Mer’s parents came up on Wednesday the 13th for about ten days. Mer stopped by to see them most days, but my work schedule kept me busy more often. However, I did get a chance to see Dale and Carlene, as well as Aunt Mary, on Sunday and Tuesday.

On Sunday, Mer and I met everyone at Aunt Mary’s place. The consensus for lunch seemed to be a desire for soup, so I looked on the internet for suggestions, and found a nearby newish restaurant called Zoup that specializes in soups and a few sandwiches. That seemed to please everyone, so that is where we headed out to for lunch. We got a chance to visit for awhile after lunch as well.

On Tuesday, we met everyone at Hartville Kitchen, which is always a treat. I was surprised at all of the now-finished construction that has gone on in the area in the five years since we moved up to Cuyahoga Falls. After supper, we went back to Aunt Mary’s to watch Jeopardy!, while I hooked up Aunt Mary’s new wireless router, which gave me some trouble, but I finally got it working. I was pleased with that – wireless is a nice little luxury to have.

Last Saturday was a fun little day. We had a graduation party in the early afternoon, followed by a wedding of a former student. The only down side of the day was that the wedding overlapped with two other graduation parties to which we could have gone.

The former student, Kevin, was one of my Founding Fools: one of eight students who helped me start up CVCA’s improv group eight years ago. He is now in medical school, and his wife, Sarah, just passed her exams to become a nurse. The are moving to Toledo, but were having the wedding locally in Akron. I do not know Sarah well, but I had met her at Matt and Clarice’s wedding a few months ago, and she is very friendly. She was also everything a bride should be – radiant and beaming. The joy expressed by brides and grooms is one of the main reasons I love weddings. It’s also fun to get to see people at them, as many of my former Fools were in attendance.

The wedding was a long service by modern standards, lasting about forty-five minutes. The pastor carefully went over how serious the wedding vows are, and called on us as the congregation to witness the vows and to hold Kevin and Sarah responsible for those vows. It was a very good service.

The reception was great, although typical in that we did not get to see much of the bride and groom. We did, however, get to visit with some CVCA parents, and got to hang out with our former students. There was dancing later in the evening, and Mer and I closed out the party with our friends. It was a fun evening, and we still have four more former-student weddings to go yet this year.

On Saturday morning, we met up with our students in the hotel lobby to explain what was going on. We did not have a match until the late afternoon, so we had time to tour Chicago for three or four hours over the morning and early afternoon. Mer and I made the offer to lead a group downtown, and five of the six families took us up on it (the last family had other family in Chicago they were going to go see). A couple of the families had never traveled on mass transit before, so it was fun to introduce them to the El. Since we were starting at a terminus, we had a car all to ourselves for several minutes, so Mer and I shared how to use the mass transit map, which, as we explained, is useful knowledge, since all major rail systems we have ever seen use similar maps.

We got to the Loop stop downtown, and made our way up to the street (our rail line was a subway at this point). Although it was not planned, we came up right in front of Daley Square, where a very famous Picasso sculpture is located. That made us look like legitimate tour guides. After Mer ascertained which way was east, we headed that way to Millennium Park, a large park that is right downtown and was being built just as Mer and I were leaving Chicago. They did a beautiful job. We walked everyone up to a highly-polished abstract sculpture in the park, which is referred to informally as “The Bean” due to its shape. I forget the real name, but I like calling it The Bean. We wanted to use The Bean as a landmark, as a place to meet everyone if they chose to do their own thing. We quickly pointed out several things people might want to do, and two families decided to try Chicago on their own, which was fine. The three remaining families decided to stay with us for a walking tour.

Mer and I showed our guests the park; we started by showing them the interesting and always crowded fountain in the park. It is only about one inch deep, and is framed by two huge walls that project different faces on them. Occasionally the faces “spit” into the fountain, much to the delight of the children who splash around in it. Mer dipped her toes in while we were there.

We retraced our steps over to the new pedestrian bridge from the park to the Art Institute. The bridge and the gallery to which it leads offer fantastic views of the city, and there were a few pieces of sculpture on display. We tromped back down the ramp and headed over to the small artificial creek that marks the original shoreline of Lake Michigan. The water is very cold for some reason, and may of us dipped our toes in while chatting with a friendly security guard. We next wandered through the small gardens, and I pointed out where the Chicago Blues Festival was happening in the next park over. That took us over to and onto the pedestrian Serpentine Bridge which, if followed, takes people over to the lake shore area. We stopped halfway across to get a grand view south, and then we headed back to the main park. We crossed over the band shell area, which is a large lawn expanse, and ended up back by The Bean. That was a pretty full tour of Millennium Park.

