You have probably noticed that 2009 is over and we have started 2010. I ran much of 2009, and kept track of my running using a Nike+ system hooked to my iPod. It kept track of distance and speed and calories. It did miss some runs – there were a few weeks when my old iPod was broken and I had not gotten the replacement yet. There were some runs during which the battery ran out or the Nike+ just froze. I had two races that were 39 miles just in themselves during which I did not wear my iPod. Still, the Nike+ system logged everything that I did record, and the 2009 results are:

905 miles for 102,000 calories with an average pace of 7:40 per mile.

102,000 calories is about 29 pounds burned off. Over the year, I lost about 10-15 pounds. It is a bit intimidating to think that I ate about 15 pounds worth of food that the running simply kept off, as opposed to actually losing it. If I did not run, I would be tipping the scales at over 190 pounds. I think I’ll keep running.

But not yet. I decided to take 7 weeks off from running in hopes that a nagging injury to my left knee will heal. So far, it has been four weeks since my last run on the treadmill, and I am aiming to try running again on February 1st, just one day shy of 7 weeks off. What a shame – I hate not running. Running is how I manage stress, control my weight, and generally feel good about myself. I also expect I will be in pretty lousy shape come February. After my marathon in late September, I got sick for three weeks, and it took about three weeks of running to get my lungs back to where they did not hurt when I ran. I can only imagine that taking 7 weeks off will be harder. Still, I’d like my knee to heal, and in a very un-Riordan like way, I’m trying to be patient AND sensible. Maybe 2010 will be the year I run 1000 miles, in only 11 months.

The second part of our vacation in Maine was even more mellow than the first part, believe it or not. Christmas day opened with my waking up early, and my convincing Mer that we should go to the breakwater to see the sunrise. It stuck me that it would be beautiful, and it probably was, somewhere. This particular day in Rockland, however, it was quite cloudy, so we did not really see a sunrise per se. Happily, it was much milder than the day I had tromped out on the breakwater earlier in the week. We finally gave up on seeing a sunrise (well after the sun was up), and we went back home. We munched and puttered, and we eventually got around to opening gifts (it is surprisingly hard to corral six adults used to their own disparate schedules). Later in the day there was continuing Skip-bo action, but that was about it for the day.

The next day (Saturday), we headed out around 10:00 am to head over to Dad’s in East Livermore. The drive is a little over 1.5 hours long, so we got to Dad’s a little before 12:00. We might have gone hungry, except Kellee is a great and prodigious cook. She had made three different kinds of whoopie pies in addition to a large Christmas dinner. Plus, I spent the afternoon making bread, which turned out well and disappeared quickly. So, the day was spent eating, watching some TV, and having Mer beat me at Dark and Stormy and Trivial Pursuit. Late in the evening, we watched an hour-long 1930s animated version of Gulliver’s Travels. Gulliver’s Travels is one of my all-time favorite books, but I was suspicious of the movie from the packaging. Words almost fail me at how bad it was – Gulliver only goes to Lilliput, and he does not appear until 25 minutes through an hour- long film. The first 25 minutes was a cooked-up story about two kingdoms having a marriage go bad. It included every stereotypical gag from 1930s animation – it creaked and groaned through a poor plot for what seemed a very long time. Yikes. After the film, we went to bed.

Sunday was spent reading and eating and using the computer and watching Mer grade papers. Monday we were social – we went all the way up to Jay (about 20 miles) to see my high school friend, John. John has been a good friend of mine for 25+ years. I had not seen John in about 5 years – his 8-year-old son is now 13, and he has a 4-year-old daughter who is very cute. John and his girlfriend Linda are friendly folks, and we spent a good amount of time chatting. John had also just gotten a Wii for Linda for Christmas, so we played The Price Is Right, through which I learned that I have no idea what things cost anymore. I still won both games because John “went over” in one game and in the other Mer was way under on prices. It was a good time. We had to cut the visit short because the roads were getting messy from snow, and Mer had to get home to grade. Back at Dad’s we watched a very interesting BBC series on nature with Dad and Kellee. We watched a show on the Arctic (focusing on bears), one on the Pacific salmon run, and one on wildebeest migration and the great cats that feed on them. The shows were beautifully done.

