It may be nigh on the middle of January, but here at Mu-sings it is still Christmas!

Mer and had planned to do a Michigan-Chicago Christmas tour this year since we thought a Maine Christmas would be too expensive (because of tolls, gas, and two hotel nights). So, we stuck around Ohio for a few days and we planned on heading to our friend Ellen’s new house in the evening on Tuesday (the 23rd).

I worked a day Monday since Mer was planning on grading all day. My knee (which, if you remember, I injured while running on Saturday the 20th) was aching, so I wore shorts to work so as not to irritate it. I got a bunch of comments, and a few people thought the lower leg was too red to be good, but I spent the day going up and down ladders so I am sure that helped matters. I was planning on working Tuesday as well, but I had not done any shopping, plus my lower leg was really red and the area around the wound was swollen, so I took the day off and went to a quick-care doctor. After a two-plus-hour wait, I got in to see the doctor who was able to diagnose an infection before he even sat down to talk to me. I had x-rays on the knee to make sure there was no bone damage (there was not), so the doctor gave me a prescription for two antibiotics and a nurse gave me a very painful shot in the butt. That hurt for hours! After a mere three and a half hours, I went home to eat and then went out to shop for Christmas. Seeing as the doctor told me the infection was not going to clear up on its own, and I was leaving town for seven days, I was pretty happy that I had decided to go to the doctor.

Mer and I did head out around 5:00 that evening to go to Ellen’s place, which is in Hillsdale, Michigan. According to our computer directions, it was about a three-and-a-half-hour drive to Ellen’s, but it was starting to rain and the temperature was about freezing, so I was worried we would have road trouble. Happily, we had no problems with the road ourselves – I never felt the car slip, although I took it really easy, especially after we stopped for supper. There certainly was ice building on the highway, and as we approached western Ohio we saw a car off the road on its roof. We got to just a few miles from our exit when all traffic came to a halt. We then sat essentially still for 90 minutes. It turns out that just a mile or so ahead of us there was a two-car-two-truck accident, and it had shut the highway down.

Once we got past the accident, we made it to our exit, and we turned north toward Michigan. I was happy to be off the highway, but that also meant that the roads were not so well taken care of. There were two things in our favor, though – the road was just as straight as could be, and the freezing rain turned to all snow within just a few miles. It did turn out that Michigan had not bothered to salt or even plow, but we took it easy and had no real difficulty in getting to Hillsdale. By the time we had arrived, it had taken about six hours to get there.

Ellen, who is also a teacher and thus was on break, was still awake and willing to stay up for a short while longer. We moved our luggage into the house (we do not travel light), and then Ellen showed us around her very cool house. Ellen got a job teaching at Hillsdale Academy back last summer, and largely bought her house unseen via the internet. I can see why – her house is really cool. It is a pre-1900 house with high ceilings and wooden floors, and had woodwork frames around all doors and archways. The back door leads in to the kitchen, which then leads through two rooms that are still evolving identities. Ellen has been busy stripping wallpaper and repainting everything, so these rooms are still in process. The last room on the ground floor at the front of the house is Ellen’s living room, which is cozy and wonderfully sans television. There are stairs that wind up from the living room to the three bedrooms upstairs, which have happy nooks, and two of them (not Ellen’s room) have huge closets. There is a large bathroom with a claw-footed tub upstairs, and a very small but fully functional shower bathroom downstairs. Her house is wonderful and evoked more than a little coveting on my end.

After the tour we talked a little and I hit up Ellen for some food since my medication was supposed to be taken with food. She was kind enough to share some goodies someone had given her, and Mer and I liberally (or, in Hillsdale, conservatively) helped ourselves to the snack plate. We chatted for awhile, and then headed gratefully off to bed sometime just before midnight.

The next morning, there was about six inches of snow on the ground. I took it upon myself to shovel the walk and to break open the end of the driveway, which I was able to do. This sounds magnanimous, but Ellen paid dearly for it by having to listen to my 10-minute rant on the back-breaking properties of her straight-handled shovel.
 
Ellen and Meredith are both English teachers, and I like Englishy things, so our conversations and ideas of entertainment can be a bit, well, nerdy. After a yummy breakfast that Ellen made (a potato-ham hash), Mer settled down to grade papers, so I challenged Ellen to a game based on Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice. It turns out that Ellen loves that book. Sigh. Still, I was ahead for some of the game, and I finished just one space away from getting to the church (the goal of the game) when Ellen staged her come-from-behind win. She then impressed us by going through every trivia card in the game and getting them all correct. Egad.

We then had a time of cultural exchange. We introduced Ellen to Slings and Arrows, which is one of our favorite  shows (about an acting company), and she introduced us to the American version of The Office, of which she had season three. We enjoyed The Office very much – it is funnier and far less painful than the British version that was the genesis of the series, and Ellen seemed to enjoy Slings and Arrows (or at least humored us). Somewhere in there, I took my first of only two naps of the trip.