We took everyone over to Michigan Avenue, and we walked north to Water Tower Place. That is about a two-mile walk (or so), and we got to see the Tribune Tower, with its rocks from all over the world, and the Wrigley Building, and we crossed the Chicago River, and saw much of the Magnificent Mile. We ended at Water Tower Place, a huge mall next to the Water Tower, which is one of the few structures that survived the Great Fire of Chicago in the 1800s. The mall has an excellent food court, and so we took lunch there. Mer and I separated from the group in the food court, and after lunch we felt as if we had time to run over to Ghirardelli’s Chocolate to get dessert. I got a sundae, and Mer got a brownie. They were very good. We then wandered at a deliberate but non-hurried pace back to the park and to The Bean, where we expected to meet up with everyone. We were the first back, but everyone did show up before the time agreed upon. We walked back to the El, and got back tot he hotel in good order, with about an hour before we had our only Academic Challenge match of the day.

We all met back up before our one match of the evening. Even though it was a national-level tournament with about twenty teams at the competition, our first draw was against Hawken School, a school about twenty miles from CVCA that we have played several times. Schools can enter more than one team, and we were up against Hawken’s “C” team, so while the match was certainly competitive, we were ahead for the entire round and won by a solid, but not crushing, margin. It was good to get the tournament going with a win.

The various families had their own dinner plans, as did Mer and I. We drove downtown to Shannon and Jo’s new, very cute apartment in the vicinity of Lincoln Square, and we chatted for some time. We then went to their favorite watering hole, The Red Lion, where we got supper (great fries). We meandered over to Lincoln Square after supper, where we tried one of the new-and-hip top-your-own-yogurt places. It was okay. The toppings were great, but the yogurt still tasted like yogurt, which is to say, not like ice cream. Jolene went to a different place and got real Italian gelato. After that, we walked back to the apartment, and Mer and I headed back to the hotel.

Most of Sunday was spent in matches. We started the day with a tough loss, losing only on the last question. For the rest of the day, we lost two other matches by a solid margin to excellent teams, and we won two more matches, to go 3-3 for the weekend. That was a respectable showing, but we needed to go 4-2 in order to make the playoffs, so we were done for the tournament. Nonetheless, it was a great experience.

Mer and I took the opportunity of being free from any Monday matches as a chance to leave on Sunday night and go back to Mom and Marc’s place. The hotel was kind and did not charge us for the cancelled day, even though we did not check out until 5:00. We made our way to Mom and Marc’s, arriving about 8:00, and we again got a good chance to visit (and eat).

Monday we slept in, and then Marc took us to brunch at a local restaurant, the Olympus. It is normally a Greek restaurant, but they serve good breakfasts. Our trip home was uneventful, and all was well when we got home.

Mer is the coach of the Junior High Academic Challenge Team (think competitive trivia), and a few months ago her eighth grade team won a state-level tournament and so were invited to go to a national-level tournament in one of three cities (Washington, New Orleans, and Chicago). Mer chose Chicago because we know the city, it is closest, and the timing worked best. Last weekend was the Chicago tournament, so we headed out there on Thursday. Mer’s team consisted of six students, but all the students’ parents decided to make a vacation of it, so we did not have to worry about transportation or even chaperoning the students. We just had to show up and make sure people were where they were supposed to be. We also offered to lead a group downtown on Saturday if anyone wanted to go.

But before all of that, we had to get there. We left after school on Thursday, and made it as far as Mom and Marc’s place. Mom was still in Chicago, but Marc was home, and he was good enough to take us out to eat. We went the short distance to The Getaway, a Chicago Cubs-themed bar and grill. We had a pleasant supper, and Marc gave good-natured grief to our waitress and a few patrons. Marc is not shy! After supper, we went home and chatted for a couple of hours before going to bed.

Marc has a part-time job at a local car wash (about eight hours a week). We got up and ready in time to see him off, and he offered to wash our car if we swung by, possibly with something from the local bakery. Since I wanted to get breakfast from the local bakery anyway, I was up for that. So, we packed up the car and went to the bakery, where we got some huge breakfast pastries for very little money. We took one to Marc, and he washed our car, which was the first time it had been washed in at least a couple of years. He also showed us around the working area of the car wash, which I found interesting since I like to know how things work. We bid Marc a fond farewell, and we headed south. We wanted to eat breakfast somewhere pretty, so we stopped by New Buffalo, which is on Lake Michigan, and is a town where we had never been before.

We parked the car and walked to a nearby beach, where we sat on the sand in the shade and ate our very delicious breakfast. A local duck took great interest in us, especially Meredith, and he got to within three feet or so. It was amusing to watch him (or her). We watched boats come and go since we were on a small harbor, and we had a very pleasant time. We did have to leave without exploring the town, though; we were meeting Mom in Little Italy in Chicago at 11:30, and so we had a schedule to keep.

The drive into Chicago was uneventful (although there was some heavy traffic), and we found street parking on Taylor Street pretty easily. I had just paid the meter for parking when I heard Mom call out – she was coming up the sidewalk. That was pretty good timing! We went into the restaurant we had chosen, called Tuscany, and we were waited on by an obviously-from-the-old-country Italian man. The food was wonderful, and it was a great visit with Mom. We skipped dessert since Mom had made a special run out to Oak Park to a bakery to get us some cake roll that is drool-inducing. Mom takes good care of us. After lunch, we walked the four or five blocks with Mom back to her office since we had never seen it. We also got to cross some of the University of Illinois at Chicago campus along the way, which is a pretty place to walk. We left Mom at her office and went back to the car and made our way out to the O’Hare airport region to check into our hotel for the weekend, the Four Points Sheraton.

We found the hotel after some little trouble due to the myriad of exits on all of the highways, but we did find it. The room was clean and comfortable. We got settled in quickly, and I took a brief nap while Mer read. We had a big evening, and I wanted to be rested.

Since we were planning on taking a group of students and parents downtown on Saturday, we decided it would be a good idea to have a sort of “dry run.” We were headed to see a play just north of the Loop, and so we took the Chicago train, the El, to close to downtown before transferring to another line to get to the neighborhood where we were going. It worked out fine, but we were glad we had done it since it involved catching a hotel shuttle and finding the El station at O’Hare.

I decided we should see some theater while we had a free evening in Chicago, and while still at Marc’s I had bought a couple of tickets to a small theater that was performing Corleone: The Shakespearean Godfather. The title is accurate – the play was telling the story of The Godfather as if it had been written by Shakespeare. We had thought it might just be a bunch of “thee’s” and “thou’s” thrown in, but with the exception of the prologue, which was a little weak, the play incorporated a bunch of real Shakespearean texts into the story. Half the fun for me and Mer was trying to identify the various plays being quoted. The play really worked well, since the Godfather story is Shakespearean in plot (a large storyline with several sub-plots). I was very pleased by the play, and was sad that they were playing to such a small crowd (there were only about twenty of us in the theater). Mer and I went home quite happy with the evening, with the only damper being that we had to wait about thirty-five minutes for the hotel shuttle that was supposed to run every twenty minutes.

Last week, on Wednesday (the 6th), we headed over to the apartment of our friends Matt and Clarice. Matt was out of town, and as I like it when people look out for me when I’m alone, I try to return the favor. Clarice is a huge movie fan, and has great taste in moves. She had recommended to us an early Hitchcock film, The Lady Vanishes. We were very much game (I’m a big Hitchcock fan), and so the evening was laid out.

We grabbed take-out from the nearby Five Guys Burgers and Fries (my suggestion – I’m a big fan of this too), and we settled in to watch the film. Clarice did not lead us astray – the film was pretty fantastic. The basic plot is one of trying to figure out if the main female lead is seeing things after she gets hit in the head, and the story successfully mixes in the mystery of that with lots of action, suspense, and some wonderfully dry humor. I highly recommend it.

Clarice proposed a second film after we finished, but I had to work the next day and it was already 10:30, so I was forced to decline. We’ll have to catch that film another time.

On Saturday, it was Mer’s turn to be in charge, and although the day was spitting rain on and off, she decided (with my backing) to try some new parks. So, we headed north to a Cleveland Metro Park. Cleveland has a long string of continuous parks around the edge of the city, and they are collectively called “The Emerald Necklace” since they sort of look like that on a map. We headed to one of these parks, in the the southeastern part of the “necklace”; the individual park is known as the Bedford Reservation, and it’s comprised of a large main park and a couple of small satellite parks.

