Last Saturday (wow! A week ago now!), Mer and I got to go see our friends Zach and Londa get married. Mer and I love weddings anyway, but this was a great wedding. It was full of CVCA people (Zach works at CVCA), so we knew a ton of people. The ceremony was very nice (including a CVCA student playing concert harp as prelude music), and there were two receptions – one for CVCA people with finger foods, and then the formal dinner reception (there were too many CVCA folk to invite them all to a formal reception). But the best part was seeing Zach and Londa get married. They are wonderful people. Zach may be the most earnest person I have ever met – when he says “God bless you” he really really means it. Zach has a million stories, usually with himself as the butt of the jokes. Londa is always smiling, and she is gracious. I’ve helped Zach move a couple of times, and Londa always made sure everyone felt appreciated (and well fed!).

A great moment at the wedding itself was the first kiss. Zach and Londa both work with youth, and they wanted to model purity in a relationship, so they made the decision to not even kiss until they were married. No pressure! Their first kiss was in front of about 500 people. The minister was funny – just before telling Zach he could kiss Londa, she said the usual thing when asking people to raise their hands to accept Jesus – “with every head bowed and every eye closed….” That got a good laugh, and not one bowed head.

Mer and I are also excited because Zach just moved to an apartment about a half mile away from where we live. It will be great having a young and fun couple so close to hang out with. For me personally, I want to hang out with Zach because he is so sincere. I’d love to have some of his faith rub off on me!

Welcome to the neighborhood, Mr. and Mrs. Churchill!

Thursday night I threw a Founding Fools reunion/party. All of the original Fools showed up, except one who was working at school two hours away. Some of the Founding Fools I had not seen in over two years, so it was great to see them. I made pizza and calzones, including the brilliant move of forgetting to put cheese in two of the four calzones that I made. I claimed that it was out of consideration of lactose-intolerant people, but really I was just an absent-minded dork. The Fools themselves brought chips, dessert, and lots and lots of sodas. We certainly had plenty to eat. Mer always accuses me of assuming that everyone eats like we do, and she is right – there was only the equivalent of three pieces of pizza per person, but there were still leftovers for us! Yum!

We had general chatting and eating until everyone showed up, and then I put in the movie o’ the evening – The Gods Must Be Crazy. Mer had introduced me to the film years ago, and it seemed like a good film to show the Fools. I did give the same disclaimer that Mer gave me – you have to give Gods a chance, since it starts kind of slowly. The Fools seemed to enjoy it very much. Not too bad for a movie made before any of them were born!

I ran over to school quickly to get my list o’ games, and we provided to have a good hour of improv. One of the fun things about these parties is that doing improv is for our amusement. We have no audience – it is doing improv just to have fun, and fun we had! The Founding Fools still have it – there were some fantastic moments of heightening and a fantastic “yes, and” where a Fool agreed that he very much wanted an elephant trainer. Some highlights of a very funny evening:
– Ranting and raving about college food
– A wife giving her husband an elephant and an elephant trainer as a present
– The superhero Perfect-Teeth Girl getting the “special floss” from Floss Girl
– A location-vocation-means of death that had Mer on the moon filling in craters while being attacked by plants
– Various advice on how to tell your kids about Santa
– Listening in on answering machine messages about being snowed in (including many messages from Aunt Tillie!)
– A paperback scene where one of the Fools ended up with tetanus
– A blind line scene where a Fool was being sold cheap hair care products

We wound the evening up with a little Wii action. I got smoked by a Fool who is also a tennis player. I guess I have more work to do.

It was a fun evening, and I even managed to stay up until midnight! Great fun!

Last week, CVCA finished up its second annual fitness challenge. The goal this year was to walk 50,000 steps/week for eight weeks (or you would still win if you accumulated 400,000 steps). Roughly speaking, 10,000 steps is about 5-6 miles (of walking). CVCA gave everyone that participated a pedometer and let the steps come fast and furious. If you reached the goal, you could choose to get $100 toward your HSA (Health Savings Account), or you could get a $75 gift certificate to your choice of several area stores or malls.

I participated again this year. It does not require me to change my habits to reach the goal. My job has me walking 4,000-10,000 steps/day, and then I run another 3.7 miles/day (about 7400 steps by an allowed 2000 steps/mile conversion for running). So, I managed to avoid injury and sickness during the eight weeks and managed to rack up about 580,000 steps.

