Ahhh. Yesterday was pretty darn nice. Last Christmas, Mer got me a gift certificate for an hour-long massage, and I finally cashed in on it yesterday. I had never had a professional massage before. It was very nice, very relaxing. It loosened up my back muscles (which get tight from my running and dancing), and put me in a nicely mellow mood. The massage place was a home-based operation near our old house in New Baltimore, so after I got my massage, I swung by the old homestead to check on it. All was well, and I got a pleasant and welcome surprise: I checked the propane tank (which is used for heating the house), and the tank was basically full. I had forgotten that the propane company had filled it late last spring, so the only propane that had been used was for hot water. That was a big help (it can cost $400 or more to fill the tank).

Then, I got home to my busily grading (school papers) wife, but she stopped to have lunch with me while we listened to “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” on the radio, which is one of our happy things to do. The show was fun (as usual), and my ham-and-cheese calzone hit the spot for me.

After a short nap (about 30 minutes) that I took while Mer took a quick shower, we drove down to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park and walked on the old canal path. We went back to the boardwalk and sat and watched the big goose strut his stuff around the pond. It was a very nice day – about 55 degrees and sunny, and the path was pretty (although we both thought that the leaves probably peaked last weekend).

After the walk (which took about an hour), we talked about getting movies from the library (which are free). While Mer ran out to get a few groceries, I looked up the library hours. Unfortunately, the library closed at 5:00 and we got home about 4:45. However, the library offered downloadable movies, so I gave that a try. Everything looked like it was working, but when I checked on the download process later, the movies had disappeared. That was too bad.

Mer did remember that we had an old VHS tape of the musical Bye, Bye, Birdie which our aunt had taped off of TV 12 years ago, and we had never watched it. So, out came Conrad Birdie and swooning girls. The musical was great fun – all fluff. Most of the songs were “beltable,” and since Mer had been in a production of Birdie in high school, she sang along with her favorites. She especially liked the song about the joy of being married to an English teacher, and the song about how wonderful it was to be a woman. For those not familiar with the musical, it is a story ripped off from the life of Elvis – a hot young musician gets drafted into the army, and his manager decides to make a big production of Conrad Birdie giving one last kiss to a girl from (where else?) Sweet Apple, Ohio. It is in no way a deep musical, but it was an enjoyable musical to watch.

After Birdie, I tried one last time to download movies from the library, and this time I tried shorter films (I thought maybe the longer movies were timing out). This time it worked, so Mer and I went with Rick Steves to Italy for an hour. It was a little weird to be watching something on the computer screen (one video was only about 5 inches across), but it still worked well enough.

On top of all of these things, when we got home from our walk, I discovered a gift card from Best Buy in the mail. Two very generous benefactors (maybe in the interest of having things to look at in my blog?) sent the gift card along so I could replace my camera, which I accidentally dropped a few weeks ago, which broke it. This was a very kind gesture, and I will try very hard to take better care of the new camera, which I should get in the next few days. Many, many thanks to you responsible – it really was very kind of you!

So, on a scale of 1-10 for Saturdays, yesterday was pretty darn good!