CVCA’s Jterm started last week on Wednesday. Jterm is a special eight-day session where teachers offer trips or three-hour classes for students to take, and they tend to be quirky and fun classes that highlight teacher interests. Last year, Mer and I used Jterm to take students to London, but this year Mer only had to teach a three-hour class in the morning, and then she was free. As such, she actually had some time to do things.

So, on Friday, it was a sunny and warm day, so I took a half-day off from work, and Mer and I headed north toward the lake. Mer had a gift card from CVCA’s auction from 2010, and the card was to a coffee shop that was only open Monday to Friday during the day. This seemed like a great opportunity to go, so we headed up there. Sadly, in the year-and-a-half that had passed, the place had gone out of business. Not to be deterred, we had lunch at the Redhawk restaurant next door. They had really good and unusual sandwiches.

After lunch, since we were so close to Lake Erie, we headed up Route 44 to a huge public beach. Not surprisingly in early January, there were not a lot of people about. Although the day was warm, there was a fierce wind coming straight off the lake, and neither of us was wearing a true winter coat. We only stayed a short while. Even so, it was a refreshing change of pace from a usual Friday workday.

On Saturday, I went running with Jim. It was pretty great to be able to run fourteen miles outside on the Towpath Trail on January 7th. The northern part of my run was snowy and icy, but the nine miles on which I ran south of where I’d parked was all clear of snow and ice. It was a real treat.

After the run, and I had showered and gotten ready, Mer and I headed to Kent to watch the CVCA hockey team play. It was a closer game than the one we had seen a couple of weeks before, but the guys still won pretty handily, 10-3.

We then went home, where I spent much of the day watching the NFL playoffs. While I listen to a number of NFL games while I work around the house, I watch very few games on television. So, it was a special treat to plop down on the couch and watch most of two games. In the afternoon, Zach and Londa stopped by for a short visit, and we made tentative plans to maybe go to Michigan and Chicago together for spring break. That would be much fun.