Last Saturday was our usually scheduled “date day” where one of us is in charge. Last Saturday was Mer’s turn, and she decided to start it in style (at least for us). She trundled us off to have a brunch at Bob Evans’s.  We hope someday post-house that we will be able to have brunch out most Saturdays. We both love hearty breakfasts. In the meantime, we occasionally cheat on our budget and go our for an unauthorized meal. It was a good way to start the day – good food and hot chocolate and good company.

We then ran a few errands and I spent some early Christmas cash on an iPod Touch charger so I would not have to keep my computer on for four hours just to charge the battery. Not a super-exciting outing, but again, the company was most pleasant (although she was not going to be bothered to go into a nerd-intensive store like Radio Shack when I went to get an RCA cable so I could plug the Touch into my stereo).

We puttered around back at home, and had a good time with out usual Saturday pastime of listening to Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! Mer had more food in store, though, so after Wait Wait we headed south toward Canton. One of Mer’s old friends had rediscovered her through Facebook, and she was throwing an informal party at a local buffet restaurant. Mer wanted to go, and I am an easy sell for buffets. Our budget allows for us to be invited out by other people, so we were okay with this outing.

I had never been to this restaurant before – it is a local chain called Golden Corral. It was not cheap (about $12 per person), but I have never seen a buffet like this before. The buffet line stretched the length of the restaurant – about five separate sections. I guess Midwesterners like to eat!

I got to meet Mer’s friend, Jennifer. In the wonderfully odd world of technology, Jennifer and I were already “friends” on Facebook because of Mer. It was nice to meet her in person. She seems very nice. She has three kids, and we got to see pictures, and Mer and Jennifer generally caught up (having not seen each other in about 18 years). We were later joined by one of Jennifer’s friends, David, who had gone to CVCA through eighth grade. We spent the better part of two hours chatting and eating and eating and eating. Mer and I made sure we got our $12 worth! Since our evening was not done, we rolled out to head home around 6:00.

We were meeting Ken and Janet at our home so we could take them to Actors’ Summit theater. The theater was putting on its Christmas play, which this year was The Sanders Family Christmas. It is a sequel to the play Smoke on the Mountain. It is a play set at Christmas time in 1941, 18 days after Pearl Harbor. It is set in a small mountain church, where the Sanders Family bluegrass band has come to play for us, the congregation. It is very light-hearted, with occasional moments of seriousness (with the war background present through much of the play). There are lots and lots of bluegrass numbers performed through the play – about 20 or more total.

We had seen this play years ago with Ken and Janet at Malone College. We thought it was wonderful. It pokes gentle fun at small Southern churches without mocking them. Ken, who was raised Baptist, found himself thinking a lot of times, “Yeah, that is how it is.” They did a nice job. Rumor had it that the Malone production took a year to prepare for – one of the main characters uses sign language through much of the play (her character can’t sing well, so she signs even though no one is deaf). That must have taken some time to learn, and supposedly the actors had to learn the songs as they did not initially know how to play their instruments. The sister who signed had stolen the show in the Malone production, with lots of over-the-top moments that were great fun to watch,

Actors’ Summit’s production was excellent, but sadly, they cannot prepare for a whole year, since they turn plays over every eight weeks or so. The actors were great, and the music was very fine (including an actor playing dobro!), but they had to compromise with the sister who signed. She only signed through the first part of the first act; after that, she sang with the ensemble, and they modified the script to go from her saying she could not sing to her saying she could not sing solo. It was completely understandable, but it was too bad, since much of the fun when we first saw the show came from watching the exaggerated signing for the lyrics of the songs.

Having said that, the play was still quite funny, and the music made for  a fine evening. The song selection did a good job balancing well-known songs with ones that are not played anymore. It was also great fun to get to go out with Ken and Janet – since we don’t live near them anymore, we only get to see them outside of church a couple of times per year.

If you ever do get a chance to see The Sanders Family Christmas, I recommend it. It is not terribly deep, but it is entertaining, and not a typical Christmas-style play.