Mer has volunteered her services to help out with her 20th high school reunion. She needed to help check out a country club to see if it would work for the party, so she was to meet several people from her class at a county club in Canton. Since I had a gift certificate for a restaurant in Canton, and I needed to finish mounting Aunt Mary’s light, I went along with Mer down to Taggart’s – a restaurant in her old neighborhood that is known for ice cream and it is an institution, having opened in the 1920s. We met Aunt Mary there, and had a fine meal, where I ate too much, as I usually do when I go out to eat.

Mer went on her way to the country club, and Aunt Mary and I went to the Home Depot, to try to find the correct all-thread screws to mount her light. A man at the store was very helpful and insisted that we did not need a metric screw, so we went home with the same threaded screw as we already had, on the off chance that the all-thread I had tried before was cross-threaded (and messed up).

I tried the new all-thread, and it did not go in any more easily than the last ones. Aunt Mary ran back to her old place to get her all-in-one oil to see if lubricating the screw would work. While she was gone, I decided that maybe all I needed was a better grip, so I tried on Aunt Mary’s pink rubber gloves, and managed to get the older screws in place. After several attempts to get the length correct, I managed to get the new lamp fixture hung and it even worked. Score one for the good guys.

To celebrate, Aunt Mary and I watched Jeopardy! and I iced my knee (that has tendinitis). Mer came along just in time for Final Jeopardy, and then we headed home. Good food, a successful manly-outing, and Jeopardy! made for a good evening.

Thursday, Mer and I headed down to Clarice’s place for a game night. Clarice is one of the founding members of my improv group, in the first group back in 2005. She now helps me coach the current group, and she seems to like hanging out with me and Mer, which is gratifying. Clarice was hosting the game night, which included us, Clarice’s boyfriend, Matt, and two other Founding Fools – Josh and Kristen. Another student from the Class of 1996 made a cameo appearance, and it was good to see Rose again.

Anyway, we had much fun playing games. I was on the winning team (with Kristen) in Cranium. We beat the teams of Meredith/Matt and Josh/Clarice. We then randomly choose teams to play a game called 25 Words or Less, where you try to get your team to say five words on a card in as few words as possible. The random teams turned out to be males against females, and shockingly we won, 6-4. Go figure. I very much enjoyed the company of the evening – it was good to see everyone again.