The day after Thanksgiving has become known as “Black Friday,” and is largely dedicated to consumers buying lots of things. I’m not sure what would make me go out to stores on Black Friday, but sales are not enough. Instead, Mer and I took advantage of the day off to finally go through our basement storage room, and clean it out of all the stuff we have accumulated over thirteen-plus years of marriage. Much of the stuff in there was still packed in boxes from when we moved four and a half years ago. It was time to be pretty ruthless with this stuff. We enjoyed the irony of getting rid of stuff on a day dedicated to the acquiring of more things.

We were. I hauled the stuff up from the basement and emptied the boxes to make sure they were bug-free. Mer then sported the contents into “keep,” “pitch,” and “give away” piles. It took all day, and we did not quite finish; we still had five small boxes to go through, which we finished up on Saturday. We both ran out of steam, and we had a play to go to anyway.

In the evening, we got to go see Actors’ Summit’s latest production, a Christmas-season play called Winter Wonderettes. It was basically a musical review, with a loose storyline of a group of four women singing in a small hardware store for the store’s Christmas celebration. The play was set in the early 1960s, so the music was largely from the 50s. I am often skeptical about musical reviews – they usually are just glorified concerts. So, I was pleased when I enjoyed this one. I liked the characters of the four women, and there was quite a bit of humor involved, including pulling random men out of the audience to help out with the Christmas presentation. The music was recorded and played over speakers, but the singing was excellent, and the set was festive (simple holiday decorations). The lighting for the play was extensive, with various lighting effects for the songs, and that was new (at least to me). It was not a deeply moving play, but I had a good time with it.

Mer and I try to go on opening nights because there are small desserts served, and you can chat with the cast. I got to talk to the oldest sister of one of Mer’s best students (who graduated in 2007), and it was a great conversation. We chatted about her role in this play, as well as her role in the production of Rosecrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead that Mer and I saw at Kent State a few years ago. In fact, Mer and I pretty much closed out the place, as we were the last guests to leave. It helped redeem the day spent pawing through boxes of stuff.