Last Friday Mer and I had tickets to go to Actors’ Summit Theater (where else?). So, I dug out my Date Day reserves and took Mer to San Francisco Pizza Oven in Hudson.

San Francisco Pizza Oven is a decent enough place to eat. It is not going to win any awards on charm, but the food is usually decent and it was striking a chord last Friday. We ordered our food (Mer – ziti, me – bbq chicken panini), and I got a hot chocolate. Since the restaurant is SF-themed, they use Ghirardelli’s chocolate in their hot chocolate. I figured it had to be good. Boy, was I wrong. It was about 800 degrees hot, and completely tasteless. I do not know if they put the “small” amount of chocolate in the “large” cup, but it was pretty bad stuff. Do not get hot chocolate there!

The food was very tasty, although my modest sandwich was fairly late in coming out to the table, for whatever reason. Mer’s food was hearty and good (she let me try some). Happily, because of the delay in the food, the waitress gave us a coupon for a free sandwich for the next visit. Yes, we can be bribed with food.

We made our way the very short distance to the playhouse, where we got to see The Year of Magical Thinking. Magical Thinking is a one-woman show about the author trying to cope with the sudden death of her husband and the constant illness of her daughter, who dies a little over a year after the husband. The play was quite well written and very well acted (the poor actress had a ton of lines with no one to help). The theme of loss and grief is pretty universal, and so I should have been into this play, and yet I was not.

I’ve tried to figure out why. I think it is lots of reasons. It was a Friday and so I was tired from work. The play dealt openly with emotions and internal thoughts, which Mainers and especially Riordans do not do. My world view and the author’s are wildly different. The author feels she can fix and control everything, and I can relate to that – maybe we are too similar. Maybe I don’t like to deal head-on with death. For whatever reason (and maybe all of these and more), the play just made me feel impatient and failed to capture my attention or emotions. It should have, but it did not. There you are.

Continuing about last Saturday, it was Valentine’s Day, and we actually had a date plan! A coworker had tickets to see Lord of the Dance in Cleveland, but could not use them, so she gave them to me. They were in the nose-bleed seats, but that is actually good for a show big on spectacle and low on dialogue – you can see the entire stage at once, and that makes for a fine show.

A few days after we got these tickets, a student of Meredith’s approached her and mentioned the show. He said he thought I would like it, and wondered if we would like to double date with him and his CVCA girlfriend, who is also a student of Meredith’s and is a founding member of the Ceili Club. We were both very flattered and readily accepted. How many students think it a good and romantic time to hang out with adults, let alone teachers? Since we had tickets, Matt and Lauren (the students) would be sitting in a different area for the show, but that would give them some space on Valentine’s Day; we agreed to go out to dinner first and we would all ride in our car to Cleveland, so we would still get to spend lots of time together.

The funny thing about the evening was that it was a surprise day for Lauren – Matt planned the whole thing and Lauren knew nothing about it. Again, a risky move of surprising your girlfriend with a double date with teachers.

Mer and I called ahead to Texas Roadhouse where we had agreed to all meet. Texas Roadhouse does not take reservations, but you can put your name on the waiting list via phone. So, when we got to the restaurant, we only had about a 10 minute wait (there was about an hour wait already at 4:15!).

We walked through the door of the restaurant and Matt and Lauren were already there waiting. Lauren’s face lit up – she was really excited to see us. Again, most gratifying and flattering. We decided to wait just outside the doors of the restaurant since things were so crowded. We chatted and I took a photo. It turns out that part of Matt and Lauren’s romantic day had started with a training run with the cross country teams that morning (Matt and Lauren are both runners). Somehow, I suspect that Mer would not be too thrilled if I suggested starting out any Saturday like that, let alone Valentine’s Day.

We had a pleasant dinner. While Texas Roadhouse has a wonderful way with all things meat related, their desserts are skimpy and not appealing (I think they have three choices). Since we were doing okay on time, we decided to swing by the house to condense down to one car, and then head over to Handel’s for ice cream (and yes, it was February and butt-cold; that is what car heaters are for).