Ellen whipped us up a supper of fresh bread and ham and potato slices, and thus fortified, we went to Ellen’s church for Christmas Eve service. The roads were still very slick, but the drive was short, so we got there just fine. Ellen goes to an Anglican church that is fairly small inside (it looks as if it could hold about 100 people), and had beautiful exposed wooden beams. It also has tastefully modern and artistic stations of the cross around the sanctuary. The order of service was formal, and was based largely on the 1912 version of the Book of Common Prayer. There was lots of music and prayer and Scripture reading. I had not packed any formal clothes, but Ellen had assured me jeans would be fine. The priests were very warm and greeting, but I did notice that no one else was dressing down on a high-holy day.

The only slight problem with a formal liturgical service that is essentially Catholic is there is much (and I mean much) sitting then standing then kneeling. The astute reader will remember I had an infected knee and lower leg that was not going to kneel and was not very happy about going from sitting to standing. I muddled though as best I could, and figured praying pain-free sitting was better than trying to block out pain kneeling.

We went home after the service and chatted more and ate more. Ellen had tried making a candy earlier in the day that had not turned out correctly, and appeared to be fused to the pan. That was sad. However, that meant she had a pot of chocolate on the stove that we used as a dipping sauce for EL Fudge cookies. Very tasty. Since this is two weeks later, my recollection may be faulty and this may have been an afternoon treat, but they were still satisfying.

Christmas day arrived, and for the first time ever in my life I did not open anything. That was fine – the company, hot chocolate, and food were all agreeable. We had talked about going to Mom’s place on Christmas Day, but my (turns out faulty) memory thought they were not going to be there until the 26th, and Ellen was not able to get away because of an upcoming conference in Chicago, so we decided to hang out at Ellen’s for another day.

The big outing, on Christmas Day, over Christmas break, will surprise no one. Deep in every student’s being, the suspicion has always been there. Yes, on Christmas Day, what do two teachers and a school staff member do? They go to tour Ellen’s school. Hillsdale Academy is small – it is a K-12 school, and is self-contained on two floors of one building. It sounds as if the school has about 400 students total with another 200 on a waiting list. The school is on the campus of Hillsdale College, and the suspicion is that it was founded as a place for faculty kids to go. Still, it is a very pretty building. Ellen’s classroom was very spacious and had one wall of windows. If the school has a knock against it in my book, it is the lack of classroom technology. The rooms do not have audiovisual systems, and the entire school could have been outfitted with them for about $40,000. Portable projector carts are available, and Ellen told us she uses one quite often. Still, it is far easier to use equipment that is available all the time and has zero set-up requirements. All in all, though, the school facilities look very nice.

We took a small look at the college itself. Ellen had to return a video to the library (which was shockingly closed on Christmas day), so we got to see the college from the road to the library and one quad of the college on the very treacherous icy walk to the library. Ellen dropped her video in the return slot, and we beat a slow retreat back to the car.

We spent the rest of the day on Christmas puttering. Ellen made another attempt at her candy (a resounding success this time!). I hooked up three more speakers to Ellen’s surround-sound stereo. Mer graded. We all played a Shakespeare quotation game (I think Mer won). We watched videos. There was hot chocolate and more food and large-scale consumption of the chocolate and buttery brittle candy that Ellen made. It was quite a pleasant day.

Mer and I planned on leaving early the next morning, but we awoke to the sounds of ice pellets hitting our window. There was ice all over everything, and the driveway was hazardous, and the roads looked only marginally better. We decided to delay our egress and we kept an eye on the weather. If things improved, we figured we could leave in the afternoon. This gave us good opportunity to finish off Ellen’s homemade candy and to watch more videos. By early afternoon, I figured we would give the roads a try, so I chiseled my way into the car and loaded it up. We said goodbye to Ellen and headed out around 2:30 or so. Staying with Ellen was much fun, and we hope to get back to her (cute) place soon.

The roads were not great, but they were passable. We were able to get on a major highway (I-94) after about 45 minutes, and the highway was in okay shape. I think the additional several hours we waited were helpful – it let the salt crews have time to work. Mom later told us that I-80 had been shut down in Indiana in the morning, and that I-94 (which they can see from the house) was crawling during the morning.

We got to Mom and Marc’s place in the early evening. It was then that I discovered that they had gotten back from visiting my sister on Christmas Day, and so they had wondered where we were. Ooops. That was unfortunate. Mom and Marc interrupted their fiercely-fought Scrabble game, and we sat by the gas fire and talked for much of the evening. Mom and Marc gave us a wonderful calendar of pictures of sunsets that they had taken over Lake Michigan, from the beach that is only a brief walk from their house.

