Saturday started out with Shannon’s and my running five miles down in the Valley, running under two different major highway bridges, which Shannon found cool. It was a fun time because of the company, but my run left me pretty beat (Shannon let me hear it, too). After heading home and getting ready for the day, we did a Shannon requirement – a good breakfast. Shannon’s favorite meal is breakfast, so we headed over to the dependable, if not exciting, Bob Evans. Mer observed that at least it is an Ohio-based chain, so it was sort of local. Breakfast hit the spot, and got us going for a day of art.

I had sent Shannon a link to an Ohio tourism website, mostly as a joke, but he actually used it and found out that the small, but quite good, art museum at Oberlin College was having a special exhibit on medieval art. Both Shannon and his wife Jo are really into all things medieval, so he really wanted to go. Oberlin is about an hour away, so off we went. As a bonus, the museum also had special exhibits on book illustrations, which I knew Mer would like, and Saturday was also the day of the town’s sidewalk chalk art fair. It was a good day to be going.

The museum at the college is free, even the special exhibits. Shannon was impressed with the medieval art pieces – there were probably about forty of them in all. I liked them because the vast majority of the works were religious in subject matter, and that always interests me; plus, Mer and I felt as if it was an extension of our recent Italy trip.

We more or less blew through the regular museum to get upstairs to where they had fifteenth-century illustrated church choir books on display; they were elaborate and impressive. Next to them was the exhibit on modern book illustrations, with examples from books by Poe, Bronte, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and more. Mer, as I expected, loved the books.

We headed back outside to see the chalk art. It was quite good, and varied wildly in effort and talent and subject matter. That was very cool – you could have kids drawing more or less next to “real” established artists. What really surprised me was the size of the event; I had thought it would be more or less around the art museum, but it stretched for five or six blocks in two directions. We wandered over the entire space, and we enjoyed the scene, even in the mid-afternoon heat.

We headed home and rested a little, after swinging by Handel’s for ice cream. Shannon impressed us by getting a shake and then going back for a sundae. Back at the house, our friend Ami (“Dubbs”) came over, which was a meeting six years in the making. I love Dubbs – she is a ton of fun, and I knew Shannon and Dubbs would get a kick out of each other. I had tried to get them to meet over the last six years, but it never worked out. Happily, I was right – Shannon and Dubbs hit it off, even to the point of Dubbs carrying Shannon piggy-back into the movie theater later in the evening.

We headed over to Big Boy in Valley View because Dubbs had mentioned it. For the second evening in a row, Shannon ate a veggie burger. He and I both ordered shakes, which were good, but more than either of us could finish. I actually got a little ill from the heat of the day, and had to spent a little too much time in the bathroom. After supper, we walked over to and then over a very cool pedestrian bridge, so Shannon got more bridges in for the day.

We finished the evening by going to the theater nearby to see Joss Whedon’s version of Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing. I loved it – it was an updated version that worked well, and it was well acted and funny throughout. The movie had a great scene where Beatrice overhears that Benedict loves her, and it was the first time Mer or I had ever seen that scene play out as amusingly as the corresponding scene with Benedick. It was really well done. The only slightly odd thing was that the four of us were more or less the only people in the theater who were laughing, and it was a very funny production. Strange.

Art and Shannon had a pretty good day of it.