Last week was a good eatin’ week, with a little productivity thrown in. On Sunday (the 3rd), Mer and I went down to Canton and had lunch with Aunt Mary at Taggart’s Ice Cream Parlor. Taggart’s is a restaurant in Mer’s old neighborhood, so we have a pretty good history with the place. It serves burgers and sandwiches and such, and makes pretty good ice cream. They have been in the same location since the 1920s, and we like it quite a lot. After lunch (and ice cream), we headed back to Aunt Mary’s new place and dropped Mer off so she could grade. Aunt Mary and I then went over to her old place and we spent the early part of the afternoon moving everything from her basement to the main floor and moving everything from the second floor to the main floor. This is not a huge help to getting Aunt Mary’s old place cleared out, but it got everything in one place that did not involve stairs so that Aunt Mary could organize things without a bunch of trips up and down stairs.

Monday evening (the 4th), we had our first meeting for our J-term course, Literary London. Mer and I are leading a trip of 13 students to London in January as part of CVCA’s J-term program. We wanted to have a meeting to get information to the students and to their parents, so we had the first of probably two meetings. It went well. We had all 13 students show up, and they all had at least one parent with them. One of the families had offered to host the meeting, so we had plenty of room and enough seats. Mer started the meeting off with a game of matching the British word (like “bonnet”) to the American word (like “car hood”). That was amusing, and everyone seemed to get a kick out of it. Mer runs good meetings. We then went over expectations, the itinerary, and the grading system (pass/fail). The meeting went about an hour and a half, and Mer and I were happy with it.

Last Wednesday, Mer and I went to the Akron Hibernian Club. We go on the first Wednesday of every month to dance to live Irish music at the club with my CVCA Irish dance club. We had a small group this time – just three students, but we also had one returning alumna, so we had six people altogether. That was enough to dance for about an hour. We have a good time, and the club musicians are pretty great. We’ll dance one and sit out one just to listen, and so on. Anyway, we were getting ready to leave when the bartender pulled us aside and said they had cake and ice cream for the Purple Man’s birthday. The Purple Man is a ninety-three-year-old man who is often at the Hibernian Club, and is always dressed in purple. Cake and ice cream and getting to sing for the Purple Man were all good things, so we stayed. After we sang and the food had been served, a woman got up with a man who played guitar, and she sang three Irish songs – “Black Velvet Band,” “Wild Rover,” and “Fields of Athenry.” I had forgotten how much I had missed hearing live Irish ballads. It was great. We stayed an extra hour until 10:00, and  it was well worth it.

Last Thursday, Mer took me out to supper at a fundraiser at Dairy Queen. We like to eat for a cause. Most amazingly, we were both satisfied with the new super-small blizzard dessert that comes with the burger meal. Since it was a fundraiser, I did buy a large blizzard for Dubbs, who was at school for much of the evening running volleyball tournaments. She ate the whole thing, even though she is lactose intolerant. I guess it hit a spot.

Finally, to wrap up the week o’ food, Mer and I went out with our friends Zach and Londa to the Cheesecake Factory on Friday night. That was a good time. Zach and Londa are fun people, and Zach always has a bunch of funny stories to tell, usually at his own expense. We had not gone out with them since early in the summer, so it was great to catch up with them. Since we had seen them last, Zach had gone to his brother’s wedding in Israel, Mer had been to Romania, and Mer and I had been to Vancouver. We ate a lot of food, although I finally found a normal-sized meal (the smallest burger), and Mer skipped dessert. That may have been good, since some part of my meal (probably the dessert) caused me digestive problems for 36 hours. I may have to go back to gather more data to see if it really was the dessert. That would be another food week, then.