Post ice cream, the trip to Cleveland was uneventful except for a search for the directions that included going back to the house (we found them in Mer’s seat – she accidentally sat on them and could not feel them through her enormous coat). We had been joking all evening about going to see a monster truck rally to throw Lauren off the scent. It turns out that we did not have to worry – Lauren had never heard of Lord of the Dance, but she was excited to see it when she found out that it involved lots of Irish dancing.

My only sadness of the whole evening was that the gallery that houses my favorite sculpture, Melody, was actually open, but we did not have time to go in and see the statue. Next time.

We agreed upon a meeting place for after the show, and we each went to our seats. As I mentioned, our seats were way up in the third balcony. It was a little fear-inducing for me because of the height, but the view of the stage and then the show was fine. The show was great! The Lord of the Dance does have a plot – the good Lord of the Dance, aided by a guide, must fight off the evil dancer who is challenging him. It is pretty straightforward, but it does make for a tighter show (plot-wise) than Riverdance. I think I like Riverdance slightly better because it showcases more musicians, and seems as if it has more dancing. It’s pretty close. Anyway, I enjoyed the show very much. I was amused by the four lead dancers (the Lord of the Dance, the evil guy, the good girl, and the evil girl). They were excellent dancers, but since they were in charge of their squads of dancers (as part of the plot), they spent a lot of time strutting around the stage pointing and gesturing while the chorus dancers danced their hearts out. The leads all had solo dances and also took part in the big dances, but it sure seemed as if the leads danced less (or at least not more than) the chorus dancers.

We all met back up after the show, and Lauren got an usher to take some pictures. Sadly, I did not bring my camera for fear it would not be allowed in the venue, but Lauren had hers in her purse. Lauren and Matt both liked the show very much. We had to wait a bit to get out of the parking garage, but once out we made it home with no incidents. It was a very successful evening!

Saturday, as you may have noticed, was Valentine’s Day. In addition, it was “my” day where I could plan anything that I wanted to do. So, what does the master of schmooze and romance do on our national day of love? Hang out with lots of students! And it was much fun, too.

To start the student-intensive day, we headed to a birthday celebration for Zach (a.k.a. “Moops”), which was being held nearby. Moops is a Royal Fool, and so I have known him for a couple of years. His mom is also a music teacher at CVCA, and so I have known her for about 5 years. Mer pointed out that it is pretty neat that we feel comfortable hanging out with either the parents or the students. Anyway, I digress.

We first struck out for Hudson to get Moops a birthday present. It seemed natural to guess what he might like – a teenaged male could not dislike food! So, we headed to the nearest Panera and picked up a gift card. We were waited on by a CVCA student, so we got an additional student appearance in on the day.

Supplied with our gift, we headed to Kendall Hills park where the party was being held. It was supposed to be a sledding (“sliding,” in Maine) party, but the two-plus feet of snow we had two weeks ago is now gone. So, it turned into an eat-and-hike party.

It was a surprise party, so Moops was not there when we arrived. There was a warm and roaring fire in a large barrel to keep us warm, so the waiting was not a problem. There were several students that Mer and I knew, and Moops’s parents and grandparents were there, so we had a good time waiting for the birthday boy.

He showed up with his girlfriend, who was the one to dream up an excuse to come to a park on a lightly snowing day (I think she told him they were meeting her sister and then going to lunch). Moops seemed quite surprised. Food suddenly appeared in the form of chips and pizza. We ate and talked, and then we each got a cupcake with a candle on it to blow out. I guess Moops is so old he needs help with his candles! It was a fun and tasty twist on a cake.

We then took a hike of about a mile around the park. When I say “we,” I mean the students took off ahead while we cleaned things up a bit, and then we (Moops’s parents and Mer and I) followed at a distance. The snow was not heavy and was not accumulating; it just made things pretty. We tromped around for about a mile or so and made a loop back to the fire. We talked for a few minutes more, but then Mer and I had to leave for part two of the evening. I’m glad Moops was able to host us for his birthday – food and fellowship and hiking makes for a good time.

