Photo of the day, Tuesday

Holly had a bit of a tough day today. But we're hopeful that the surgery to her shoulder tomorrow, while initially painful, will at least start the healing process in her shoulder. The surgery is at 7:30 AM, Wednesday, and it's kind of like an international flight, you need to be there 2 hours ahead of time. I will post again tomorrow after we get home. Oh, yeah, it's outpatient. It is truly astounding what is considered outpatient anymore.

An interesting convergence of things caused me to try to post a video today.

• Classmates.com sent me a note that Jerome, a classmate of mine from very long ago, is now part of their database
• That put me into a nostalgic mind set
• A friend sent me a pretty cool video that reminded me of a prank that we did as teens
• I wanted to try something new

My own story, while not captured on video tape, (I mean really, we only had 8mm cameras back then) went like this.

I grew up in a small town in southern Minnesota. During the summer of 1973 or 74 we played catch with a Frisbee on the main corner every night. One night we lost a Frisbee because it dropped into the back of a pickup truck headed south. Anyway, a bunch of us were really bored, some could drive, some could not. An idea for a prank was presented and found to meet the criteria that it needed to be funny, weird and dangerous. We pooled our funds and went to Severson's IGA and purchased 2 rolls of aluminum foil. We all piled into the 65 Ford LTD and headed out to Five Mile corner, you know, near I90. Once there we took Jerry, he was the shortest, and wrapped him head to toe in tin foil, shiny side out. We laid him in the back seat of the LTD and headed back to town. While driving we "glowed up", a glow in the dark Frisbee with a flashlight so that it was nice and green. Once on the north edge of town we parked the car in a dark location and got Jerry out of the car and positioned him in the East ditch. After a brief tactical conference we headed to the West ditch with the Frisbee. The next car was seen coming into town and as it approached it slowed down to the 30 mph speed limit. As it neared our position we launched the Frisbee so that it sailed 30 feet in front of the car. The driver was alert and slowed down to a crawl. Jerry climbed out of the ditch and, with arms lifted high, made for the slow moving car. The driver saw this apparition and stomped on the gas and zoomed out of sight down the road. We're all busting a gut laughing and since it's such a small town, not much else happened, Jerry tore his beautiful foil clothes and we called it a night. Next morning at breakfast Mom seemed distracted with something funny. Did I mention that Mom was the bartender at the Municipal Liquor Store? Sorry, she was. I asked what was up and she told me that Dorthy had gone so far past the bend that it was doubtful that she'd get back. I asked why and she related that Dorthy burst into the bar and ordered a double. While panting was unable to answer any questions, at least not until the double arrived. Then all Mom got out of her was, "They really are coming, they really are coming", well that was all until after the 3rd double. Then she heard, "the little shiny men from mars". Mom called the significant other of Dorthy's to come and get her, and was still amused in the morning. I didn't clear up the mystery for Mom until 3 years ago. We had a good laugh over that.

Have a great day!

Pat