Laughter, tears, and cheetah groundhogs

Tidbits today.

Sonny had a show recently that got written up in Boston's Phoenix paper. Very very cool.

Danny has been playing more gigs than ever with his various bands. The biggest of late was opening for Creed at Darien Lake. Mega cool.

The other day I was waiting outside by myself for a delivery. Walking around in circles, leaning on a street sign. Feeling generally awkward to just be standing there.
As I'm leaning on the sign, scanning for the delivery guy, a cop car pulls up.
Two thoughts automatically pop up in my head - 1) Is it illegal to lean on street signs? 2) Maybe it's Mark or Jason - the guys I know in the RPD.
He stops a short distance away. I gulp a bit.
His hand comes out of the window and makes a "come here" motion. Uh oh.
I walk up. Not Mark, not Jason. I lean towards the window, hands in pockets. "Hey, how's it going?" (Picture a golly-gee-willikers fist pump here)
Guy looks at me. Points out that he was just letting the person standing behind me cross the street.
Mortified!!!
But the best part was telling this to Jenny & Tina - who double over with laughter and even had me in tears recounting it...

Earlier this summer, J and I were driving by a big lawn on the way to errands one evening. We enjoy spotting the groundhogs that often litter the green expanse, so I was keeping my eyes open. And saw this incredible image. A groundhog RUNNING! He was booking somewhere (and I like to think it was a joyous and not a lifesaving type of thing). He flew over dips, legs extended in each direction. The cheetah-hog. Awesome....

Two catchup books.
Book #12 - Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl: The true story of "Renee" w/ forward by Frank Conroy. Fascinating. Renee's story is presented in so matter of fact a manner. Things just get very different from normal. The extent of the loss of reality defies categorization and she's often forced to bucket things in ways that aren't right just to try to convey what's going on. Voices, for example, are more compulsions from "elsewhere". The therapist's interpretation is baffling to me. First, she often uses "psycho-babble" - words that do not need to exist (like utilize in business!!), where syllables are added just to make it sound more official. Then, she's pinned all of Renee's issues to the fact that she was weaned prematurely. Geh? How about the fact that her mother discovered her father cheating, which broke up the marriage and made her mother threaten suicide - right at the time when Renee first started experiencing symptoms???? Never mentioned it. Seemed weird. Good book though.

Book #13 - The Secret of Two-Edge: Book 6 in the ElfQuest reader's collection by Richard & Wendy Pini. To balance #12 - I don't have much to say. Kinda' fun, kinda' ok. Meh.