Ashley's Visit!!

About a year and a half ago, I read a magazine Bonnie was receiving. A girl named Ashley was the editor. The literacy and personality of the publication impressed me, and I asked Bonnie, “Do you suppose she would write to me?” Bonnie replied with an impatient, “I don’t know. Write to her!” And so, I did. She wrote back with a letter I found both lengthy and interesting. So began a relatively consistent correspondence and occasional phone chats. Her personality and random sense of humour came across wonderfully in her letters.

Recently, she began seriously considering a time when she might travel to Ohio and pay us a visit! And so, on July the ninth, we were picking her up at the airport. I recognized her easily – strawberry-blonde hair and pink-striped fashion scarf. :)

We spent the first evening drinking Market Spice tea, talking, playing Trouble, browsing photo albums, and eating at least one too many chocolate chip cookies. The next day, we had a jolly little group of friends.

First there’s Matt, a twitter-obsessed facebook addict who wears his bluetooth “just to feel cool.” He made sure that everyone knew it was John Calvin’s birthday. He owns a couple pairs of Converse All Stars, all of which he cleans periodically using dish soap and an old toothbrush.

Then, there’s Matt’s wife Wendy, a sweet, energetic, and fun-loving lady. She can make a little task like dishes interesting. She is enthusiastic and often hilarious.

And Joe – he’s a piano performance student at Heidelberg who seems quiet, but has a quirky sense of humor. He can recite pi to the hundred-something digit. Like most of us, he has a weakness for ice-cream bars.

Joe’s friend Justin is a student at Heidelberg, member of studio class, and theory-teacher-in-training. And I called him “Joe’s friend” to make him feel small and unimportant. He was excited about his most recent adventure: riding his bicycle to an abandoned railroad. Or perhaps he would wish that I refer to it as a daring feat. Anyway.

We played Balderdash, but since nobody had the actually game with them, we used a dictionary and paper. Innovative. Here are some of the most amusing definitions:

Matt described “Peruke” as “A man’s wig of the 17th and 18th centuries,” while Ashley defined it as “mortification resulting from the inability to locate Peru on a map.”

Justin wrote that “turnsole” was “the boot of a pirate,” while someone else claimed it to be “a shoe making machine that rotates shoes to the sequence of assembly stations in front of workers arranged in a circle.” Hmm. Try to picture that.

Joe put that “soubriquet” was “a clam scam!” but gave himself away by adding, “Bam!”
At one point, Joe said, “if I say ‘tricksy’ in mine, will it be less convincing?” When Matt defined “barracoon” as “a tricksy animal that sings a low tone,” we all assumed it was Joe, who had actually written that it was “a fraudulent bake sale.”

And finally, my personal favourite, courtesy of Ashley:

She defined “fascicle” as “a follower of the ancient Greek philosopher Fascicles.”

Coming today: photos from mentioned visit.