On Saturday, I met up with nine guys from church, and we raked leaves in the yard of a house-bound man. I am not a big fan of raking, and I rarely do it, but it was a good cause and with ten of us, we knocked the yard out in about two hours, in spite of two rain breaks. I had to leave after an hour-and-a-half so I could get home in time to go to Kent for the free music workshops, which turned out to be next Saturday (good thing I checked online before we went up to Kent).

To show how sad I am about physical labor, 1) my arms are sore today, and 2) I got blisters on both hands through work gloves. THAT is when you know you have a soft-hand kind of job.

Saturday evening, Mer and I went to Actors’ Summit Theater (where we have season tickets) to see Shaw’s Arms and the Man. For those who remember, Mer and I saw Too True to be Good  (by Shaw) last summer, which we did not like. This was a chance for me to like Shaw again. I was not disappointed. Arms and the Man was funny and thoughtful. Shaw managed to poke fun at love, class, and war without beating you over the head, and he created an interesting plot and interesting characters to boot. Actors’ Summit did a great job staging the play (as they always do). Mer said she saw a review where the critic preferred the Actors’ Summit production over the Shaw Festival’s own version of the play. I thought the acting was great all around, but the main male lead had a great stage presence – he stumbled on a line or two, but was a compelling character. The play runs for another week, so if you are local to NE Ohio, I recommend getting out and seeing it (and those in Mrs. Riordan’s classes get extra credit for doing so!).