Full Moon on Groundhog Day

Groundhog Day is always a unique experience, and this year was no exception.  I headed out the door on Monday with the Smootmobile fully packed with layers of additional clothing so that I'd be nice and warm at Gobbler's Knob while watching Phil make his annual prognostication the next morning.

But instead, I was out until around 1:00 a.m. with my brother and some close friends, and I ultimately decided that it would be in my best interest to just sleep through Phil's forecast in a nice, warm bed at my parents' home.  I have officially become a big wimp upon seeing the 12-degree reading on the thermometer under a cloudless sky.  We could feel the frost starting to develop on our heads, just by walking through a parking lot.

So, rather than getting ready to watch a groundhog predict the weather, we spent much of our Groundhog Day Eve watching a 20-something year old guy proudly display a bruise he had gotten on his butt while attending a recent event at Madison Square Garden in New York.  He said he had fallen down a flight of stairs there, and I will just go ahead and make the wild assumption that alcohol may have been a factor.

A group of these folks (I guess now that I'm elderly I can call 20-somethings "kids") came to Punxsutawney from Long Island so they could see what Groundhog Day was all about.  I seriously doubt that any of them were able to actually attend Phil's forecast either, because their blood alcohol levels were probably beyond what any modern instrument could possibly measure.

My new "friend" from New York seemed to continually insist that he stand right next to me to display his bruise -- and the rest of his hairy butt -- in case there had been some sort of new development there since the last time he showed me.

It was admittedly funny at first, but it became increasingly disturbing as the night wore on.  I found myself thinking rhetorical questions like, "Why couldn't the lone girl in their group have suffered some sort of bosom injury instead making me see this every few minutes?"

At one point he had left for about half an hour only to return wearing only a bathrobe, presumably because that made it much easier to display his butt, without the unnecessary added inconvenience of unzipping his pants and everything.  (My apologies for the poor quality cell phone picture... but if I had to suffer, YOU have to suffer.)

Earlier in the night we had the chance to see actor Stephen Tobolosky from the movie Groundhog Day.  He portrayed "Ned Ryerson," the annoying insurance salesperson who accosted Bill Murray's character each morning as they headed to the celebration ("Ned Ryerson?  BING!").

It was fun to watch him speak at the annual banquet, and he and his wife seemed to be genuinely thrilled to be there to take it all in since they had never visited town before, let alone on an actual Groundhog Day.  And best of all, not one time did he feel that it was necessary to display his butt to us.