Tuesday’s highlights were twofold – my getting my butt kicked by Mer in Dark and Stormy, followed by seeing The Nightmare before Christmas. Neither of us had seen Nightmare before, and it had been lent to Mer by one of her students. It was excellent – original and entertaining, and the music was fun (in a twisted sort of way). My sister-in-law, Jo, loves the film, and I can see why.

Mer and I had originally planned on going home from Maine Friday-Saturday, but there was a very large storm forecast for the entire weekend. So, we made the decision to travel Wednesday-Thursday to stay ahead of the snow. But, to draw the vacation out a bit, we decided to go the scenic route. We went back to Rockland to see Gramps. I had bought him a new CD/tape player (his old one had broken), and I wanted to give it to him. I also had a gift certificate to The Boathouse, a Rockland restaurant, so we figured we would grab lunch there. Carleton’s great-grandsons were there, so Mer and I took on Carleton and Logan in a game of Skip-bo. Mer and I then went to lunch at The Boathouse. It is right on the water, and the front is all glass. It was breathtaking. The restaurant served mostly seafood (no surprise there), but I got a decent burger while Mer got some scallops. We dashed back to Rankin Street for one more game of Skip-bo (we split the two games), and then we headed south.

We were aiming for York, for a B and B on the coast. Along the way, we swung through Brunswick to stop by and see one of Mer’s college friends, Julie. Julie has twin four-year-old girls, whom we had not seen in 3 years – quite a change! Julie was just heading out to walk one of her dogs when we stopped by, so we left the girls in the care of Julie’s husband, Paul, and walked with her over to Bowdoin College. It was very cold, but it was cool to wander around the college. It is a pretty campus. After the 30-minute walk, we stopped by the house for another 20 minutes or so, but then had to go so that we could get a decent rest before the 12-hour drive on Thursday.

We got to the B and B in York about 7:30 and checked in. It is a pretty B and B, and is called The York Harbor Inn. It looked as if it had 30-40 rooms, all told. Our room had cool slanty ceilings, but I did crack my head on them a few times. We went to the restaurant to get something to eat, and we were disappointed that it took about 40 minutes to get our food, even though the place was not busy. We headed back up to the room and went to sleep, but I woke up in the wee hours to the heater in the room making noise. I turned it off, but it took me about 2 hours to fall back asleep. So much for a good night’s rest. In the morning, the heater no longer would throw out heat, which was too bad. We were on the third floor (where heat rises to), so we were not too cold, but it was a little frustrating. After a good continental breakfast, we checked out and were on the road about 9:00.

We did manage to avoid the big storm coming to Maine, but we did hit a smaller storm for much of the western half of Massachusetts. We were always able to go at least 35 mph, but it did slow us down quite a bit, and I was not sad to drive out of it once we reached New York. We drove back into another storm a few hours later, but by then it had changed to rain. We were very lucky. We stopped outside of Buffalo to grab supper at Denny’s (not a happening stop on New Year’s Eve at 6:00), and then made it safely home around 10:00. We could have gone to one of two New Year’s Eve parties, but we were pretty wiped. Mer rang in the new year while reading next to my sleeping form.

We spent the last three days of vacation at home catching up on life. It was not a bad way to transition back out of vacation and back into school.

Mer and I both had two weeks off for Christmas, so we jumped in the car on Friday the 18th. We had booked a resort room at Woodcliff Resort in western Rochester, about 4.5 hours away from home. We have done the Maine trip a bunch of times, and Mer was tired of shelling out $85-95 for a bland motel room that often was not very good. She asked me to look for something better, and after some online research, I stumbled across Woodcliff. Woodcliff is a very nice spa and resort hotel, but December must be a very slow month for them, because the room we booked was really amazing, but only $105. The resort is on a hill, and the room looked out over the hills around Rochester. The room was big and the bathroom was nice, and it was just soul-soothing (as Mer observed the next morning). We relaxed in the room – we watched a 30-minute collection of Pixar short films that was on the Disney channel. I slept like a rock, and since check-out time was not until noon, we slept in. We also took advantage of the $15 (for both of us) breakfast buffet that was elegant and very tasty. The dining room had tons of windows that overlooked the snowy hills. Quite wonderful. Sadly, the return trip would not take us here, as the January room rates jumped up to $135/night. Ah, well. It was a great stay. We were well rested and well fed, and we did not need to stop for food until we got to Maine.