 Friday night was the first-ever off-site, non-CVCA-venue Fools show. After the first Fools show of this year, back in December, a CVCA alum (and wife of a CVCA teacher) approached me and asked if we would mind being the entertainment for their church’s Valentine’s Day get-together. I was surprised, but quickly said I would think about it and run it past the students. They were pretty excited about the idea, and so we landed an extra show for this year.

I also now have an assistant coach. One of the Founding Fools asked if she could come back and help coach. Since the Fools group is now 10 members, I accepted the offer – it will allow me to split the group in half and get the individual students more stage time in practice. Mer and I gave the new coach, Clarice, a ride to the show. We chatted about coaching things and got to the church about 6:00, with the doors opening at 7:00 and the show starting about 7:15 or so.

Our friends had done a great job – the basement fellowship hall of the church was looking pretty classy. There was black fabric hung around with white lights draped behind them. There were about 10-12 tables in the hall covered with black tablecloths and candles. At the front of the hall there was a small stage that was in the shape of a T – a broad back portion with a small thrust stage sticking out. The stage was about six inches off of the floor and was made of bouncy plywood. There was a small office on one side of the stage that we were allowed to use as a hang-out room (a green room), as well as for an isolation chamber for the various guessing-game improv skits. Finally, and amazingly for us, there were two small red-tinted spotlights illuminating the stage. It was a nice set-up.

The various Fools showed up by 6:15 (except for one who was stuck in traffic), so we went over stage notes. People started trickling in about 6:45, and so we found a room in the upstairs of the church where we could warm up. We headed back down to the fellowship hall around 7:00, and we ensconced ourselves in the “green room” until we were given the thumbs-up at about 6:15.

The room was pretty full – probably about 60-70 people. It appears the Fools have a bit of a cult following – we did not advertise this show at all at CVCA, but there were still about 25 CVCA people in the audience, including a fair number of students. The crowd was very enthusiastic and was much fun to play to. They needed some extra prompting to give us suggestions to get scenes going, but I think that is due to not being familiar with improv shows and how they work.

The show itself went pretty well. There were only a couple of games that either lagged or went long. Since we played a total of 14 games, that is a pretty good percentage! We had several crowd-roaring moments, and most of the show was laugh-worthy (in a good way). Some highlights:

– a “new choice” where a basement was infested with a dinosaur
– a super-fast “interrogation” where the criminal nailed that she had stolen paper clips with Rapunzel in the White House
– a “genre rewind” where the character had a sore tooth and a crazy dentist and had to perform the scene as opera
– a “good, bad, and ugly advice” where one character was a nasally geek/nerd
– a “musical chairs” where a man forgot to get his girlfriend a diamond ring for Valentine’s Day, and settled on getting glass rings instead, and they ended up in a zoo in China
– a “political debate” that got my friend Nate on stage (since he goes to the church and works at CVCA), where we debated belly button lint and number two pencils

The show did have a half-hour intermission, so I don’t think it felt too long. We went about an hour and fifteen minutes (I think).

After the show, we headed over to the house of one of the Fools – she lived only a few blocks away and invited us back for pizza. 7 of the 10 Fools could make it, and so we caravaned the short distance over. Clarice, Mer and I ate pizza and chatted with a couple of parents and grandparents upstairs while the Fools headed to the basement. After we finished eating, Mer and I and Clarice headed downstairs to see what was up. The various Fools were chatting while a couple played Halo on an X-Box. We joined in the small talk, and then I was forced to play Halo for the first time ever, happily against another Halo newbie. I lost 3-2, and it was universally agreed that we were pretty sad players. I then played another Fool at Rock’em Sock’em Robots. I lost that too, so I lost both new school and old school games. I must be getting older.

We’ll have another Fools show back home at CVCA in March. I hope it goes as well as our Friday gig.

