Minnesota Vikings vs Denver Broncos

Minnesota Vikings vs Denver Broncos

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for November 17, 2019

I bumped into my old buddies, Heather & Alyssa Hornbuckle, the other day and enjoyed our brief conversation.  I don't get to see these ladies nearly enough so it was nice to have a few minutes to catch-up.

I was working at my desk the other day when I looked out my window and was surprised to see two different albino squirrels eating at out feeder.  This is the first time in months I've seen more than one of these at the same time.  I recently had a friend in Minnesota tell me they've never seen an albino squirrel in their entire lives and we've been having them come in our backyard every summer for 20 years...across two different houses!  We consider them to be our guardian angels so we are always excited when they come around.  I was curious how rare they are and did a Google search and found this site.  You know these are albinos because they have the pink eyes and this site says that albinism occurs in mammal births only 1 in 100,000 times.  Yet I have been documenting photos of them on my site for at least 15 years and remember seeing them for several years before we ever captured a photo of one of them.  Weird.

Keep reaching for what you want!!

We took off a month from the Empty Nester Club, but thought we'd fire it up again this week and had a good turn-out of friends. We had another couple arrive and finally had to forget about trying to squeeze more people in the booth.  Some of us were at risk of having our ribs broken.

Luke is my fantasy football buddy so we stay in touch on almost a daily basis strategizing about different line-ups.  So when he told me he would love to go to a Vikings game this year, I thought I should make that happen.  And what a game we chose to attend!!

Our friends, The Browns and The Zitzewitzes, were at the same game, but on the exact opposite side of the stadium.  Lucky my camera has a pretty good zoom so I was able to track them down and then sent them a text to smile for the camera!

Pretty soon the game was ready to begin and the players were all fired up.  Stefon Diggs had an amazing game with 121 receiving yards and a touchdown.  It was probably because of the way he pumped up himself and his teammates during the opening ceremonies.  

The game included a celebration of the military and had a half time show featuring a bunch of WWII veterans.  A couple years back the NFL was having a lot of controversy around the American flag, so I thought it was a pretty classy move when Eric Kendricks came running on the field while waving it proudly.  Good stuff.

The Denver Broncos were our opponents today and I was thinking before the game that the Vikings would be a lock for the victory.  Their record for the season before the game was 3-6 while the Vikings were 7-3 so naturally it would be an easy win for the home team.  Wouldn't it?

Apparently the Broncos didn't subscribe to my logic because they absolutely crushed the Vikings in the first half and we went into halftime facing a deficit of 20-0.  Unbelievable.  I didn't think the Vikings had a chance to win after that shellacking.

But lo and behold, our men in purple pulled off the biggest comeback I think I've ever personally witnessed and ended up coming back to steal the victory by a score of 27-23.  Dalvin Cook, Kyle Rudolph, Irv Smith JR, and Stefon Diggs all scored touchdowns for us and Kirk Cousins threw three of those to make most people in the stadium quite ecstatic.  They go into the bye week with a pretty decent margin of victory to make the playoffs.  You gotta love those Vikings!!