The trip on Saturday was uneventful. There was a huge storm that was moving up the east coast, but we managed to get through Massachusetts about three hours before the storm arrived. We were happily furnished with lots of trip food thanks to the generosity of Mer’s students bringing in good things for Christmas gifts. We called Carleton (Mer’s grandfather) once we got to the bridge at Kittery, and found out that Mer’s parents had missed their flight due to misreading the tickets. That was sad, but it would only result in a two-day delay for Dale and Carlene, so no great harm.

As we proceeded up the coast, we started to get hungry (it was pushing 8:00), and Mer needed a bathroom. We were just north of Bath, so we stopped at the Taste of Maine restaurant in Woolwich. I had grown up seeing the commercials, and Mer had gone by the restaurant most of her life (on trips to Maine), but neither of us had ever been before. We split a pizza (in a seafood restaurant), and then I was a little sad when we passed Moody’s Diner 30 miles later and saw that it was still open. Ah, well. We arrived in Rockland safely around 9:30, where Carleton and Aunt Mary were waiting for us.

Sunday was off to church with Gramps and Aunt Mary. I really like Pastor Gabe of the First Baptist Church in Rockland – a very good and passionate and thoughtful preacher. We were mellow for much of the day Sunday, but went back to the church for the evening service, which was taking the place of a Christmas Eve service this year. I love Christmas services – I would find it very strange and incomplete now not to sing “Silent Night” by candlelight during the Christmas season. The evening service featured a pastor-in-training  who gave a short sermon, and he did very well. After the service, there were refreshments in the gym, and I got to chat with the newer pastor. He is an interesting man who got a Master’s degree in marine biology before feeling he should go into ministry. I ate too much food, and then decided to tromp through the 3-4 inches of new snow to go back home, which is about a mile. One of my favorite pastimes in Rockland is to walk. I love the town, and I like looking at the houses. With the new snow, it was very pretty.

On Monday, Mer and Aunt Mary went off to Bangor to pick up Dale and Carlene. That left me alone with Carleton, so I took the opportunity to take him to lunch at the Owl’s Head General Store, a store in the next town that has the best burgers in the greater Rockland area. I really treasured that lunch – I admire Carleton and like him very much, and it was good to get to talk with him one on one. We chatted quite awhile about his service in the Pacific in World War 2, at my instigation. While Carleton does not shy away from talking about his service, he does not bring it up on his own. He spent 2.5 years in the jungles of New Guinea and other Pacific islands. He was attached to the field HQ of an artillery unit. It was very very interesting. Mer and Aunt Mary and Mer’s parents made it back safe and sound in the late afternoon.

Tuesday was another pretty mellow day. Mer and I had lunch at Bricks, a restaurant in town that serves $5 lunches. After lunch, we headed over to the cemetery to see Gram’s grave (Gram passed away last October). It is still a very pretty place to be buried. We headed back home, and later that day, three of Mer’s relatives came over for pizza. It was a pleasant meal.

Wednesday was an exciting day – in the morning I went over to the breakwater to walk out on it, but it was bitterly cold. It was very beautiful, but it was painful to be in the wind on the breakwater, so I only made it about 100 years out on the the mile-long breakwater. Whew, was it cold. Around 11:00 or so, Mer and I took everyone to lunch at Bricks. We have been the charity cases for 2.5 years now (because of the two-house situation), but we had a little money set aside for this occasion, and we were pleased we could finally treat everyone. We headed back home after a good meal, and we watched a couple of videos about Alaska that Aunt Mary had. She had been on a cruise to Alaska in September, and had brought these back. Alaska is beautiful – what amazing county. Later that evening, we broke out the Skip-Bo cards. Gram and Gramps were huge Skip-Bo players while Gram was still alive, and Skip-Bo was always a highlight of visits to Rockland. It was me and Carleton versus Mer and Aunt Mary (it is always guys versus girls when the numbers work out right). The games spread out over several days, but I won’t keep you in suspense. Carleton and I triumphed, 5 games to 4. I made some mistakes, but not enough to lose everything. I corrected a very minor play of Carleton’s, and he talked about it for the rest of the day (in good humor). It was very funny – I believe he claimed he had not been “yelled at” like that even in the army. What was especially great was that I made a pretty obvious mistake right after I showed him his very minor one. Ah, the joys of Skip-Bo.

That evening, Mer and Carlene and I went to see The Blind Side. I knew nothing about the move, and I was very pleased that it was about football and it had Sandra Bullock in it. Then, on top of that, it actually portrayed Christians in a decent light, and on top of that it was an inspiring story, and it was (mostly) true. What a great movie. I am glad that I got to see it.

