AMKT and I woke in Boone, North Carolina. In a couple hours, we will sleep in our bed in High Point, North Carolina.

We ate breakfast at Waffle House, which is a special place for us even though we rarely eat there. We had our first sort-of date at Waffle House on January 1, 2000, in the early morning after staying awake all night welcoming the final year of the twentieth century.

After breakfast, I annotated a chapter from The Divine Commodity, which I’m reading as part of my research for my book project. While working, I ran into Heidi Campbell, who attended my research-in-progress panel yesterday at the BEA regional conference. We talked about my scholarship, and she gave me some good insights into studying audiences of Christian media.

AMKT and I left Boone around 11:30, and stopped by a fruit stand on the way to Salisbury to pick up the boys. She bought three bags of apples, and I shot the photo of the gourds above.

We got to Salisbury about an hour before we were scheduled to pick up the boys, so AMKT ate lunch then went to Big Lots, where I bought a new iPhone case and a ten-foot audio cable.

One the way home with the boys, CKT told us he wants to be baptized. When I asked him why, he said, “I want to get wet in church.” We had a good talk about what baptism means after that.

I took a nap for about an hour-and-a-half. When I woke, CKT was yelling at EJT in the living room to stop “messing up” his Lego creations. I told CKT he should play with his toys in his room if he does not want EJT to play with his toys. But I also told EJT he needed to apologize to CKT. EJT said, “No!” so I put EJT into time-out for the first time. He wasn’t happy, and was pretty apologetic when I finally got him out of his crib about five minutes later.

I took CKT to church tonight to practice the piano. While there, we saw a colony of bats flying in and around the chimney. It was pretty cool.

I’m sure there is a bat-tism joke in there somewhere.

I watched The Simpsons for the first time in years because I wanted to know which character was going to die. It was Rabbi Herschel Krustovski, which gave the show a good opportunity to address Judaism again. The show was okay, but the couch gag was noteworthy. I’m afraid that couch gag just may be the best thing The Simpsons produces this season.