Last year when I made goal, I was responsible and choose the $100 toward my HSA. Not this year! Since Mer and I are limited to going out only when we have gift certificates, I’m choosing the $75 gift certificate to Chapel Hill Mall, where there is a Ruby Tuesday and a food court that includes a Dairy Queen. There is a certain wonderful irony in walking the equivalent of 300 miles in order to get the means to eat out. Date nights will be coming soon!

Mer’s Honors English classes, which are made up of juniors, just got done reading Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner. After many of the works they read, Mer assigns a project to reinforce the major ideas of the story. For this work, she assigned The Rap of the Modern Mariner – where the students had to tell the original poem’s story in rap form.

Mer’s fourth period class threw down the gauntlet. They told her they would do the assignment with no complaining if she came up with a rap herself. She agreed. Since the students could collaborate if they wished, Mer brought me in on the project to help. Mer came up with the concept – she wanted to take Weird Al’s “White and Nerdy” and make it become “White White Birdy.” She also explained the major events of Rime. With this information, I wrote out Rap of the Modern Mariner. Mer then tweaked the language for rhythm. We divvied up the song – Mer would do the chorus (including the opening and ending), and I would rap the verses. We performed the rap to much amusement to two of her classes. It was much fun. Turns out rapping is quite hard – it is hard to keep the fast pace up, and breathing becomes a problem. Still, it was a good assignment. Here, for your musing, is the text to our opus:

I see you goin’ to the wedding
I just gotta tell ya all
about the birdy

Gotta tell you about the birdy
Gotta tell you about the birdy
Stop and hear about the birdy
Look – I killed the birdy

You wanna get to the party
But you can see in my eye all
about the birdy

Gotta tell you about the birdy
Gotta tell you about the birdy
Hear all about the birdy
Look – I killed the birdy

On board ship I can perform
On deck or pilot’s platform
I’m the best – that’s the norm
Oh snap! Here comes a storm
That big storm sure weren’t nice
The ship we couldn’t entice
Southward the prow did slice
‘Till we were surrounded by ice

On the sea we did toss
We thought all was to be loss
No soul did we come across
Until we saw an albatross
Just then the ice gave way
North we went into the gray
The bird perched there all of nine day
I killed the bird, I must say

My shipmates felt I did betray
But the fog went without delay
Twas right such birds to slay
But what a price we had to pay
There was nothing on board to drink
The sea itself, it began to stink
No one could speak or even think
Gave me evil looks without a blink

They put the bird on a big chain
Yeah, all around my neck they put the white, white birdy

Gotta tell you about the birdy
Gotta tell you about the birdy
Really big and heavy birdy
I’m stuck wearin’ the birdy

I’d like back in with my shipmates
But they all hatin’ me because I shot the birdy

Gotta tell you about the birdy
Gotta tell you about the birdy
It’s a big white birdy
I’m stuck wearin’ the birdy

‘Gainst the wind here comes a ship
Makes no sense, gotta get a grip
On my arm I took a sip
So that I could use my lip
Life-in-Death, she does roll
Playin’ with Death for ev’ry soul
She wins me, the others go
With a cursed look, they all blow

Now, my friend, you look scared
But you gotta find out how I fared
Lookin’ at the slimy sea I dared
To think it was beauty impaired
But I was hasty in how I spake
‘Cause later on I saw a snake
It left beauty in its wake
Now my curse is on the make

The birdy fell from my neck
And it rained on the deck
And I felt the water, not hotter
But cool as all heck
Then some angels came and they took the guys
And they made them all up to rise
And the wind filled the sail
I got home without no fail

And now the curse, it was lifted
And down from my neck
There fell the white white birdy
From my neck there fell the birdy
Gotta tell you about the birdy
Gotta tell you about the birdy
Went away, the white white birdy

I gotta tell folk ’bout God’s love
So they know not to go killin’ white white birdies

Don’t go shootin’ white white birdies
Don’t go shootin’ white white birdies
No weddin’ today
Mullin’ ’bout white birdies

Bird!

Last night we had the first Fools show of the year. What a FANTASTIC show. It went about an hour and 10 minutes, and the energy was really high. This was helped by having a big group of Fools (10 this year!), and our biggest crowd ever. We set up the library to use every seat in it – we can seat about 70. It was standing-room-only last night. I estimate that we had at least 80 people at the show, and we may have had as many as 90. They were a great audience – fun suggestions, quick to laugh, and lots of energy. It is much fun to play to an audience like that.

For 7 of the 10 Fools, this was their first show. I was proud of them – any nerves they had translated into energy instead of fumbling for words. Things were not perfect – there were a few “no, buts,” energy waned a little (briefly) in a couple of spots, and I waited too long to call “scene” in two games, but the show was a HUGE success.

One thing that amazed me, especially for a group with so many new members, was the “call-backs.” A call-back is when you mention something in a game that hearkens back to something from an earlier game. Call-backs are almost always funny, and show the audience that you are listening and paying attention, even when you are not on stage. There were numerous call-backs, especially toward the end of the show, and they went over big.

It really is fun to do improv, and it is REALLY fun to do improv when you have a night like last night. Good job, Fools!

Mer and I tried adding the (free, came with the game) river expansion pack to the basic Carcassonne game. The river pack adds 12 river cards – one spring card (where the river starts), one pond card (where the river ends), and 10 river cards. It adds more interest to the game, especially where farmers are concerned, because it creates a boundary to the fields, which adds complexity to the strategy.

I felt as if I was winning throughout the whole game. I managed to take over a castle that Mer had spent a lot of time building, and I managed to get an extra farmer in the main field of the game, so I had two big point-scoring opportunities. It turns out that my confidence was misplaced. I won by three points. If Mer had gotten any one of four different cards that I drew, she would have won. One of the cards she needed was the penultimate card drawn (I got it) – at that point she had a 50/50 chance of winning. It’s weird how you think you are in control of a game and then start sweating it as the points are tallied. I’m looking forward to trying this game with three people sometime. I think that would add complexity without making it simply a land-grabbing game (I fear that four or five people make the game about playing any piece you can any time that you can).

Awwwwwwwwww!
We must have been a good boy and girl this year!

We just got back from calling hours for Uncle Bob. Uncle Bob was a dear friend of Mer’s family, and he was a huge influence on the entire King clan. He was a long-time friend to Dale, and was responsible for Dale coming to Ohio to teach at Malone College. Uncle Bob loved theater, and his New York and Cleveland tours exposed a young Meredith to the world of the arts. Uncle Bob was also an ordained minister, and he presided over our wedding. Here is his obituary, as printed in the Canton Repository:

Dr. Robert Leland Lair
Robert L. Lair, age 75, went home to be with the Lord on Tuesday, December 4, 2007 at Aultman Hospital. He was born to Francis
and Georgia Morrison Lair in Gloversville, NY, on June 21,1932. He was
one of six children.  He received his
doctorate in English at Ohio State University, and his masters of
English from Middlebury College at the Bread Loaf School of English.
His undergraduate studies were completed at Bob Jones University where
he also received a masters in Bible, was professor of English, and
served as the Dean of Arts and Sciences. He also taught at Ohio State
University before coming to Malone College where he taught until his
retirement in 1994. During these years he was very active not only at
the college but in the community. For many years he served as the chair
of the Language and Literature Department. He started a series which he
wrote and directed entitled “Evenings with” where he acquainted
students with the lives of various authors. While at Malone he received
the honor of the yearbook dedication and was also recognized as
Professor of the Year when he retired. His acting and public speaking
skills landed him leading roles in Malone College Shakespearean
productions of Richard II and King Lear, and he could be frequently
seen at area churches performing one of his religious monologs. An avid
writer, his books on T.S. Eliot and Emily Dickinson were published by
Barron’s Educational Series, and he was a regular contributor to the
Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges and Universities. Robert was
pronouncer several years for the Repository Spelling Bee. He was quite
an accomplished pianist and accompanist and wrote many musical
compositions as well. He could be heard in the community where he
served as interim pastor of three different churches: Sixteen St.
John’s Church of North Lawrence, Market Heights United Church of Christ
of Canton, and St. Jacob’s Community Church of Cairo, Ohio. A lover of
the arts, Bob led NYC Theater tours for 30 years, Cleveland Playhouse
tours, the Spoleto Festivals, Europe and Stratford Festival Tours as
well. There were many faithful participants in these tours who attended
just to experience the warm personality and fun of just being with
Robert Lair. He will always be remembered as a wonderful husband,
father, teacher, pastor, tour director, actor, pianist, friend, and
always the life of the party. He will be greatly missed. He enjoyed his
retirement and spent much of it in travel, antiquing, reading, and
writing, having written hundreds of prayers which he shared with
friends. Most of all, he loved his family dearly and was so proud of
their accomplishments. Contributions may
be made to Malone College, to establish a scholarship fund in the Department of
Language and Literature in memory of Dr. Lair.