Thursday (Christmas Eve) was spent getting ready to have the entire family over. We all made food (I made homemade bread that turned out well), and all the kids and grandkids and great-grandkids showed up early that evening – I think there were 15 of us in all. We ate a ton of food (and still had lots left over), and then exchanged gifts (not counting immediate family gifts, which waited until Christmas itself). I ducked out at one point – I had a headache coming on, and I wanted some fresh air, so I went for another walk around Rockland. Again, it is much fun to admire the houses there – many of them are very beautiful. Once I got back from my walk, the gift exchange was over and the party was starting to break up. I went upstairs to finish off The Great Gatsby, which Mer had been encouraging me to reread, since she had just finished teaching it.

That brought us to the about the half-way point of our vacation in Maine, so I’ll wrap this up here. Maine is a pretty great place to spend Christmas.

We had two Christmas get-togethers this year (besides the ones held at CVCA). The first was at my boss’s house on Saturday the 12th. Jim is also my running partner, so it is easy to hang out with him. There were several other CVCA folks there with spouses, but there were only 10 people all told, and I knew 8 of them (including me and Mer), so it was the right size for shy ol’ me.

I do like my coworkers, and this was a fun time. My colleagues are funny people, and I especially enjoy hanging out with the president of CVCA, RT. He is an outgoing and funny man, and it was nice to be outside of work with him.

There was food, and a music game. The music game was to guess the name of the Christmas carol based on the reading of a less-used verse from the song. It was delightful to see Mer enter “competition mode” – she sat straight up and focused entirely on the reader. I love my wife. On the other end was RT and his wife, where they kept throwing out random names of songs, much to the amusement of everyone in the room (even Mer). The women beat the men 1-0 (it was -1 for each wrong answer).

After the song game, we had a white elephant gift exchange. There were a number of funny gifts, like an inflatable SpongeBob Squarepants, and the required singing mounted fish. But, my favorite moment involved our gift. We thought we were being fairly nice – we brought our old 26″ television, since we’d been given a new one. I took a picture of the TV and put the picture in a gift bag. My co-worker Vicki picked it, and had the strangest expression on her face, and she called her husband back into the room to see the gift. A minute later it became clear why – when RT opened the gift from Vicki, it was a 12″ television. So, Vicki traded up, I guess.

Sunday we also had a get-together. We met up with Aunt Mary and we took her to Macaroni Grill for lunch. After an excellent lunch, we headed over to Mt. Pleasant Church (Aunt Mary’s church), where we joined up with a group of about 8 others to go caroling at a couple of nursing homes and a hospital. The group was about half youth (under 20), which was fun to see. Getting to sing to older and some sick people was very moving and gratifying. The people seemed really very grateful. We wandered up and down halls in the buildings singing, and people came to the doors of their rooms and sang with us. One lady followed us around in her wheelchair. It was quite wonderful.

After the singing, we went back to the church, and they served us a light supper, which was generous on the desserts. Yum! A weekend mixture of family, friends, and total strangers seemed a good way to spend a Christmas time weekend.

Our first Royal Fools show of the year was back on December 11th. Royal Fools is my improv comedy group that I coach at CVCA, and this marked the sixth year of Fools being around. Amazing to me, but I am glad of it.

My assistant coach (and Founding Fool), Clarice, came over to the house before the show. Mer made a very good casserole, and we chatted about the show. I headed over a tad early to get things set up (make sure we have enough chairs on stage, get a table for refreshments, that sort of thing).

We have a good group of Fools this year – a group of 12, which is the biggest ensemble yet. I actually limited the group to grades 10-12 (I used to allow ninth graders to join) because the group is as big as I would want it to be. I’ve turned away 2-3 people who wanted to join after the year had started as well. I feel like we are getting pretty established as a group.

This particular Friday was busy – there was a home basketball game, and there had been a sophomore class skating party, and I think something else was going on as well. So, I was very pleased when we ended up with an estimated audience of about 80 people. As usual, the audience was very supportive and good-natured.

