Last Monday was Memorial Day, so I had the day off. Mer and I took our time getting ready in the morning, but around noon we headed down to Aunt Mary’s place. Last Christmas we got Aunt Mary Casablanca, because she had never seen it. We set up a date to see it, and it was time to get some pizza and watch the film.
We all loved the film. It had been a long time since I had seen it, and I had forgotten how many familiar quotations have come out of Casablanca. It is a snappy, well-written film with interesting characters. No wonder it always shows up in discussions of best films of all time.
After visiting Aunt Mary, we headed over to Dubbs’s parents’ house, where Dubbs is staying while she heals up from her surgery. Dubbs was doing pretty well – she had some dizziness, double vision, and nausea, but she was mobile and alert. Mer and I took turns reading her the first book of the Prydain Chronicles, which Dubbs had never heard of. She liked what we managed to read (the first three chapters).
Mer and I headed home and had supper, then we headed over to CVCA. I had teamed up with Craig McSparran to organize a Connections group activity. My group and our sister group teamed up to take on Craig’s group and sister group in a Nerf war. We had the whole school to ourselves, and we set up base camps and distributed identical Nerf guns, and then we went at it. Mer watched on the security cameras from my office while she did some other work as well. I put on action-movie music over the PA system, and we had a great time. Our groups lost both games, but we had fun playing. The whole event lasted about two hours, and Mer and I got home at about 10:30. And, yes, I was aware of the irony of having a Nerf war on Memorial Day; it worked out that way because the building was empty.
On Wednesday, we had our monthly Ceili Club dancing event at the Hibernian Club in Akron. We try to get together once a month to dance to the live music they have. This time, the group consisted of me and Mer and five students, which was a decent turnout. It may end up being the last time we do that for some time, since I graduated the entire club (except for two or three students who show up sporadically).
On Thursday, Mer and I had the ever-exciting midweek date. We went to the Akron Art Museum to catch their special exhibit on MC Escher, whose art I am fond of. We saw a thirty-minute film on Escher’s life, and then we spent a little over an hour looking at his actual works. It was really interesting to see so many of his prints, and it is amazing how good he was at creating prints. Fascinating stuff.
After the art show, we headed over to Barley House for supper, where we had a good meal, but surprisingly slow service considering that the place was only a third full. I almost got up and left when it took almost twenty minutes just to put our order in. Still, at least the food was good. The waitress did not even offer dessert, which suited me fine, since I wanted to take Mer to get ice cream at Handel’s. The service there was fine, and the sundaes hit the spot.