Celebrating Birthdays, Making Memories, and Facing Loss

This week seemed to go by super quick for me. On Monday, I just didn't feel great, and it made me realize just how cherished your health is. Even just feeling a little bit off, you're not at a hundred percent, it was tough to just get going. I felt bad. I felt run down. I felt off and just didn't feel great.

That was how I started my week and tried to push through things. But of course, when you do that, by the time you get home, you really don't want to do much. You're just like, "Oh, I did what I needed to do," and then you rest. On Tuesday I felt a little bit better, but unfortunately, it had messed up my sleep, so I was just super tired. I had taken my allergy medicine because I noticed that my allergies are kicking back up now. Usually, the first couple of days I take it I'm very drowsy, and that's what I ran into on Tuesday. So, I felt bad on Monday and on Tuesday I was feeling drowsy. It was just tough.

Wednesday, I had my regular manager meetings and, well normally, me and Holly go out on Thursday nights. That's our standard date night. We like to go out, go to dinner, or try to do something fun. We didn't do that this week. We're trying to eat at home more and just eat a little healthier, a little less restaurant food and fast-food type stuff. We had steak and potatoes, we had fish one night and had some fajitas another night. So, all homemade type stuff, but fairly lean, which was nice.

The team got me this. It's an Easter, rainbow unicorn because I'm always accused of being an optimist and things are going to work out for the best. So, they say, I have a rainbows and unicorns outlook on life. One of my manager's kids saw that and thought, "Wow, this is a great thing for Mr. Shane." So, they got it for me. It's a little early for Easter, but I actually want to taste it. I couldn't bring myself to bite the head off of it yet. And I think everybody knows, you always start with the head or the ears first.

On TV, we watched episode one of Shōgun, which just came out. It's an old movie by James Clavell about a European who gets washed up in Japan back in feudal times and how he deals with everything. I read the book years ago when I was a child, and I've read it a couple of times since then. I was really looking forward to it, enjoyed episode one, can't wait to watch a little bit more later on this week or next week.

Then on Friday, we took Sam and Noah both back down to Peachtree City so that Sam could spend time with his friends and see everybody for his birthday. His birthday is next week. So, we wanted to get down and let him see family and friends. Of course, the boys had school, so by the time they were done with school, got to the Charlotte house and then we all drove down to Peachtree City, it was pretty late. We were glad to get into town and the boys went and visited some friends that night, while me and Holly just went to bed. What I would say is just to be young again, where you didn't need nearly as much sleep.

Then we took Sam to a place called the Juicy Crab in Newnan, Georgia for his lunch birthday with my mother and father-in-law and my brother and sister-in-law and that was a good time. We've been there a couple of times and Sam really likes their crab legs, so we did that for his birthday, and it was a lot of fun. Then we went and saw Dune: 2, which was interesting because the boys didn't know a lot about the story. They'd seen Dune one, but they still hadn't read it, and they watched it all and had a ton of questions about the whole Dune world.

If you don't know, there were a ton of books written by Frank Herbert about the World of Dune. It's a sci-fi movie. Part one came out on HBO Max a couple of years ago. Part two came out this weekend. It was a good movie. I thought they did a pretty decent job in it. Like any movie based on a book, they took some parts out and it's always interesting to see what parts they take out, what they changed, and how it went forward. But I thought they stayed pretty true to the source material, so I enjoyed it. We went with a couple of other friends also, so there was a whole bunch of us there. It is a long movie, two hours and 45 minutes though, so it's not quick.

Then Saturday night we saw UFC 299. It was a big night for us. A lot of people on the main card were fighting that I wanted to see. So as soon as the main event started, Petr Yan beat Song Yadong. We were rooting for Song Yadong. My wife wanted him to win, but Petr Yan won that by decision. Then we rolled up to Gilbert Burns versus Jack Maddalena. Jack Maddalena got a knockout TKO in round three. I was upset about that because I'm a Gilbert Burns fan. I'm rooting for him next time around. It was a good showing by Jack Maddalena.