The show itself went well. We made a few mistakes here and there (yes, you can make mistakes in improv), but we did not tank any games. There were some pretty spectacular moments as well:
– a political debate about Santa Claus, and the revelation that the red-wearing guy is really “Commie Claus”
– a superhero called Concrete Boy, who filled in the San Andreas Fault using himself (and in the process falling on his chest without catching himself at all)
– a proposal of marriage voiced by “Do I have to?”
– a dancing wombat

We debuted two new (to us) games. One is called “Showdown at the Improv Corral” (or Showdown for short). In this game, two teams of three square off against each other, and go back and forth trying to outdo the other team by creating more interest in saying a single phrase over and over. It’s a concept in improv called “heightening.” The game went over quite well, but Clarice and I need to figure out a good, short way to explain to the audience what is going on.

We also introduced a game called “Salesman” where a Fool tries to sell a random object to two separate people who really don’t need it. In this instance, the salesman had to sell a nosehair trimmer to a yo-yo expert and then to a soccer star. The audience enjoyed it, and I think we will do even better next time (now that we have seen how it will work on stage).

The Fools came through with food this time, and so the hanging out after the show was festive. That was a good thing, because the show came in pretty short for us (just under an hour). Most of our shows are about 75-85 minutes long, so I was glad to have food available for people to hang out and chat.

Once everyone was gone and we had cleaned up (about 9:00), Mer and I grabbed our friend Dubbs, and met our friends Rachel and Nate at Coldstone Creamery up in Hudson. We ate too much ice cream and had a good time chatting. All in all, a very successful evening.

My Christmas gift to Mer this year was a bit early. I took her on a date on Thursday the 10th. We went to Outback to eat, and then drove over to Kent to go to the Kent Stage (an old renovated movie theater) to see one of Mer’s favorite bands, Over the Rhine.

Mer has been following Over the Rhine since around 1991. The band members went to Malone College in Canton, and all had Mer’s father, Dale, for an English professor. So, Mer found out about them through her dad. The original four-member band is now down to two original members – a husband/wife team that is still creating really good music. The duo brought along three other musicians with them to flesh out the sound, and they were tremendous. One musician in particular was jaw-dropping. He played the pedal steel guitar, mandolin, dobro, guitar, and a mandolin-guitar hybrid that I had never seen before, and he played them all effortlessly. I spent much of the concert watching him.

The concert was excellent. It opened with Lucy Wainwright, the daughter of Loudon Wrainwright III (a well-known folk singer). She was by herself and played guitar. She was a very funny person with many stories (including a date in London where her date ended up in the hospital (not her fault)), and her music was very solid. She did a nice job of winning the audience over, and she played for about 45 minutes.

Over the Rhine came on after a 20-minute intermission, and they played for over two hours. Being December, they did several numbers from their two excellent Christmas albums, but they also did many songs from their other albums as well. They did not go back as far as their first two albums, but otherwise I think they did at least a song from all the others. The lead singer, Karin, can still sing, and her husband plays keyboards really well. They seem to enjoy each other on stage, and had a good time interacting with the band.

If you are interested in hearing what Over the Rhine sounds like, you can check them out for free at archive.org – start here – http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=collection%3AOvertheRhine&sort=-publicdate and see what you think.

Just to round out the Christmas gift, I did buy Mer Over the Rhine’s first-ever songbook so she would have something to take home and play on the piano. Turns out the arrangements are a tad tricky, but she is a game soul and did a nice (if slow) job at her first few attempts at them. Merry Christmas, love!

Saturday the 5th was “my” day, but it was not too exciting for most of it. We did start off well, by using up the last of a Bob Evans gift card to get breakfast at the restaurant. Then, we spent hours (and I do mean hours) running errands. Happily, we were able to run them together, and it was companionable. Plus, I was getting new glasses, and I did not dare to pick out my own glasses without Mer’s input. She (with the help of two store clerks) convinced me to get frames from the “go bold” collection. They look like updated hornrims from the 50s, and Mer helped cement the deal by saying they looked like the glasses David Tennant wears as The Doctor in Doctor Who.

A friend of mine had given me spare tickets he had to go see Weathervane Theater’s production Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge. I had a little money around, but not a lot of time, so Mer and I settled on splitting a sub at Subway, and then trying the ice cream at an ice cream parlor/laundromat called McMoo’s. It was especially funny to be getting ice cream since it was a very cold night out, but dessert is dessert. The ice cream was okay, not great, and we had to rush it because we were cutting the time too close to the start of the play.

Weathervane is a comuntiy theater, which means that most of the actors are amateurs. Still, I have found their productions to be well done, and they have been around for a long time, having started in 1935. It is interesting to me that I keep managing to see variations on A Christmas Carol, a novel/play/movie powerhouse that I have long since grown tired of. Last year, Shannon and Jo took us to see the story from the viewpoint of Marley, Scrooge’s partner, and it was a well-done show. Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge looked closely at Bob Cratchit’s family, especially his wife. The play was meant to be a good-humored look at the familiar story, and threw in many contemporary references to Enron and to It’s a Wonderful Life. As a play, it was smile-worthy, with a few heart-felt laughs along the way. It dragged a touch in the second half as some of the first-act jokes were re-hashed, but it held together okay on the whole.

The acting was fine across the cast. The actor playing Bob Cratchit was excellent – he shone every time he was on stage. He had very good stage presence, and was easy to hear and delivered his lines with ease.

There was no set to speak of – the play took place in front of the main curtain. The main stage was set for the teen production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, so this play made do with a very sparse set. It worked just fine.

I think I would have liked to see the play head even more toward farce or satire. It could not quite make up its mind where it was going to land – a tongue-in-cheek play, a satire, or a farce. I think it could have been much fun if the author had pulled out all the stops and let the play romp. Still, it was an entertaining production, especially as a gift from a friend!

On Thursday the 3rd, Mer and I headed over to Actors’ Summit Theater to see Guys on Ice, a (are you ready?) musical about ice fishing. We were a little skeptical, but were happily surprised. It was a three-man show, mostly about two friends shooting the breeze while ice fishing in an ice shanty. Along the way, they sing about things. Odd, but it worked pretty well. It was all fluff, but who cares? It was entertaining.

The two friends are fishing while waiting for a local reporter to show up to feature them on “that fishing show.” The reporter never shows, of course, but they spend the day fishing and trying to get rid of an irritating fisherman, The Moocher, who bums bait and beer. The play took place in Wisconsin, so there was fun with accents and some pokes at football – one of the guys was in trouble with his wife because he had Packers tickets on their anniversary (he rightly pointed out, “I’ve only knnown my wife 17 years – I’ve had a relationship with the Packers for 38 years!”).

The music was fun and lighthearted. It was backed by solo piano, but the piano was played very well. There was a fun number about being the King of Fishing, where one of the guys imagined himself as the Elvis of Ice Fishing, with the result that his friend comes back in the shanty wondering why the singer is standing on his bait bucket. My favorite number was a tribute to snowmobile suits. They guys were wearing full snowmobile suits, and sang about them, and they provided percussion by using the velcro flaps of the suits. That was great.

So, all in all, Guys on Ice was a big hit with me and Mer. It was not deep at all, it was all fluff, and it was great. It was a good way to spend a Thursday evening (excpet for the surprise of remembering that I had to work the next day!).

We had Wednesday through Sunday off for Thanksgiving, so we decided to head to Michigan to see Mom and Marc. It was also a fine excuse to pick up our friend Ellen who lives in Hillsdale, Michigan. We left Tuesday, but Meredith had to stay until 6:00 for parent/teacher conferences, so we got a late start. That worked out okay, because we had invited ourselves to stay the night at Ellen’s, and she was gracious enough to accept – she even promised to turn the heat up from absolute zero to merely frigid (actually, her house was very warm this time, but don’t tell her that). Ellen’s house is a nice distance away from Cuyahoga Falls – just about 3.5 hours, so we got to Ellen’s about 10:00ish and chatted briefly and marveled again at how pretty her house is. We did not stay up too long, but went to bed after procuring a lamp and 17 tons of blankets for Mer.

The next morning, Ellen served up a fine breakfast of baked pancakes, which I had never had before. They were very good, and she informed us they are also called German babies or Dutch babies, for reasons unknown to her. This was very fitting, though, since Mer was teaching Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” in her English class (a viciously satiric essay about solving Ireland’s starvation problems by eating babies). Many of Mer’s students were happy to be confirmed in their suspicions that she eats babies.

After breakfast, we packed up the car and headed out. It is about 2.5 hours to Mom and Marc’s place from Ellen’s, and the trip was uneventful. We were a bit surprised when we got there that the drive was blocked by a van, but it just turned out to be a workman. He moved so we could get in the garage, and we were able to unpack while he finished up his work on the front door. After the workman left, I went downtown to get some supplies to make bread as a welcome for Mom and Marc, and by the time I got back, Shannon and Jo had arrived and everyone was quietly reading or grading in the living room. I worked on my bread.

Mom and Marc arrived earlier than expected (they were allowed to leave work early since it was the day before Thanksgiving), and that was much fun, although it did ruin my plan of having hot bread for them as they walked in the door. We all talked, and I did finally get some bread on the table, which seemed to be a hit. Mom and Marc supplemented the bread with pizza (I think).

Meredith and I were in the middle of a fitness challenge that was issued by CVCA. If we exercised 30 minutes/day, and if most of the employees did it, then CVCA would get a break for insurance costs. I can’t say we always had the best attitude about the program, but we complied, which meant we walked 30 minutes every day that we were at Mom’s, incuding Thanksgiving. Several of the days were just a tad cold and windy.

Other than walking, much of the time was very mellow, with a lot of good food. Mom and Marc put out a wonderful spread, and we ate too much. There were also a number of games that were played – Shannon and I rallied from behind, but still lost to Mer, Jo, and Ellen in the book-identifying game Dark and Stormy. Various people in various combinations played Blokus, the Avalon Hill game of Shakespeare (I beat Mer by one space!), and Scrabble over the course of the vacation. Shannon and Jo had to leave Friday, but we filled in for them by watching the five-part mini-series Cranford, which is based on a series of novels from the mid-ninteenth century. The series was quite good – very funny much of the time, and touching in a few places. I was ticked because the author seemed determined to kill off everyone, but other than that little detail, the series was very good. Ellen said she had heard the TV series was one of those rare ones where the series was actually better than the books it was based on.

Saturday, Mom and Marc were going to see Marc’s family in Michigan, so we decided to get adventuresome and headed to a town we had never been to before – Saugatuck. It was a bit of a longer drive than I had expected (about 70-80 minutes), but it did turn out to be a cute little town, although we missed it the first time (it is off the main road about a mile). We wandered the streets window shopping. We saw a sign for a bookstore on a second floor of a bulding, so we tried the door, but it was locked. There was a gallery on the first floor (there is a law in Michigan that all towns near the lake must have at least one gallery on every block), so we went in to see if there was an inside entrance to the bookstore. There was not, but there were hundreds of paintings crammed in the gallery. The clerk informed us that he sold more paintings than any gallery in the entire country, and that everything was 70-80% off because it was off season. We looked around, and much of it was not to my taste or Mer’s taste, but there was one abstract piece we kept coming back to. We had a place in our living room that we wanted to fill with a big painting, and this fit the bill. The painting was only $80, and we had been given a gift of $60 earlier, so we finally decided to buy it. We left it in the store so we could keep wandering for a bit.

We went down to the lake. There were no boats around, but there were a lot of spots to moor boats, so I assume this is a popular spot in the summer. We were getting hungry, so we found (after a little looking) a reasonalbly priced restaurant where we ate. We then went and picked up the painting, which I am guessing is three feet by four feet. I was confident that it would fit in the trunk, just. I was wrong. So, lucky and longsuffering Ellen got to share her backseat with a painting all the way back to Mom’s. (On the return trip on Sunday, Mer sat in the back seat for the drive to Ellen’s.) I did try to mitigate the wow-what-a-great-time-I’m-having aspect of Ellen’s plight by stopping near home at a Culver’s Restaurant to buy frozen custard for everyone. Ellen assured us that the painting story would provide material for her Christmas letter (when it comes out in May).

We did go down to the lake several times, usually on our CVCA-insurance-requested walks. Ellen went with us a couple of times, which insured the next installment of the Ellen-is-cold-with-the-Riordans series. Mom and Marc joined the three of us (with Marc driving Ellen down to the beach and Ellen and Mer back to the house) for a very spectacular sunset on Saturday evening.

While Mer and I still have one more house than we would like to have, we do have many, many things to be thankful for. One of the biggest blessings we have is a pretty great family – not to mention friends who somehow manage to still want to hang out with us despite my best efforts at freezing and crowding them away. It is good to stop and take stock of these blessings once in awhile – we probably should do it more often.

One of my friends and running partners, Nate Gurnish, had been hinting and then outright telling me that I should run the Cleveland Fall Classic half-marathon with him. I was fortunate enough to get some extra money (as a gift) in November, so I did end up with enough money to pay for the $35 (or so) entry fee, and I entered the week before the race.

