The City of Big Birthdays

Sunday was my 39th birthday, but Mer was good enough to plan a fun-filled celebration day for me all day Saturday. We both woke up early for no good reason, and Mer took me out for breakfast. She took me to the nearby Doug’s Dinner Bucket, a small diner. It was great. The owner/cook/waitress was super friendly, and there was an older man reading a newspaper in the corner while nursing his coffee. When anyone (other than us) came in, he said hello. By name. He got into a conversation with a friend who came in, and the conversation largely boiled down to how the corporate “man” kept trying to screw them out of money. It was very satisfying.

I ordered a huge breakfast – an egg sandwich, a mound of home fries, and two pieces of French toast. The food was very good, and I’m a fan of breakfast. When the bill came, Mer discovered that she had forgotten all of her money. So, I sat at a stool at the counter, and she ran the 4 miles home to get her money. I had a great time. I got to talk with the owner some, and the man behind me wanted to take bets on if Meredith was coming back. One man came in and looked a little confused and sat at the far end of the counter. The owner got simply asked him “homemade?” (for bread, I assume) and he nodded. As she went off to make his presumably usual breakfast, she asked him if he was okay there, and he nodded. I’m pretty sure I was on his stool. Ooops.

Mer did come back for me and paid the bill. We went home and played some music and sang, which we do not do enough of. Then, I was allowed to nap for a bit. I was roused late morning and told to buff up and get my suit on. After my having done so, we left the house around 12:30 and headed north to Cleveland.

Mer gave me directions, and we ended up at Playhouse Square, the home of most of the very good theater in Cleveland. We parked with some anxiety in the parking garage, because we were running late and the cars in the lot were not parking (everyone was looking for “the” spot instead of just heading to the top of the garage). We did make it, but we sat down as the lights were flashing for the show to start.

Happily, Meredith continued the scantily-clad, morally corrupt theme of birthday theater (see post about Nine from last week) by bringing me to see Chicago, the musical based on an adulterous woman murdering her lover. I know it has adultery and murder, but it really is a great musical. It has lots of funny moments and the music is great and the orchestra is right on stage to see and the dancing is jaw-dropping. It is just a good time.

The theater was absolutely packed – keep in mind this was a 2:00 matinee on a Saturday. We were toward the back of the main level, on the left-hand side. Mer apologized for the seats (which she bought before Christmas), but I thought they were pretty good. I could see and hear everything just fine.

Chicago was just flat-out great. I’m not sure how it could have been done better. The orchestra was “on” and it was fun getting to see them, especially the brass section, which was lively. The conductor got to interact with the cast on several occasions, which was funny.

The singing was excellent. The leads had lots of power and clarity, and the chorus blended well. The lead actress was cheek-pinchingly cute. Yes, she was a murderer and an adulteress, but a very coochy-coo murderer and adulteress. The lead man was a now-25-years-older actor best known for playing Luke Duke on The Dukes of Hazzard. He did a nice job as a money-grubbing, sleazy attorney.

What absolutely blew me away in this musical was the dancing. I have not been to a big musical in years, and I had forgotten how beautifully the human body can move. Both the male and female dancers were incredibly graceful in their movements. They had full control of their bodies, right down to how they moved their hands and even fingers as they danced. It was just a joy to see them dancing.

After the show, we headed back to the car. We were on the fifth floor of the garage, which was the roof. We waited for about 5 minutes, and I saw that no cars on our level had moved, so I asked to go back inside to use the bathroom – I figured it beat sitting in the car for 15 minutes or more. We did, and on the way out we were looking around the theater complex when a man opened the front door to the small gallery there.

For years, I have been captivated by a sculpture in the gallery of a woman dancing while playing the fiddle. It just expresses joy to me. Meredith refers to it as my “other woman.” I had never gotten to see the work up close, and we just lucked out that the gallery was opening for the evening performance. We jumped at the chance to go in. The sculpture is fantastic, and I found the best viewing is from about 10 feet away. It is a wonderful piece. The small gallery had a good number of very interesting pieces, and a lot of back and white photos from the 40s. It was a great little art space.

We headed out after a little while, and after some digressions off the beaten path (Mer had misprinted the Mapquest directions, so she was guessing at some roads), we made it to a vary fine Italian restaurant in Solon, Jimmy Dadonna’s. It is a family-affair place, with big portions and really good “bread bites” that are not quite rolls, but really good. We ate quite well, and then Mer let me pick where to go for dessert. Cold Stone sounded good to me, but for some reason was really crowded when we got there. That encouraged us to look in their freezer, and we came away very quickly with a chocolate peanut butter pie. Yum. We went home and ate it while listening to the latest Wait Wait on the computer. It was a great way to celebrate my birthday.

My actual birthday was much fun as well. After church, I got to baking. I made four loaves of bread and a pizza. I had sort of invited myself over to the Churchills’ house to watch football, and they had graciously agreed. Mer was caught up enough on her work to be able to go with me, so we headed over to the house around 3:00. We dove right in to the bread, to the point where we did not bake the pizza until the second game. Londa had made four kinds of dessert – chocolate chip cookies, chocolate chocolate chip cookies, chocolate peanut clusters, and brownies. I had so many cookies (about 15) that I never even got to the brownies. They were really great.

It was much fun getting to eat lots of food and to chat with Zach and Londa and to watch football. It was a pretty ideal way to spend a birthday. We got home late, and I had eaten way too much, but I did not think too much about it. Until the next morning, when I felt ill going in to work. I finally left work early at 1:00 and went home and went back to bed. I finally began to feel like myself again after supper later that night. Lesson probably not learned, but at least the opportunities to be that dumb don’t come along too often.

Happy birthday to me! It was a good one.

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