If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck... it just might be a swan.

     So much of life is made up of illusions.  Either we're tricking our brains to see what we want to see, or our minds play tricks on us.  Whatever the case, things aren't always what they appear.

          My Daughter, Lindsay, was home from college for spring break, and though we now have a casino right in town, Lindsay is still one year shy of legally entering it.  Her brother and she thought a trip to Dave and Buster's might be the next best thing.

     This place was an hour north of us and and more or less a glorified Chuck-E-Cheese for adults.  It had all the fun and games of a casino, only you didn't empty your pockets as quickly.  However, there was the opportunity to fill them, except it was tickets and not cash.

     With 5 years between them, Lindsay and Matt don't have a lot in common, but they do like to play games, and when they realized they could score double the points if they both threw balls at the same time on one particular machine I saw one of many illusions, and that was that they actually liked each other.
                           

          The beauty of camera phones is, you can take a  million pictures and trash the ones you don't want.  Of course I took many, and when I took this picture, it was simply Matt throwing his hands in the air, but when I looked at it later I saw my next illusion.  If you'll notice, Matt appears to be hanging from the light.  

                                                                                                                                                                              

     Many of the games reminded me of being in Vegas, though there was something about this place that was missing.  I did see this frogger game which is a bit of nostalgia  and it took me back to earlier times.  

          The tickets you won were for the most part worthless, and only redeemable for glorified junk in the redemption center.  But at least the games acted as a baby-sitter, saving you from gambling away your mortgage payment.

     Before long, Matt and Lindsay were on a mission to see just how many worthless tickets they could collect in one night.

     So here was our next illusion... all of these tickets were stuffed in Matt's front left pocket, 2110 to be exact, and it was like a magic act as he kept emptying them into the bin.


     The whole day turned out to be magical, and it was a miracle that Matt and Lindsay never got sick of each other.  But as I was showing my friend, Maryann, my photos the next day, she looked at this sunset, the one I thought looked like a sandy beach  on the water, when in reality it was a snow covered corn field from the freeway...  She said "Hey, look!  it's a swan!!"  I never saw that, but it sure appeared to be one:)

     I trick my brain all the time to try to make good things out of the challenges in life, but sometimes nature does it for us, and if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck... it just might be a swan:)

Have a great day!!

Christine:)