We headed to one of the small satellite parks first. We found it first because we stumbled across it because the main road of the town was closed, and we happened across the smaller park while finding our way around an unmarked detour. That was just as well, since we could easily do the entire smaller park in an hour or so. The smaller park, called the Viaduct Park, is a very cool area that used to be a tall railroad overpass over a small river. After the viaduct was built, later engineers channeled the river through a huge tunnel, and filled in the area around the viaduct with fill dirt. The rail lines moved to this new land, and the viaduct eventually became the literal high point of a park that opened about ten years ago.

The park has paved paths, and information boards that explained how this river area used to be used for industry, which included a night-only power plant that powered street lights. There are few remains of the older buildings, but a few foundations still exist, and the tunnels that channeled river water around for power still exist, and the larger one that powered a flour mill can actually be walked though (albeit you have to bend over). The entire park is very pretty, and it has a small but picturesque falls near the old mills. It rained a little bit while we were at the park, but only for a short time, and then the rain went away. It was not even enough to get us wet, so the park tour turned out to be a good idea.

After we had explored the Viaduct Park, we made our way to the much larger main park of Bedford Reservation. The park is huge – we estimated it was about six miles long, before it spilled over into the next Metro Park. It is a beautiful park, with horse trails, paved bike trails, and several picnic areas. We drove through the park to get an overview, and along the way I saw a sign for Bridal Veil Falls. I had heard about these small falls that resemble a bridal veil as they cascade over rocks, but had never been able to find it. I violated a rule about our days, and suggested we stop to see it even though it was Mer’s day (I’m not supposed to make suggestions on Mer’s day, and vice versa). She good-naturedly agreed, and we parked the car and walked into the woods. The falls were about a half mile into the woods, and were a little disappointing since the river was so low. I suspect they are at their best in the spring with the run-off of melting snows. Still, it is a pretty place to walk.

After making our way back to the car, we continued along the road until I saw a sing for a scenic overlook, and I pulled over (I’m really not very good at obeying the Mer’s-day rules). The overlook was situated over the entire river valley, but was mostly covered in by foliage. I expect it is spectacular in the late fall, and I’ll need to try to remember to go back in the fall. We drove a little bit further on, but then Mer wanted us to turn around because we still had a graduation party to go to.

We left the main park, but made a quick detour to another remote park, Forbes Farm. Forbes Farm used to be a working farm, but had gone under for some reason (the park does not explain why), and nature had reclaimed most of the site. There are still a couple of foundations around, and the park has a short (half-mile or so) paved trail that meanders through the trees. It is a pretty spot, and the park looks to be geared toward school-aged children since there are many information placards around the site.

We headed south to the party. It was a fun set-up, with a tent, a big yard, and a bouncy house. We stayed for some time, as several other teachers showed up while we were there, and we had a great time getting caught up with them. The food was excellent, and we had a fun time watching various students play corn hole. It was a good grad party.

We finally headed home, and Mer decided she wanted to watch a movie version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. I had gotten it for her some months ago, and so we settled in to watch it. It was very well done, and I am glad we own it. The only slightly odd bit was that the filmmakers decided to take the main male lead, Prospero, and make it into a woman’s role, Prospera. It worked well, but I did not see any artistic value to the change, so I’m not sure why the change was made (other than that the actress playing Prospera was excellent).

In finishing the weekend, we did also have another graduation party on Sunday; this one was a joint party for two girls, one of whom Meredith had taught, and I actually knew the other one of them fairly well. That always makes a party more fun for me. There was a burrito bar and a sundae bar, and the house overlooked a large pond, and the evening was very nice, so we had a good time. We did not see any other teachers, but we had a long talk with the father of one of the girls, while I ate too much food. I’ve always been a sucker for a sundae bar.

Last Thursday, I broke my once-a-year golf tradition to try spring golf with my colleagues Phil and RT, and Phil’s friend Jack. We went to the par-three golf course that is part of the much larger Brandywine course. Phil’s friend Jack is the resident golf pro at the course, even though he is in his late 70s. He is a very funny man, and was very kind to me, even as poorly as I play golf.

I do love Brandywine’s par-three course. It runs along the Cuyahoga River and the national park, and is just as pretty as can be. I like Phil and enjoy his company, and RT is a stitch. We had a very good time. And Jack even allowed us to play a full eighteen holes, and it was free, which was very nice of the course to let us do that. I played okay, but mostly I enjoyed the scenery and the fellowship, and I look forward to my fall outing.

