Shane Smith Law Cruise: Why Is There a Monkey On My Head?

So, this whole week I was on our attorney trip. We'd done a reward for some of our attorneys who excelled last year. They were eligible to go on a cruise with their spouse or significant other and us. As this is the first time we've done this, we took a cruise, and it was down in the Caribbean. So, we flew everybody down to Orlando where we disembarked and got on the Mardi Gras ship. I forgot how seasick my wife gets when we were booking this, so that was a problem. She did try to use the patch as best she could, and she even had some other anti-nausea medicine, and it worked pretty well. But for people who get seasick, it can be disorienting. It was kind of funny a little bit when you'd try to walk down the halls and the ship would move a little bit and she'd wobble a lot.

But even I had a little bit of trouble sleeping one or two nights when we hit some choppy water and went back and forth. I was surprised at how much noise the ship made, just creaking and groaning in the water. It makes you realize just how massive those ships are, I guess. But it was a great trip. Here's a picture of the team who went. Like any cruise ship, lots of fun activities. Here's our attorney Ashley and her significant other Jake at a cooking class on the ship. It was a three-hour-long class, which was crazy.

The ship had lots of good food. This was Shaq's Big Chicken. I didn't know Shaq had chicken restaurants, but he does have a bunch of chicken restaurants similar to Popeyes, where they have some hot stuff, some chicken sandwiches, and chicken fingers. We ate there once or twice, and they also had a placard up there when he opened the restaurant on the ship. This is his hand in comparison to mine, and he is clearly just a massive fellow. I knew that, but I don't think I realized quite how much larger his hands are than mine, especially considering sometimes I have trouble finding weightlifting gloves that fit well. So, he's just got truly enormous hands.

Here, one of the excursions me and Holly went on was we went to a place called Monkey Land where you see these smaller monkeys. What I didn't know is the monkeys were not actually from the Caribbean Island we were at. I guess they were imported from Central America. We didn't find that out until we were finishing up and leaving that the monkeys weren't even from there. But it was a lot of fun to see them. It was mostly a big photo op thing though. The monkeys, I mean, they only want to deal with people if they're getting fed. Now when they are getting fed though, they'll run over on top of you. You can see here there's a picture of where they got on my head and Holly's head. I was glad we had hats on. One woman had some longer hair and I guess one of the trainers almost put food in it or something and they sort of rifled through her hair, which was kind of crazy to see. That was a lot of fun for us.

That same trip, we did some hiking to a waterfall and then rode ATVs on some trails in the Caribbean, which was one of our excursions. We didn't do a lot of other stuff. We walked around here. You can see us down the beach in Turks and Caicos just for a little bit. The tourist part we were at was very crowded. One of the islands had a place where you could stamp your passport, which we did because even though we've traveled a little bit, we haven't traveled a ton, and several places we've been to don't actually stamp your passports anymore. So, it seems like that part was sort of going away, which I know a lot of people used to collect those.

Here's a picture of everybody who was there for our final dinner on the last night. I think everybody had a good time. We went to a comedy club called Punchline a couple of times for entertainment. They had some really good comedians, pretty funny. It's always interesting to me, the comedians, how their shows change from the afternoon to evening. I guess they get a little more R-rated or PG-13 plus at night. But I would say sometimes some of the comedians are better during the day show than the nighttime stuff.

One of the things I was surprised about is there's this duck thing where they hide little ducks all over the cruise ship and people hide them and people buy them. I'm not really sure when that became a thing, but I was surprised by it. I didn't anticipate it and we didn't catch on until halfway through. They are tough to find, and a lot of times people will find a duck, keep it for a little while, and then they go rehome it for somebody else to find. The cruise ship is into it, and they have a couple of nicer ducks you can buy as well.

One of the things, I had seen was a lot of trivia things on cruise ships. I didn't know how popular bingo was on the cruise ship where they sell the cards and then people compete for the prizes and stuff. That was a huge thing on the ship. Lots of people enjoyed it and had a good time. I just didn't know that many people played it. Also, a lot of people brought cards or little board games to play up in the food lounges, which was neat for me to see and I was happy to see it because I always like it when I see folks who are not just doing a lot of things on their phone. That's one of the things I struggle with myself is to not just get sucked into my phone. That's why a cruise is good sometimes because it gets us away from our day-to-day and it's just harder to log in and do some work. So, you truly have to relax.

But overall, we had a good time. Everybody enjoyed it and we got back on Saturday. We left the cruise ship early in the morning and then we ended up just chilling at the airport for a little while. We breezed through security, with no issues at all. We just went right on through regardless of whether you had TSA precheck or did the regular security line. While I sort of picked on my wife a little bit about how early we were to go to the flight back, somebody sent us a picture of how packed the airport security was later in the day. So undoubtedly, while it was easy for us in the morning, in the afternoon, it was packed and crowded, and a big delay. So, I guess I'm glad we went through when we did without any issues. I hope you all had a good week and remember if you are in pain, call Shane!

Paw Offices of Teddy, Robin, & Kingston

So, this week I wanted to chat about my little bro, Jason. A while back, our dad, Noah, had this alley cat stroll right up to him and fall head over paws in love. He managed to convince our grandpa, Shane, to let him and his girlfriend adopt Jason. When Jason first joined the fam, he was a tiny thing, lighter than me, zooming around at about eight pounds while I tipped the scales at 10. But over the next month or two, he packed on the pounds and caught up to my weight. Now, as you can see in this pic, he's even bigger than me! I'm the gray one, and Jason's the larger cat. It's pretty funny—when we first met, I was a bit wary and kept my distance, but now we're inseparable. Best buds, napping and chilling together. Just a little update from Ivy and Jason!

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!