An Odd Weekend

On Friday night, we visited Kathy and Travis and another couple for what Kathy is calling Cuisine and Conversation. This will be the first of four monthly meetings where we gobble grub and sit around answering questions from a book of them. It centers on spirituality, and it's not as stuffy as I worried it would be. It went fine. The next nights will probably move from house to house.

When I got home I found a message from My Parents. Dad officially has lymphoma. A Friday test and a Monday exam should tell us which kind it is. I looked it up on WEBMD, and read all the varieties of Hodgkin's and non-Hodgkin's and survivability rates and treatments. I think we'll know by the end of today which kind it is and what medicine they'll consider. Dad, except for the lymph swelling, says he's OK. He's still going to work, still getting groceries. He unfortunately is a prime candidate for lymphoma: He's an older male who worked around chemicals all his life. He may also have used black hair dye (a strong precursor). We'll know more later in the week, and we'll visit him this weekend, maybe watch the Super Bowl with them.

We watched I Am Legend Saturday night. It's a strong movie that has almost nothing to do with the original novel, and Your Sister is a bit obsessed with both now. We talked about the film throughout the weekend and then hit Blockbuster to rent the first two film adaptations of the story: The Last Man on Earth and Omega Man. It appears that the Will Smith movie is based more on those two films than the original novel. We watched Last Man Sunday night, and it's a surprisingly good, cheapie horror film starring my beloved Vincent Price.

But what happened earlier that night was really strange. I picked up Your Sister from the school around 6:45 so we could drive for pizza and the movies. She was standing outside talking on the cell phone, and as she hopped in the car, she said someone from the house across the street was aiming a laser sight at her. She was warning the remaining teacher in the building. I stopped the car out of sight and called 911. We told the officer what was going on, and as we waited for him to arrive, Your Sister noticed people were leaving the home.

We drove back around through the parking lot, told the last teacher what we were doing, and drove in front of the house. Your Sis wanted their license plate numbers, so I turned around in the road. They saw us and hastily hopped in a truck to leave. We parked in the road to get the number of another car in the driveway and to keep them from leaving. The truck pulled into the school parking lot and drove around to the back of it, obviously to hide. The cop car pulled up next to us, we told him about the truck, and he gave chase. With the other car's number, we drove after the cop, saw him pull over the truck, and we parked in the lot to wait for him. He drove up a few minutes later and said he was going to talk to the folks at the house (who had not left yet). He said we didn't need to do anything else, and we left for dinner. Your Sis called the principal and suggested he follow up on it.

Later in the night, she remembered the school has a fire drill tomorrow, and she wants to request it be canceled. We don't know if that sight was attached to anything, and it may have just been dumb rednecks playing with toys. But we're in mountain country with a high percentage of gun ownership and a disproportionate number of dumb yokels. Why not play it safe for a few days? Along with pizza, she downed a few beers to calm down. I can't blame her. I suggested she wear a different jacket and hat and drive to school just to be safe. She was standing in the dark, and there's no way they could have seen which teacher was out there. But now they might be stupidly offended that we called the cops on them. Oh, and we drive past their house every day.

Picture of the Day
The spacesuit of Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell.