My weekend was spent evenly divided among various factions of my friends.
Friday night was spent with GAB, JTH, and JBT at Applebees. As usual, Amy was our waitress. Unlike usual, we were not supposed to be there on this Friday night. The crew was to be in Falls Church, Virginia, for JBT’s wedding the following day. It had been postponed two weeks earlier. JBT was still good company but admitted he was shaken by the turn of events. He stands to lose in excess of $9,000-$12,000 over the postponement. He especially lamented that the limo service he hired has failed to return his phone calls for weeks. This bill is $700 alone. He is assuming a rescheduling and requests that the next wedding be in Knoxville.
His fiancee SCB was absent as she will be in Virginia for two weeks. She had three weeks scheduled off from work for the wedding. Her brother is with her. He is now living at JBT’s house.
Despite the unfortunate circumstances, it was a pleasant evening.
On Saturday, I ate lunch at Cracker Barrel with my parents. I was given a special surprise. The chicken n’ dumplings, which is my standard order, now comes with three side dishes instead of two. So I ordered three sides of dumplings. I would have hated to see my cholesterol count at the end of this meal.
After lunch, I decided to go to see SMA. I had been working at the rate my obsessive compulsive disorder dictates and needed a day off. SMA is always the cure for this ailment.
On the way, I stopped at the Knox Area Rescue Ministries Thrift Store, near SMA’s house. I made a find. Evidently, in 1999 a history of my church was written. I had no idea despite my good friend TAM being one of the compilers. The book was signed by every pastor of my church since 1951, albeit only three. I was saddened to see all were signed to Dr. Tom Miles, a beloved former teacher. I learned that he is now in assisted living. I was grateful to have something that belonged to him. I later read the book at SMA’s.
I arrived at SMA’s to find him embattled in an online game of NCAA Football 2008 on the Xbox 360. He played as #2 Oklahoma against #5 Florida. Its seems many online pick Florida as their team. Sadly, Verne Lundquist is not called in for guest commentary on Tim Tebow games. SMA played well against a competitor from Memphis, whom he talked to via headset. The game became a battle of SMA’s curl routes against the opponent’s screen passes. The game went down to the wire with SMA losing 34-31 when a crucial last minute interception led to the decisive field goal. This may have been the most productive thing we did all day!
As an aside, the game ranks Georgia as the number one team in the country.
Afterwards, SMA showed me highlights of TNA wrestling as he wanted me to see a newer wrestler known as Consequences Creed. His gimmick is based on Carl Weather’s Apollo Creed character from the Rocky movie series, complete with afro and patriotic attire. It is one of those gimmicks that is so brilliant it makes you wonder why no one thought of it before now.
We then watched several episodes of the 1983-1985 animated series “He-Man and The Masters of The Universe”. We learned from production notes that the Masters of the Universe are actually the villains. On our own, we hypothesize that the character Stratos was Amish (see picture). We are going to send a note to Seth Green for his show “Robot Chicken”. We feel an Amish Stratos episode would be a real crowd pleaser.
Afterwards, SMA got some studying done for the bar and I read the history of my church. My favorite excerpt: “The church celebrated the Brusters’ ten years of service with a banquet and a ‘roast.’ Edith Johnson’s comments were the hit of the evening.” (Page 71) Edith Johnson was one of the writers of the book! (Yes, I know she probably did not pen that particular line...)
We were interrupted by a guy from Honeywell Security who was “not trying to sell” us anything...
Much time had past and SMA was craving a restaurant with pizza and television sets. After seeing that Mellow Mushroom and Smoky Mountain Brewery were crowded, we ended up eating at the Irish Times Pub & Restaurant - a restaurant with neither pizza nor television. It had been a long time since our last visit and it was not crowded, perhaps do to Irish Festival Weekend going on downtown.
I opted not to get the standard of Bangers and Mash and instead ate the Irish Stew at the server’s suggestion. The mix of roast, potatoes, and carrots was excellent in addition to being extremely manly. This recommendation may have been the one thing the waitress did correctly all night as she struggled throughout the evening.
We were eventually joined by WRK, DBN, and CST with a cameo by JS who was with another party. JS (pictured in this horrible photo) is assistant basketball coach at Roane State. He is excited by the prosepcts for this season after a horrible first year with the school. The team redshirted ten players and have a great deal of talent, including Rocky Top League veteran Keith Bauer. He is especially impressed with a 6'5" shooting guard. We vowed to go see his team in action. So there is your inside scoop on junior college basketball. Aren’t you glad you read this post?
DBN arrived within an hour, which was a blessing as the last time he met us at the restaurant he called eighty minutes later wondering why we were not still there. He had just come from a potluck supper where he was served “sixteen varieties of hummus.” Evidently one should not accept apotluck invitation from a group vegetarians.
His wife RBN’s birthday is Monday (July 28th). Her mother gave her the option of eating at any restaurant in town and she chose the Red Lobster. DBN was not pleased with this decision but I was just glad that she is still alive. I still have yet to see her since DNB moved back to Knoxville.
On Sunday morning, Sunday School met at a novel location - the church. KLTW had a rare day off and wanted to take KJW to the nursery. Rare is actually an understatement. Fortunately, she will now have every other weekend off as Morristown-Hamblen hospital, where she is doing the equivalent of her residency has hired her allowing her to relinquish her job at Best Buy.
I finished a three-week series on Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer, covering John 17:20-26 on this day. As this portion of the prayer deals with Jesus’ desire for unity among his future followers, I interspersed the Scripture with church splits throughout history and my newfound knowledge of our own church’s history. For WAM’s usual brilliance check out the WAM Quote of the Day.
Afterwards, I joined the extended Walker family at Captain D’s, one of KJW’s favorite places. She likes everything on the menu. After eating, she tried her usual ploy of, “I need to hold you.” I asked her if she really needed to hold her mommy or she just wanted out of her seat. She immediately replied, “Out my seat.” The child is honest.
As always, she had many great expressions throughout the meal. Here are four examples of KJW. I call her present hairstyle the “mullet bowl” as it is a combination bowl cut and mullet.
I must also add that one of the many advantages of a baby is that your ability to audibly spell drastically improves as this is used to conceal information.
On Sunday night, we held another edition of the “Summer Breeze Bible Study” at church. It was good to see MLM, who after having been at the beach all week, was to leave for Gulfport, Mississippi, again the following morning. Our regularly scheduled Bible Study will resume the following week with a discussion of The Dark Knight.
After Bible Study, I went to RAW’s where he cooked Rainbow Rigatoni with vodka sauce. It was great as usal. KJW ate three helpings!
I provided dessert in the form of Lofthouse Snickerdoodle cookies. I purchased them as I had never before eaten Snickerdoodle. Though it clearly would have been worth the purchase just to say the word, I actually enjoyed the cookies thoroughly.
In the latest of KJW’s likes: Coloring (as depicted), episodes of Spider-Man and Batman, but not Superman (further signs of her brilliance), and ice. We do not know why she likes ice so much but she loves to chew it.
The highlight of the evening came when she reandonly informed: “Chan needs to change my diaper." This was funny because (a) she never wants her diaper changed; (b) she is trained not to want me to change it, (c) she did not even need to have her diaper changed.
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