Last Sunday was a fairly nice winter day. We had recently gotten another foot of snow, and although some of it had melted, we still had well over a foot of snow. I had called Jim on Saturday to see if he wanted to go trompin’ in the woods. He was game, but had to wait for Sunday. So, Sunday afternoon, Jim and I headed down to the Towpath in the Valley to tromp out to the beaver dam area.

I love the beaver dam walk – it is about a mile to the pond, and I had seen it in spring, summer, and fall, but I had never seen it in winter. It seemed like a good quest to wade through a foot of snow to go see a frozen pond.

I was quite surprised to find that the Towpath had a well-worn path already. It was only four days after the major storm, and the walking was not difficult at all. I guess nature nuts like the beaver pond!

It was a pretty walk, and Jim and I chatted about work and about running (of course). We did come around a corner and see another couple of people ahead on the trail, and when we got to the pond there was a dad with two little girls (who were having a great time throwing snow balls into the mushy top layer of the ice). I was fairly surprised to come across people, especially where it was only a few hours to the Super Bowl, but for much of the outing we had the trail to ourselves.

Jim decided he had to test the ice, so he climbed over the rail on the walkway and held on while he lowered more and more of his weight on to the ice. It did hold, but it had “bad idea” written all over it.

I took a bunch of pictures, and we sat on a bench for a bit and watched the ice. We then headed back to the car. As we drove off, Jim had asked me if I had ever been to the Ledges park, and I said I had. He asked if I had seen the Ice Box Cave, which I had never found, so off we went to see the cave as a bonus.

The Ledges trails were far less packed down. I like the Ledges in that it has  rock outcroppings and a pretty decent forest. I was delighted to see someone had built a snowman on a ledge.

We wound our way down the trail, and Jim guided us to the cave. It was a good-sized crack, and it went back a far amount. Sadly, it was also really dark. Once you got in about 15 feet, you could not continue for the dark. Jim said that it went back another 40 or 50 feet. Next time, I’ll need to bring a flashlight.

We went back to the car and were treated to a pretty sunset. It was a good outing, especially given the immediate couch camping I was going to do to watch the Super Bowl.

Third time is still charming (see below) – Mer and I stayed late at school on Friday for the CVCA Open House. We have two open house programs per year, and it is a chance for the school to show prospective students (and parents) what we offer. Mer (along with another teacher)  was at the school representing the English Department, and I was in the clubs/sports section for Fools and Ceili Club.

Anyway, we got out late (around 7:15), and after a quick change of clothes, we headed back to Mustard Seed Market for dessert and music. As Mer noted, we had not been to Mustard Seed in years (over a decade), and now we had been three weeks in a row. Never too much of a good thing!  In this case, we were going to hear Celtic music, which turned out to be a woman who played recorder, whistles, and guitar, along with a man who played guitar and keyboards. As luck would have it, they took a break just as we arrived, and when they came back after 10 minutes or so they did several numbers that were covers of pop tunes. They finally came around to several Celtic tunes that were very good, and that made for a fun time. When you add in excellent desserts, all is well. I had some chocolate-and-TONS-of-whipped-cream French dessert that was good (although I would get it with no strawberry sauce next time), and Mer got a very light-tasting cheesecake with chocolate sauce. I also added a peanut butter shake for good measure, and it was okay, but I liked the chocolate shake I had tried last week better. Still, good music and good food – Mer said if you’d added the Irish drum she would’ve expected pizza (a reference to going out for pizza and Irish music at Martyr’s Bar in Chicago when we still lived there).

Saturday was a very puttery day. Mer got her hair done and I ran and then napped. We listened to Wait Wait.  We headed out in the afternoon to go meet Aunt Mary at her church for a church dinner. We got there about the same time, but the doors were locked and the parking lot was empty – turns out we were a week early! Still, we seized the moment and went looking for a restaurant. Restaurant waiting times continue to defy recession talk. Our first stop was Olive Garden and they had a two-hour wait for a table. We quickly moved on to Macaroni Grill and they had an hour wait. Cheeseburger in Paradise finally came through for us with a 20-minute wait. We had a good meal while getting caught up with Aunt Mary.