Rest in peace, Uncle Bob. Welcome home.

The CVCA server has enough data (250+ GB) that it has become difficult to back up. Backups are taking 8-24 hours to complete, depending on technology. So, after dumping $2000+ into various solutions, the next attempt was to install a firewire 800 card in the server and use that to back things up. How hard can installing a PCI card be?

Uber-technician takes the server offline just before 7:00 am. He unhooks the 10,000 cables and hoists the 800-pound server onto the workbench. The side just pops off (good Dell!). Uber-tech takes out the not-fast-enough USB2 card that was last month’s solution to the backup issues. Uber-tech installs the new card. Success! Uber tech slaps the side back on, hoists the 800-pound server back into place, and reconnects the 10,000 cables. Uber-tech confidently powers the server back up. Wild success! Uber-tech goes over to his desk to await the “found new hardware” announcement. Silence. Hmmmmm. Uber-tech figures that the server just found the card and happily hooks up a firewire 800 drive. Silence. Hmmmmmm. Uber-tech remembers seeing a standard power connector on the card. Even though the manual says nothing about the power, uber-tech figures maybe the card needs 12 volts.

Adequate-tech unhooks the 11,000 cables from the server and moves the 900-pound server over to the workbench. Adequate-tech takes off the side. Hmmmmm. The only internal power cable seems to be powering the server DVD drive. Hmmmmm. Adequate-tech figures he can just share a network DVD drive, so he unhooks the power from the DVD drive and plugs it into the card. The card connection bends to the rousing chorus of “Oh, crap!” from adequate-tech.

Grumpy-tech pulls out the firewire 800 card and installs a second one (grumpy tech’s motto – “Always order two!”). Grumpy-tech hooks up the power connection. Success! Grumpy-tech puts the side back on the server and moves the 900-pound server back to the rack and hooks up the 11,000 cables. He powers on the server. Silence. Blank screen. Hmmmmm. Grumpy-tech unplugs the power and tries again. The front display turns orange and shows a memory error. Hmmmmm. Grumpy-tech tries again. Processor error. Hmmmmm. Again. Processor error.

Panicky-tech starts formulating emergency run-the-school-with-no-data plan. Not very encouraging. Panicky-tech unhooks the 12,000 cables and hoists the 1,000-pound server on to the workbench. Panicky-tech pops the side off the server and unhooks the power from the card and reattaches it to the DVD player. Panicky-tech pulls out the firewire 800 card AND the extra USB card (just for good measure). Panicky-tech puts the side back on the server and heaves the 1,000-pound server back to the rack. Panicky-tech hooks up the 12,000 cables. Panicky tech suddenly remembers he works for a Christian school and prays really really hard. Panicky-tech powers the server back on. Beep. Green lights. Screen comes on.

Relieved-tech looks at the clock – 7:40 am, 10 minutes after students arrive. The server still has no good backup solution. Server:1, Relieved-tech:0

(I’m still VERY grateful the server came back online!)

It’s 4:45 pm. The hard-working Mainer starts his way home, walking across the CVCA parking lot. There is some snow, and a little ice because the day was warm and some snow melted. Huh. The Mainer slips on some black ice. Tricky. Still, the dextrous Mainer stays on his feet. It will take more than one little patch of ice to bring him down. Still, discretion is the better part of valor, so the Mainer tries to stay on the crunchy ice that he can see. Ooops! Another black ice patch. Darn stuff looks just like water on the pavement, of which there is a fair amount. The parking lot slopes down at about a 10-degree angle, so it makes it hard to navigate over real ice. Still, the Mainer has survived 36 winters, most of them in Maine and Chicago. What can bad ole Ohio throw at him?

Three strikes, you’re out. Another patch of black ice and the Mainer is glad that he lands mostly on his forearm and manages to limp to the safety of the snow and make his way back home. If the Mainer had back problems, his back would not be happy about the sudden acceleration/sudden stop of his unplanned trip. Everything seems to be mostly okay except for his pride….