for the evening – lots of good-natured ribbing of Cleveland, which I loved.

They had a lot of funny skits, but I really loved one near the end where two of the guys sang a song based on a true story of an encounter with a five-year-old at Walmart. It did not turn out well for the adult guy who wrote the song. It was also amusing to watch the audience. There was a bar, so the audience mostly got feeling better and better as the show went on, and we even heard one woman say how much better the second half of the show was compared to the first half. She was raising her third sheet at that time.

It was a funny evening, and I laughed a lot. We did have yet another long ride home as another storm had moved in while the show was in progress. On the whole, it was not too bad, but there were a few tense moments on Route 80, which was oddly crowded for 11:00 pm on a snowy Friday night. We made it home just fine. The evening was a great Christmas present from Mer.

Mer’s birthday was Wednesday the 18th. We usually celebrate our birthdays on the following weekend, but I did want to take Mer out to dinner on her actual birthday. I had a $10 gift card to Outback Steakhouse, so that is where we went. We like Outback’s food, and it did not disappoint. Since it was Mer’s birthday, she got a free sundae, but she supplemented it with a dessert that gave smaller portions of three desserts, and I got my own dessert as well. So, between the two of us we had five different desserts on the table. I think that took our server by surprise. Happy birthday indeed.

On Thursday, we braved a snowy drive to go to Aunt Mary’s. The roads were not bad, but the traffic was so heavy that it took almost an hour and a half to get to Aunt Mary’s, when it normally takes about forty minutes. We got there safely, and Aunt Mary treated us to her company and to dinner at Grinders, which is a local chain of which Mer and I are very fond. Given the late hour that we ate, we were not able to linger too long at Aunt Mary’s house after supper, but we did have time to open the several gifts Aunt Mary gave us (my birthday is on the 24th, so Aunt Mary included me in the celebration as well). The drive home was on clear roads with little traffic, so that was a good end to a pleasant birthday celebration.