Monday was Memorial Day, and so I had the day off. Mer had agreed to let me be in charge, so we headed back up to Cleveland, to the east side, to the University Circle area. Even though it was a really warm day, I wanted to show Mer the Cleveland Cultural Gardens that I had seen the week before while walking that section of the Cleveland Marathon.

We parked near the Cleveland Museum of Art, which is normally closed on Mondays, but was open for the holiday. We decided to use the restrooms, and as we entered the museum, we ran into a CVCA family. So we chatted with them for a short while before we headed off toward the gardens.

Or so I thought. We walked for the better part of a mile, and we saw the Chinese cultural garden, but no others. We finally found a map and figured out I had led us in the wrong direction. We turned around and walked back to the museum, and I thought about leaving since it was getting so hot. I decided to press on, and I’m glad we did.

The Clevleland Cultural Gardens are a series of gardens in a long, narrow park that borders either side of a winding north-south road. The gardens were installed and are maintained by various ethnic groups in Cleveland to highlight the home countries. The gardens go on for over a mile, on both sides of the road, and even up a hill above the road for some of the way.

There are many countries we saw, but we were probably most impressed by the Irish garden, which was the very first one we saw. It was well kept and spacious, and there were busts of famous Irish people and a Celtic cross made of stone and grass that was over fifty feet long, occupying most of the garden. We also liked the Hungarian garden very much, which was on two levels and had busts of famous Hungarians and quotations from them.

Most of the gardens were interesting, and we saw them all. A few were lame, sadly led by the English garden, which was not laid out as a formal English garden, and was designated as English solely by the Union Jack and one bust of Shakespeare.

We had an interesting chat with a man who lived in the area, and we found out that the gardens are sometimes vandalized, and some of the busts are stolen. That made me sad; it is such a great little park that it seems as if even the vandals should respect it. Some of the parks date back to the late 1930s, and should be left intact.

I may suggest we go back sometime in the fall, to see the colors change and so we could be less hot. We managed okay for most of the walk, but I have to admit that the last mile or so back to the car was a bit of a slog.

On Sunday, CVCA had graduation at The Chapel in Green. Mer is required to go, and since she has to be there, I like to go as well. I like the pre-ceremony mingling with students, former students, and teachers very much. The actual ceremony has fine moments as well; four students gave speeches this year, and I knew three of the students pretty well, and the speeches they gave were excellent.

Graduation is always a little weird, for both me and Mer. We spend multiple years getting to know these students, and sometimes getting very close to them. Then, they move on and we cycle back to CVCA for another year. It is natural, but still disquieting.

After graduation, Mer and I had been invited to supper by a family who had five children go through Mer’s classes over the years, with this year being the graduation of the youngest. Normally, I would have loved to go, but I had a mild migraine going on, and I did not feel up to it. My friend Craig gave me a ride home, and Mer was still able to go with the family, where she had a nice time and some good food at Carrabba’s.

Saturday was Mer’s day, and she started the day out with a graduation party. It was a party for one of Mer’s students whom I had not known, but that does happen every year. I always think that since Mer only has about forty seniors, I should recognize all of them. The party was a fine one, in a hall next to a church, with great comfort food and about five different kinds of dessert. Yum.

In the evening, Mer took me up to Cleveland, to Playhouse Square. She took me to a theater we did not even know existed – a small theater downstairs, under the large Allen Theater. It looked as if it used to be an old bar. It was now set up as a very small theater that could seat about thirty or forty people. We were there to see two one-act plays, to which I was looking forward, as theaters rarely put on one-acts.

The first play was Elegy for a Lady, by Arthur Miller. It told the story of a man who comes into a store staffed by a woman. The man is looking for a gift to give to his mistress, who he thinks is dying. The play unfolds details pretty slowly, and the language is vague enough to allow multiple interpretations of the action. I thought it possible (but not necessarily likely) that the play could be straightforward, or that it could all be happening in the mind of the man, or even that the man and woman were the lovers being discussed, but could not bring themselves to talk openly about the woman dying. It was not so compelling as Death of a Salesman or as The Crucible, but I still enjoyed the play quite a bit.

I’m afraid I cannot say the same for the second one-act. It was called Three Women and was by the poet Sylvia Plath. After the play, Mer explained to me it was about three women who had been pregnant:  one had a miscarriage, one had a normal birth, and one had to give the child up for adoption. The language was very dense, and the stories were interwoven with lots of overlap, and even though I really tried to stay with the play, I finally gave up on it about halfway through and just waited for it to be over. It was a fine piece of art, I expect, but not all art speaks to all people.