In Eckleburg's Eyes - 10/13/2008, Part 2

On Sunday morning I taught a Sunday School class at the Central Baptist Church of Bearden comprised of young married couples. The scheduled speaker, NAH was out of town and I had been enlisted to fill his shoes. When I arrived, I got to see DAT’s handiwork. The church is now completely wired for television and the service can be seen in progress throughout the building. I suspect that if the church ever paid DAT by the hour it would go bankrupt.

As per the curriculum, I taught Romans 5:6-19. During the lesson, I referenced the words atonement theories, interlocutor, and synthetic parallelism. I also evidently made several disparaging asides to the SBC. No one seemed to mind me using unnecessarily complex vocabulary or my liberal leanings.

I also referenced both Miley Cyrus and High School Musical so if nothing else I nailed the highly important tween demographic in a class of young married folks. (Note: This photo is of KJW who joined us after her class. She came in vigorously flexing her muscles. RAW speculates that the church drugged his child.)

After church, JTH and I tried a new restaurant. We both noted that we wanted to eat light as we were to eat dessert at his grandmother’s house in celebration of her birthday later in the afternoon. So we ate at Mama Blues - a southern buffet! The restaurant is located at 9645 Kingston Pike where Ryan’s was until it closed in February. Mama Blues opened on September 19th with more or less the same setup and same food. If you like Ryan’s you will like Mama Blues.

One new addition was a mural of Ron Green waving a UT flag. The painting was a great likeness. I took a Religious Studies class at UT with him and recognized him right away. Green was a defensive tackle on Tennessee’s 1998 national championship football team. He is perhaps best remembered for selling his championship ring on eBay.

We had some time to kill before meeting JTH’s grandparents so we visited JDM at the new Kroger. The store opened on October 5th and is enormous. JDM was serving as parking lot manager and had time to give us a tour of the facility. It covers 113,000 square feet and the company made $1.4 million at the location during the previous week alone. It has far more features than the average Kroger including four aisles of toys, a sushi bar, furniture, jewelry, and an As Seen on TV section. They even had a string ensemble from UT playing in the store. Seriously.

Despite their vast inventory, one thing they did not have was Mallomar cookies. At least we could not find them This candy was referenced often on Gilmore Girls and I want to sample one. Does anyone know where I can find Mallomars?

After our tour of Kroger, we traveled to JTH’s grandmother’s home where we celebrated her birthday. She and JTH’s mother had recently attended a DAR meeting. The featured speaker was Smith D. Ray who spoke on the history of Oak Ridge. Among the stories he told were that of a local prophet named John Hendrix (1865-1915). Interesting information on this “mystic” can be found by clicking the link connected to the speaker’s name.

After a great afternoon with his family, JTH and I watched Grandma’s Boy on DVD. I had never seen the film which JTH felt needed to be corrected. I enjoyed it fairly well.

After the movie, I joined JTH, ALK, KL, KJW, MPW, and RAW at RAW’s home for a bonfire. KJW was in rare form. We had pretzels which she referred to as “hearts”. I never would have made that association.

KJW’s grandfather brought her back a Halloween costume from Washington, DC. She will be wearing an orange space suit. It fits her perfectly.