I love being at Mom and Marc’s house. It is peaceful and quiet, and Mer and I sleep like rocks there. We had a great night’s sleep, and then Mom made us French toast with real maple syrup. We had promised Shannon and Jolene that we would be in Chicago that day (Saturday the 27th), so we knew we had to head out. That worked out okay since Mom and Marc were also leaving to go to see Marc’s family. So, we all left mid-afternoon. Mer asked if we could go down to the beach, so we did. It was windy, and so cold, but the edge of the lake was piled up with ice cliffs, which were pretty. We wandered sown the beach to where a stream comes out of the woods and empties into the lake. Because of all of the freezing rain and melting snow, the stream was very full. Because of the ice on the edge of the lake, the stream was having a hard time emptying into the lake, and so it was spread out over a wide area of the beach. It was neat, but cold, so we made an efficient tour of the area.

The trip to Chicago was uneventful, and we made it to Shannon and Jo’s by early evening. We were both amazed at the number of new high-rises that are under construction in downtown Chicago, including the amazing doubling-in-height of the existing Blue Cross and Blue Shield building. The skyline is going to change dramatically from even just five years ago.

Shannon and Jo welcomed us, and informed us we would be going out later in the evening. We had a mini gift exchange (in that our gifts for Shannon and Jo had not arrived in the mail):  they gave us a movie DVD, and they gave me season four of Doctor Who, and Mer got a really great game about identifying books by their first lines. Shannon and I went and bought four pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream for the next night (although I found out that Mer had a sample of hers that same evening). We hung out until about 6:00, when James arrived, and we piled into Jo’s car to go have a large and tasty meal at the Essence of India restaurant. After the leisurely meal, Shannon and Jo took us to a theater I had never been to in order to see Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol.

I have to confess that I do not like the standard story of the Christmas Carol. I think it has been overdone, and it seems as if every TV show ever made does some variation on the tale. So, I was very skeptical going in to this play. Very quickly, my skepticism disappeared. It was a one-man show (the one man also happened to be the author), and it retold the Christmas Carol story from the perspective of the newly dead Jacob Marley, Scrooge’s partner. The different take and the enthusiasm and skill that the actor had were enough to breathe new life into (what for me was) a now-bland tale. Having Marley try to change Scrooge from his ways using methods that tied into the original story (ghosts and pseudo time travel and so on) was much fun. It was a good evening.

The next morning was relatively nice, so we decided to walk the two or so miles to Andersonville to go to Ann Sather’s restaurant. Mer and I love Ann Sather’s for brunch food. The meals are reasonable (usually about $8), and you get a ton of food, including two cinnamon rolls which are drool-worthy. Add in the option to get muffins with the breakfast (in this case a chocolate chip muffin), and all is yum. The walk back was into the wind, and thus was a bit brisker. I like the walk, though – it is through a bunch of residential neighborhoods and one decent-sized park.

Back at the apartment, we broke into Mer’s new book game, and it really goes without saying that the literary genius of Shannon and Mu won the first game. (Never mind that Mer and Jo won the next game the next day, and since then my record against Mer is on the order of 1-15, although I am usually competitive, usually losing eight books to five). We puttered around, and then Shannon and Jo took us to Molly’s Cupcakes, where we had some gourmet cupcakes (and a cookie). We went back home and finished the evening by watching some early (second Doctor) Doctor Who episodes that were quite well written and eating Jo’s lasagna and our Ben and Jerry’s.

Mer and I left dark and early the next morning. We got on the road a little after seven, successfully beating the Chicago traffic. We headed back to Mom and Marc’s house. We took the early start of the day as an opportunity to stop and eat breakfast at the gut-expanding Sammie’s Restaurant. What Ann Sather’s is to cinnamon rolls, Sammie’s is to breakfast egg creations. Lots of food for very little money. Happily full, we drove the last mile to the house where we promptly napped for two hours.

We spent the day puttering. We played Mer’s new game, we read, we had our own gift exchange (Mer got me a couple of DVDs and some brownie mix and an Italian book), we ate too much, we went back down to the beach to see the ice cliffs, and we settled down in the evening to watch my DVDs – Finding Nemo and Monsters, Inc. One of the great reasons we like to get away for breaks is to get away from the ever-present to-do list. The Monday we spent at Mom and Marc’s house was a perfect realization of that principle. 

We did head back to Ohio the next day (Tuesday the 30th) – we had a former student throwing a holiday party that evening, but we did make one more stop at Sammie’s for breakfast. One last tank-up before the new year caught up with us.

Oh – and I forgot my razor, so I had about ten days’ growth of “beard” by the end of our vacation.