I wanted to take Mer to see a movie, so we skipped dessert (for the time being), and we headed over to the cheap theater to see The Tale of Despereaux. We had seen a preview for it and it looked fun. It was. I am a HUGE sucker for fantasy worlds, and the creative minds that came up with Mouseworld and Ratworld were really something. The story was simple and clean and engaging, and it played into my predisposition to believe that people (or mice) can do these huge things. The characters were well drawn, both literally and metaphorically. I really loved this film. Mer was very taken with Ratworld and how creepy it was, and we both liked the mouse teacher who was trying to teach the young mice how to behave like mice.

After the movie, we made a detour to get ice cream at Handel’s. Just because it was freezing cold with a nippy breeze was no reason not to get ice cream!

So, another pleasant weekend in the Riordan household. And we may have a church dinner to go to next weekend!

Yesterday was my (38th) birthday, and it was also a Mer-in-charge date day, so she planned a nice day for me. We slept in (or at least as much as we could given having cats that want attention and walk on you to get it), and so we got up around 8:00. Mer announced we were going out to breakfast, and so we went out into a fairly solid (but fairly short-lived) snowstorm to go a few miles to the Hamburger Junction.

The Hamburger Junction is a mom-and-pop restaurant that is in a small mall plaza that we go by when we go get groceries or go to the bank (or go to get ice cream!). On their sign they offer “Vegas-style breakfast” and I had been mentioning how I wanted to try it “someday.” Well, Mer made sure someday was yesterday. For those who have been, the Hamburger Junction is fairly reminiscent of Sammy’s Restaurant in Michigan – it had a small counter area and some tables and booths and looked as if it could seat about 60 if packed out. They had a quite large breakfast menu, and offered many things in combination. As such, Mer was able to get a granola French toast, strawberry crepe, and silver-dollar pancake sampler, while I was able to get French toast, scrambled eggs, home fries, and bacon and sausage for mine (along with a pretty decent cup of hot chocolate). It is a good find.

We ran a few errands after breakfast and then spent a mellow late morning/early afternoon (I puttered and napped while Meredith exercised on the treadmill). Mer then told me we were going to a fancy restaurant and so I should get ready to go out, including wearing my spiffy double-breasted suit.

Once again, Mer has been an attentive listener. There is a nearby restaurant that I have been wanting to try but have not made it to because it is expensive. Only about two miles from our house in an oddly un-swank area is Russo’s Restaurant, a (naturally) Cajun/Italian place that is fairly upscale (at least for the Riordan household). I was able to get a very good gumbo and homemade pasta in the same meal, and you don’t get that everywhere! The service was quite good, but we felt very unhurried (the meal took almost two hours). The food was very fresh tasting, and my dessert (peanut butter pie) was drool-worthy. Mer took her chance on a not unpleasant but not really authentic gelato.

After we left the restaurant we went to Hudson. We had tickets to go to Actors’ Summit theater to see four short Chekhov plays, but we got there about an hour early. Since we had some time, I parked the car at the theater and announced we could window shop in the shopping district about a half mile away. Did I mention the temperature was in the low teens with a breeze? I have a very patient (and cold) wife.

We stopped by a high-end grocery store first, and while this may not seem like an exciting choice, the bakery was excellent and has made my list of special-treat locations. All of the cookies, cakes, breads, and pastries  looked quite wonderful. We spent a good 15 minutes ooohing and ahhhing in the store. We then made brief excursions into a couple of clothing stores before heading (quite briskly in all senses of the word) back to the theater.

As I mentioned, we saw four short plays about love by Chekhov, as follows:

“The Cat” – a play about a Russian tomcat telling how hard he had to work for his brief encounters with female felines. This was a world premier for an English-language version of this play, so that was fun. This was probably the most natural sounding (least sounding like a translation) of the plays.

