Big T.O. Trip

The plan this weekend was to go to Toronto after school and meet up with people I spend a lot of time talking to on the Internet about religious subjects, but have (in many cases) not met in real life. Most of them I met on the (ex) Plymouth Brethren forum ( http://www.simplegathering.com ) which Shawn Cuthill started and I administer. Lately, we've been feeling the need for new perspectives, as the rest of us have filled the forum up with months of hard debate and creative thought, and would like some fresh blood. Do join up, whoever you are, if you want to jump into that.
    Most PB forums are "keep doing everything the brethren way, say you love it and feel blessed to be part of it all, and don't think." This one's more deconstructionist, and allows people to discuss things that may depict certain factions or aspects of brethrenism in an unflattering light on occasion.
   Friday I taught, somewhat grouchily, and when I saw that a kid had a huge set of male genitalia drawn with marker in his locker, I said "the custodians take a dim view of people drawing self-portraits in their lockers" to a kid I don't teach or anything.
    I drove to Toronto with some audio book chapters downloaded. I listened to a bit of I am America (And So Can You) and the first two chapters of a Jim Butcher novel and also Neil Gaiman's "A Study in Emerald" which is him melding Sherlock Holmes with H.P. Lovecraft in his inimitable style.
     I hung out with a roomful of people in Toronto who all had opinions and we ate things and stayed up late, and then the next day I came back home, stopping only at The Flying J to realize I very much felt like buying a t-shirt from a truck stop and eating the least nutritionally balanced meal ever: In the middle of my plate I put a very small chicken drumstick. Around it were things that are meant to go with chicken: mashed potatoes with gravy, spicy potato wedges, nonspicy potato wedges with sausages and onions, and turkey stuffing. Then, full, I took a dinner plate to the dessert buffet and realized "Hey! I love chocolate pudding! And jello! And New York Style Cheesecake! And hot chocolate pudding cake! And apple cobbler! And bread pudding!" and ate some of each.
   Then even fullerer, I drove home, weighed down by all of that. I don't normally eat things like that, so I totally enjoyed it. And the t-shirt? A black one which reads "I'm only wearing black until they invent something darker."

I got home in time (as agreed upon) to play some songs at my grandfather's birthday party with my uncle (and two aunts), who always played music while I was growing up, but we've never played together before.