Then we went to Kevin Holland versus Michael Page. Michael Page won that one by decision. It was Michael Page, or MVP as he's called, it was his debut UFC fight. Awesome fight between the two of them. My kids love kung fu versus karate. Michael Page won though. Great showing all around by both, I would say.

The co-main event was Dustin Poirier versus Benoît Saint Denis. Dustin Poirier, I thought he was in good form. He got a KO round two and just shut it down super early. And then you go to the main event, which was Suga Sean O'Malley versus Chito Marlon Vera. Suga Sean won that by decision. It was a decision fight. Suga Sean, I'd say, dominated almost the entirety of the fight, if not the whole fight. He did a fabulous showing. He controlled the range in the fight. He just did an excellent job. It was a really strong showing on his part. Makes it hard for anybody to take anything away from his victory, I would say there. Just did a great job. So, it was a wild UFC night. Looking forward to UFC 300 coming up in a month, but it was good.

Also, if you were a sports fan, High Point University was in the Big South basketball tournament this weekend. They did a strong showing but ultimately got knocked out. The whole tournament was actually at High Point's campus, so that was super cool for High Point University. I'm a big fan of that school, my kids both go there. So, we were excited that they were hosting and that it was going on.

Sunday, me and Noah flew to Mississippi where my family is from to attend a funeral for my grandmother. While we were flying, I got an email from the Prop Store, which if you don't know, the Prop Store is an auction company that takes old movie memorabilia and sells it. It's usually stuff that was in the movie itself. So, screen used stuff, and they sell that for auction. While I was flying I took a look at this, because I'd gotten an ad that some Highlander stuff was up for sale, which I'm in a Highlander fan group on Facebook. While I was looking around this is what popped up for Gremlins, which was a cult classic back in I guess, the ‘80s or ‘90s. My brother saw it in our childhood, and we had Stripe and things like that. So, I thought I'd post this picture, just say, look what this screen Stripe is going for. It's kind of crazy that somebody would pay that much for it. For me, I thought it was a scary movie, not something I would want in the house.

It was good to see a lot of our extended family, even if it was a very sad occasion there. Looking at it, my grandmother had been big into genealogy, and I was talking to my wife. Most everybody's seen Family Tree Maker nowadays, or at least knows about what it is and how it helps us trace our family roots.

What was interesting about my grandmother is she's been into genealogy for 40 or 50 years, I think. She has traced tons of families back before Family Tree Maker, it was just so much harder. They would write to each other. They would write to courthouses to try to get copies of birth certificates sent to them. They would go places and look at birth certificates or look at military records or gravestones. And now, I compare that to Family Tree Maker where you can spend two hours at your desk and you can go back four, five, six generations and then pull up gravestone pictures that other people have loaded or see copies of the birth certificates or census reports. I just see how much that one little hobby has changed in the last 40 or 50 years.

She had written one book herself, then co-wrote a book, and then had numerous articles with other genealogists. When I look at that and I think how technology changed that particular hobby and made it just so much more accessible to people who aren't scholars and who aren't tracing everything, it is cool and it just makes me wonder what the next 50 years is going to bring for all the hobbies we do now.

One of the things about genealogy that my grandmother was particularly proud of was she was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution or DAR, and this is a group of women, and they have Sons of the American Revolution as well. But basically, it is where they can trace their lineage all the way back to the American Revolution and track that through the generations to somebody who fought in the American Revolution.

They came and spoke at the service as well and I know she had helped a lot of other people formalize their applications for the Daughters of the American Revolution and get into that also. So, an interesting group.

So overall, it was a busy week. Ended on a sad note, but we will get back at it this week.

Weekly Trivia Question

Watch this video and answer the question to be entered in the week's giveaway!

The winner will win a $25.00 Amazon gift card!