“The Retired Officer, or the Dimwit”: – a play about a retired officer who was looking for a wife who was plain in looks, not rich, and not too smart. One of our favorite actresses played a wonderfully grotesque matchmaker who described a dimwitted woman in great detail only to have her rejected. It was probably the funniest of the four plays. This was also an English-language premier.

“The Proposal” – a play about a man calling on his neighbor to ask for the neighbor’s daughter in marriage. The father agrees and the daughter comes down and the protagonist and his possible wife get into a long argument about a disputed piece of land. After a tremendous blow-up, the matter is cleared up when the daughter finds out a proposal of marriage may be at stake, and she calls the young man back to try again, only to get into an argument about who has the better hunting dog. This one had some brilliant physical comedy as the young man complained about more and more stress-related physical ailments, but was the play that sounded most as if in translation (the father of the woman kept using terms of endearment for the young man, such as “beloved” and “darling” and others that may have made sense in Russia in 1900 but sounded odd to us).

“The Bear” – a play about a woman who had been mourning for her dead husband for seven months when a rude man calls on her to collect some money that her late husband owed. The two fight verbally and then the man challenges the woman to a duel. When she accepts and she revels in the idea of shooting him, he falls madly in love with her, and he convinces her to love him back. This play had some wonderful lines and lots of elevated feeling, but still had odd moments of dialogue that may have been the result of translation.

Mer and I discussed the plays afterward, and we decided the plays could have used some tightening up. For example, after the long argument scene in “The Proposal,” where the couple argues for probably ten minutes about the piece of land, the young man is encouraged to come back and try again to woo the girl. They sit side by side and have a pleasant conversation that turns to hunting and to hunting dogs. The young woman comments that her dog is much better than the young man’s dog. If this had been an improv show, I would have yelled “Scene!” At this point the audience knows what is going to happen, and the implied forthcoming argument is wonderfully funny. In the play, however, Chekhov decides to show us the argument about the dogs in full, and it is almost identical to the argument about the land. It has the same gags, the same pacing, and even the father shows up to join in as he did in the first dispute. Even if you did decide to show both arguments, they both felt longer than they needed to be. The same reasons for both positions were repeated several times, and it made the scenes drag a bit. It is probably how real life arguments work (lots of repetition), but felt odd on stage.

The language sometimes felt very odd, and it was not clear if it was Chekhov himself or the effect of translation. A good example occurred several times in “The Bear.” The rude man who wants his money tells the audience several times, “I am so angry!” It felt a little odd, but talking directly to an audience can feel that way. What really stuck out was when he was in the middle of a sentence to the widow, and he suddenly proclaimed (as an aside), “I am so angry!” and then picked right back up where his sentence left off. We could see the man was angry – it was odd for him to stop his thought to tell us he was angry. Also, the porter for the widow exclaimed at one point as he ran off stage, “What has brought this disaster upon us?” That just felt artificial to both me and to Mer, and we have seen and studied a fair amount of theater. Again, it may have sounded fine in Russian, or it may have been normal 120 years ago. I’m just not sure.

Happily, the plays were still very entertaining. There was also a girl scout troop at the theater (to earn theater badges), so the actors answered questions after the play. I love talk-backs because I get to see how theater works and how individual shows and characters are moulded. One thing that was pointed out was something we had noticed and thought was very funny – a picture of the dead husband from “The Bear” was a photograph of the theater’s artistic director, Neil. That was a nice touch.

Food, sleep, theater – a good birthday for me.

End of a busy work week? Tired? Ha! All the more reason to go out! Last night after we got home, Mer and I trundled across the Valley (there is NO good way to get to west Akron from our house) to go to the Mustard Seed Market. Not only did we want a decent dinner that was all-natural and that we did not have to cook, but the musical entertainment of the evening was a woman singing songs of the 30’s and 40’s.

