Horrid Food & Great Church

Last Friday night, I dragged the family to Giovanni's for dinner so that I could complete the review process. I hoped that our dinner experience would be better than lunch. However, we had the same long wait, somewhat less rude staff, and atrocious food. Absolutely awful. Afterward, much disgusted with the experience, we consoled ourselves with a trip to Kohl's to get some more shirts for Boot and Foy's just for fun.

Foy's is a crazy & amazing 5 & 10 that specializes in Halloween & is creating an empire on Main Street in Fairborn. They've been featured on the Travel Channel. They now have, in addition to the main store, a grill (that's been on Food Network), an adult costume store, a kids' costume store, a second odds & ends store, a special effects store, and a haunted house. The whole street is crawling with Halloween decorations like ghosts floating above stores, hearses parked everywhere, ghouls vomiting in barrels of radioactive waste. It's a trip. The street is also crawling with people. Pie got some fireworks & sparklers & I got a bunch of candy like Pop Rocks & Razzles to send to my friend Jes.

Saturday, aside from running a few errands, we mostly just hung out at home. Saturday evening, I was the liturgist at the UCC church where I'm interning. It went well & I got to serve communion for the first time in my life. Gays can't in the PC (USA). I felt very comfortable there & J loved it, as well. People are so friendly there & they DO practice radical inclusion. We signed up for several friendship groups (I'm looking forward to the cooking one, especially), the church membership class, and I volunteered to teach my joy workshop for the adult retreat in November. We may also volunteer to be mentors for Youthquest, the GLBT youth group in Dayton, which the UCC gives funding to. Boot doesn't like the church & I can't figure out if it's homophobia or what he says it is, which is "it's not a real church". He goes on to list a litany of why it isn't: no stained glass, no organ, no pews, music that isn't "normal" (read traditional), no "Gloria Patri", Prayer of Confession, or Doxology, etc. He still wants to become a Catholic. I will have to get him to Mass one of these days & see if he likes that. It's funny that he has such a strongly-developed sense of ritual & tradition. I'm glad, frankly. But, he has the usual rigidity of 12 y.o. boys, too.

We had dinner at the restaurant of Boot's choice because he got straight As on his interim. He picked Foy's Grill. J was unhappy with the choice until we got there. She had never been, although I've taken the boys on a number of occasions. Their malts are the real thing, their burgers are great, their prices are great, and they have free pool. J, Pie, & I shot pool while Boot watched with those big, shiny, merry eyes of his. Afterward, we went back to Foy's. They went through the mini haunted house inside the store. Boot got a tiki mask for his Halloween costume, so that he can answer the door in it, a Hawaiian shirt, shorts, & a lei. It's really a cool idea & the mask is fun! Pie got more fireworks & he & J did them in the driveway when we got home. We also popped down to the book store. Pie got a Fear Street book & J got some Victorian-style paper Christmas decorations.

In the morning, I served as liturgist again. The boys were not thrilled to go to church twice in a weekend, but doughnuts from Tim Horton's made it a bit better for them. They also got to leave with the other kids before the sermon & go do Sunday school. After church, we drove down to visit J's mom, stopping at Sonic on the way. We had a nice visit, then headed home. I worked on my paper for a bit, then we took Pie to a crappy Chinese restaurant that has all you can eat crab legs. The rest of the food on the buffet, what little there was of it, was not so great, but Pie was so happy eating that crab! He made little singing noises as he ate it. When we got home, I worked on my paper some more, then we went to bed.