Tom Quixote and other silliness

We folks at the marina are so easily amused! This time, Tom has been the source of merriment!

Instead of tilting at windmills, Tom fought with our patio umbrella, and the umbrella won. During very high winds the other evening, Tom attempted to close the umbrella. Unfortunately, the pole snapped right off, and the wind blew the open umbrella into him so that the wooden spines of the umbrella frame caught him around the neck. He was really worried that he would choke to death, and had to struggle quite mightily to rip the umbrella off his head and away from his throat. Once he finally freed himslef, he looked around to se how many people were coming to his rescue, and to his amazement and disgust- no one else had noticed anything amiss! Luckily, no lasting ill effects for Tom.

The other story making the rounds is the night the new TV blew up! Not really, but that's what I thought had happened. We used to have an older style TV (a very heavy one) on a shelf above the head of our bed. When we finally broke down and bought a flat TV, we put it on the same shelf. Tom then sits in the captain's bench so that he can plug in his headphones and watch the TV, and I don't have to listen to it. When he is sitting in his captain's seat, he is often looking for a place to rest his foot. On the night in question he set his foot on the top of the fire extinguisher- which he has frequently done before, but this time- the pin had come out- and the fire extinguisher went off! When I heard the noise and saw the "smoke", I ran out of the boat. The neighbors all saw the "smoke" rolling out of the back of our boat, and came running over to see what was wrong. We all had a great laugh once we knew Tom was safe, and he told us it was only the fire extinuisher. Unfortunately, that stuff makes quite a mess, and it has taken us a while to clean it up!

We have also moved the TV so it's not over our heads anymore, and I got Tom wireless headphones so that he no longer has to be tethered to the TV.