We had about a 20 minute wait for a table, but since the music was already flowing, it was just fine to wait. The woman singing had a good voice and she had a nice stage persona. She was backed by a keyboards player (whose keyboard did a mean imitation of an upright bass) and a drum player. The music of the 30’s and 40’s is infectious – lots of jazz and swing rhythms, and fun lyrics that sometimes hint at racy without being tasteless. I literally spent the entire hour-plus swaying back and forth in my chair (Mer and I have a theory that most untrained white people can dance from the waist-up only, so we need to be seated to have any chance at all). The music made me smile – it was wonderful.

The Mustard Seed did alright by us on the food front as well. I got a pretty good shake and a burger (that was a tad over-done, so I need to get medium-well next time) and Mer got a really good looking pasta primavera with broccoli, red peppers, and cauliflower (bleh). We picked up a package of chocolate chip cookies on the way out for dessert, so it was a highly successful evening.

In the on-going birthday irony, this was the sonnet I read to Meredith on the eve of my birthday (it was the next one in line) – Sonnet 65:

Since Monday was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s (observed) birthday, Mer and I had the day off. With all that time, Mer naturally graded and I tidied the house (which badly needed it). However, in the early afternoon, I decided I needed a break, and so I went and took a tromp in CVCA’s woods.

Most of ye olde woods trail has been cut down to make way for more athletic fields, and that is fine (we need the space). Happily, about a third to a half of the woods remains, and it does succeed in feeling fairly isolated, so I went a-trompin’ in the snow. We have roughly a foot on the ground, and so it was a decently challenging walk. I was somewhat (but not entirely) surprised that at least one person (and maybe as many as three) had already been out on the trail, but not in the previous few days (the footprints were visible, but filled in with fresh snow).

It was a quiet and pretty jaunt, and I was gone less than an hour, so the house cleaning effort did not get set back too much.

Needless to say, some members of the Riordan household had no interest in going out in the snow.

Today is Meredith’s 36th birthday. Happy birthday, love!

Since Saturday is our date day, I asked Meredith to trade days with me so that I could have the planning for yesterday and she could have the planning for next Saturday for my birthday. She agreed, so I put together a nice little day for Meredith, at least as best as I could afford.

It all started with sleeping in. We slept until about 8:00, when we both woke up with a little assistance from the kitties. Since it was Meredith’s birthday celebration day, I decided we would start with a romantic little destination – the nearby DMV. It turns out that our licenses would expire this year, and they would expire on our birthdays, so Mer reminded me of that fact on Friday evening. So, to get that out of the way, we got ready and headed off to the DMV around 9:15 or so. That turned out to be happily efficient, and we were on our way, new licenses in wallets, around 10:00.

We had a little extra time (the restaurant I wanted to take Mer to for brunch did not open until 11:00), so I drove us around random roads in the valley. Everything was very pretty with the snow – we have upwards of a foot in most places, and the woods were beautiful. Mer did not know that I was stalling, and so she also enjoyed trying to figure out where we were going. After 30 minutes or so of sightseeing, I got on the highway and drove us to Mustard Seed Market.

Mustard Seed Market is a natural foods grocery store that also has a cafe. I had thought I had never been, but when we were leaving the place I saw a (former) movie theater and remembered that I had been to the restaurant 15 years ago with Meredith’s dad, and then went to see the movie version of Richard III. Mer also thinks we were there with her family when we went to see Much Ado About Nothing, so I may have been there twice. However, since both times were 15 years ago or more, it was essentially a first visit.

We were still early for the restaurant, and had about 20 minutes to wait, so we used the time to wander the aisles of the grocery store. Many of the offerings looked very fine, but where they appeared to excel was their selections of bread (and maybe coffee – they had a ton of fair trade organic coffees). They must have had a dozen different types of fresh breads, all of which I like very much. I will need to keep that information stashed away for future use.

We finally wandered upstairs to the cafe, but still had a few minutes before they would seat us. We used the very nice bathrooms, and then Meredith read about the cooking classes that were offered while I read about the live music the cafe offers on weekends. Coming up in the next few weeks is a woman singing songs from the 20s and 30s, an Irish group, and some guitar players. I also need to tuck that information away.

We got a seat at a table that overlooked the store itself, and we ordered. I got an excellent breaded chicken with rice and Meredith got a ham and cheese omelet. The store offered three types of drinks that I love – hot chocolate, smoothies, and shakes. I tried the hot chocolate, and, not surprising for a natural foods store, it was pretty poor hot chocolate. Natural hot chocolates are low in sugar and sometimes in cocoa, and while this hot chocolate was not gross, it just tasted like warm milk. The food itself was excellent, and the portions were normal sized so we did not feel bloated as we left. I did swing by the bakery and picked up four chocolate cookies as we left. They were very good.

We drove home, where we proceeded to rest and semi-nap. This caused us to miss part of Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!, but it dawned on me that I could stream the show from the laptop that Shannon gave me a year ago. Duh. I have a headphone jack that plugs into my stereo system that I bought for my iPod, but it works with the laptop as well. So, we happily got cozy under a blanket on the couch and laughed through the show, which included a dumb criminal story from Stow, Ohio. The man wore his burglary mask in the bank and then waited in line with the mask on. The police were called and caught him. Stow is only about a mile from our house. We made national news! Umm, yeah.

After Wait Wait, we played nerdy book games, and I gave Mer her present. I ordered her the Teaching Company’s 48-lecture course on British literature. We already have the lectures on American lit, so this was a happy find in the last catalog I recieved just before Mer’s birthday. After she opened her gift, we played the game that Mer got for Christmas in which you have to guess the book or author based on the first line of a book. Mer beat me 8-3 (ouch!) and 8-5. We then played a book game from Amazon that Mer got a few years ago in which you guess the book or author based on clues. I was winning the game with only one more book to go when I hit a space where you had to give up a book. Mer ended up winning 7-5. Sigh. So much for beating her on her birthday!

That took us to almost 5:00, when I had invited a bunch of people over to go up to the Cheesecake Factory to celebrate. Sadly, Ombudsman and his wife Karen could not make it, but Zach and Londa, Nate and Rachel, and Nate and Ami all were able to come. Weirdly, it had been Rachel’s birthday on Thursday and it was Ami’s birthday yesterday, and with my birthday next Saturday, we were celebrating four birthdays out of eight people.

We split into two cars for the drive up, with Nate and Rachel going with Zach and Londa, and Mer and I went with Dubbs (Ami) and Nate. We had a good time during the 30-minute drive, talking about school (of course) and other things. When we got there, Zach had already put our group in for a table, and while most folks were looking at an hour wait, we were told our table would be ready in 15-30 minutes. While that number turned out to be closer to 35 minutes, it looks as if big groups get a jump on the queue. As a happy bonus, we were seated at a round booth in a corner, so we were actually able to talk and hear with no problems.

We had a good time. The food was tasty, and we laughed a lot – so much so that the people in the booth next to us wanted to know what we were drinking so they could get some too (we were drinking soft drinks!) and they wished us a happy birthday. Our server had candles in the whipped cream of the cakes and cheesecakes of the birthday folks, and we had about eight servers singing “Happy Birthday” in a magnificently terrible way. It was much fun, especially where we had heard them singing “Happy Birthday” to another table and Ami absolutely did not want to be sung to. Anytime you can slightly embarrass Dubbs is a good time. Sadly, I forgot my camera and so have no photos of the evening.

So, dinner and dessert took about two hours, and then we dispersed into the evening to find a fairly heavy snow-belt snow. Ami’s car has moderately bald tires, so that made for a few exciting turns on the way to the highway, but we soon drove out of the snow belt and got home just fine.

Since Dubbs gave me her old iPod Touch a few months back, I loaded the entire works of Shakespeare on the device, and I started reading a sonnet to Mer each night as we went to bed. After weeks of doing this, on the eve of her 36th birthday, I got to read to her Sonnet 60, which is this (this made both of us laugh):