I wrestle with running on Sundays – Sundays are supposed to be a time of rest and worship, and running seems to be mostly self-worship (“look what I can do”). In this case, it was an easy decision. Nate had asked me to run with him as a favor, and especially where he trained with me for much of the fall, I wanted to do what I could to help him. Also, I wanted to push him. Nate had gotten just over 1:40 in the Akron half-marathon in September. I knew he could break 1:40, and I wanted to pace him so that he would break that mark.

Mer, always faithful in these things, came along to cheer and be the stuff holder. Nate’s wife, Rachel, was running in the 5k race that day as well, so Mer was once again by herself for the first 35 minutes or so. Rachel did achieve her goal that day in the 5k – she wanted to break 30 minutes, and she did so (getting a 28:58 time). She then joined Mer to cheer me and Nate on.

The Cleveland Fall Classic is well designed for spectators. It is a six mile out-and-back that we had to do twice (to get to 13.1 miles). This means that Mer and Rachel got to see us start, then come back, then go out, and then they saw us close to the finish, all without having to move very far. That was nice from their perspective.

Having an out-and-back that we had to do twice was not my first choice, but it worked out okay. I was able to break the race into 4 segments of about 3 miles, and that made for good goals. It was a little depressing to run over the same ground a second time, but not so bad as I had feared.

The day was quite wonderful for late November – it was sunny and in the high 30s or low 40s at the start, and warmed up nicely into the high 40s by the time we finished. The temperature, combined with a very, very flat course, made for pretty ideal running conditions.

Not everything was perfect, though. The race had almost 1000 people in it (counting the 5k people), and there were only 8 bathrooms for everyone (including spectators). I waited in line for a bathroom so long that I only got to the starting line (where Nate was waiting) about two minutes before the start of the race. That put us pretty far back in the starting pack, and so we spent the first two miles dodging people. Nate even cut a woman off right at the start, to the point where he thinks he may have bumped her leg (although he certainly did not mean to). It was a very crowded start.

There were three water stops along the course, which were plenty for a 3+-mile section, and the water was fine, but the Gatorade was so weak as to make me wonder if I had grabbed water by accident (twice). I finally gave up and stuck to water. This is not a horrible thing, but just an annoyance (Gatorade is useful for fuel on longer runs).

The last, and biggest, problem with the race was that the 5k runners shared the same course, but started 15 minutes later. Nate and I caught up with the tail end of the 5k runners for their last 1.5 miles, and it was frustrating at times. We had a whole road for most of that distance, but we still had to dodge a lot of people. There were numerous younger girls running as part of a get-girls-to-run group, which is great, except they did not know race etiquette. In general, in running, you should stay to the right so people can pass as needed. The girls were often running 3, 4 or even 5 abreast. Near the 5k finish, the course diverted onto a paved bike path, and it was very congested with young girls often taking the entire trail and blocking the half-marathoners behind them. Nate and I passed to the side, in the grass, but it was still frustrating and a little dangerous (one half-marathoner tripped trying to pass a group of girls, and got some road rash; happily, the girls were not hurt).

Anyway, those three problems aside, the run was quite good. I felt great, and I pushed the pace. The road was through a park system, and so the trees were very pretty. Nate was running well, although he started to crash around mile 9. I tried to keep the pace steady, and tried to give Nate advice. When I told him, with two miles left, that we would pick up the pace in the last half-mile, he laughed a slightly manic laugh, and asked me what I thought he had been doing. Point taken. Nate hung in there at that pace, and he even found a burst for the last 30 seconds of the race and finished a step ahead of me. I stopped my watch (there was no clock on the course), and we finished in 1:37:19, or a 7:26/mile pace. That was over three minutes faster for Nate compared to his Akron time, and was just two minutes or so off my best time. It was a great race. Nate had nothing left, and told me he did not enjoy the last four miles at all, but to me, that is how you want to finish a race. I am proud of Nate – what a great job.

Some official stats:

Nate finished 8 out of 24 in his age group (25-29).

I finished 16th out of 46 in my age group (35-39).

Nate and I finished 96th and 97th out of 327 male finishers (the women’s stats were separate).

I think this was a more competitive field of runners since it was in late November. That meant the high school and college cross country seasons were over, so we had a number of fast runners from area schools who ran as well (which they had not been able to do in the September Akron Marathon because they were still in season).