But the biggest time I remember that I did this, it was, I think, my senior year in college. And I had an exam that day and I literally think I forgot to set my alarm. I do not think there was an alarm involved in this at all. And I remember, it was like this surreal, like, moment where I woke up and I looked at the clock and it -- I just sort of laid there and went, “What time is that? That's not right.” And then I went, “What time is my exam?” And I didn't panic. I just sort of, like, very methodically was like, “It's halfway through my exam, like, the final exam for this class!” And I got up and I got my -- I think I probably threw something on, probably half my pajamas were still on. Who knows? But I -- like I said, I wasn't panicked or anything. I wasn't racing and I walked into the room. And of course, like, everybody's, you know, again halfway through their exam and the professor kinda looks at me and he goes, “I wondered where you were.” And he let me sit down and take the exam and I did fine and I passed the class and I graduated and all of that. But I thought, “Man, could that have gone differently.” Like, if that professor had not been a nice guy, like, I could have missed taking that exam because I was not there the day that, you know, at the time when it started or whatever. Like, I just -- ugh, I was, I definitely was, I was very grateful that it, that it happened that way, and that I didn't have to, you know, do anything, do anything strange.

So it’s the summer of 2019 and my friend and I wanted to visit one of the parks in town that we've never been before. It was a lot of fun, we spent the whole day there. And then right as we’re about to get into our car, something, like, fuzzy brushed, like, by my ankle and I freaked out. And my friend was already in the car about to drive. I was like, “Wait.” I looked underneath the car and it was the most beautiful cat I've ever seen. Well, it was a kitten. It had bright blue eyes and it was different colors of black and gray and white. And we're like, “We can't just leave this cute cat in this park defenseless.” So we walked around -- the park was just about to close -- asking people, like, “Hey, have you lost a cat?” looking for the cat mom. And we concluded that this poor kitty was just abandoned. So we took it in with us and even though this cat was adorable -- I cannot emphasize that enough -- it was aggressive, a little feisty one. And we took it back to my friend's house because I'm a dog family and that couldn't mix, and she is a cat family. So it was perfect. So they had cat food and water, we put this kitten in a kiddie pool, fed him or her, and it was a lot of fun. It, like, obviously hadn't eaten in a while. But as I mentioned before, it was a feisty one. After it got the food and water, it popped the kiddie pool in efforts to escape and it was very successful in that. It ran into the woods area by my friend's house and we spent another half an hour trying to find this little one. After a while we got the kitty back and we put the cat back in our car and we called every shelter in town and no shelters were accepting cats at that moment. We contacted all our friends and eventually somebody picked up and was just like, “Hey, my past teacher so-and-so accepts cats.” And I'm like, “Oh, Mr. Blank?” I won't say any names. But they're like, “Yeah!” So we got to drive to one of my favorite teachers’ house, drop off the cutest kitty, and it finally had a good…

And because my cell phone had no signal in that area, I couldn't keep track of the weather, the radar, anything like that. So I started to head back. I got about maybe 100 yards, 200 yards, heading back on my journey, when I could see the rain just come across the fields and across the complex. And I’m like, “Oh no.” I've got, you know, $2,000 worth of camera equipment around my neck. There's no way I am going to get back to my car running into a downpour and not have my cameras ruined. So I had to look for shelter and near me was a block of unused porta potties. So I ran for one of the porta potties. The closest one happened to be an extra -- a big one. It was, like, a two-person -- well not, like, a two-seater, but, you know, where if -- it was a family one where, you know, if you had to take a small child in there, you could and have room to move around. It had one of those little sinks, you know, with the hand sanitizer type things, I guess you could call it a luxury porta potty. But I got to that just in time, I got in and the wind came up, the rain came down. So I actually had to stand in this porta potty with the door closed because the wind was so much that it was swirling around. And if I tried to open the door, I was getting rain and mist thrown into my face and onto my camera. So I would say for about 45 minutes to maybe close to an hour, maybe 50, 55 minutes, I was stuck in this porta potty during this downpour. I managed to get one bar of service and I was texting people I knew saying, “Hey, can you check the radar?” ‘Cause I didn't have enough signal to check the radar myself. “Can you check the radar to see how much longer I'm gonna be stuck in here?” Well nobody I was texting had much of a signal or they were busy or they couldn't check the radar themselves, I just had to wait it out. Turns out it was around 50, 55 minutes. It let up, I ran to a tent that was further west, maybe 50, 60 yards west, and…

Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio. But my best plane story is when it was like the year after we graduated from college, and a friend asked me and another friend to stand up for him in his wedding, and it was in Texas. Which I'm in right now kind of ironically. And it was over Valentine's Day, and so she was living in Philadelphia at the time and I was in Grand Rapids and we we planned our flight so that we could get, have our second flights together. So like we each flew to I don't know where, Atlanta? Who knows! And then from there to San Antonio and same on the way back. So that was great, So on the way back our flight was like pretty early. So well I don't remember how we got to the airport, if our friend took us or what. And we were on a little - maybe we rented, a car because we were on a little tram from like the parking lot to the airport and we were like looking at our tickets and I said something about how we had time because our plane took off at, you know, 8:15 or something. And her ticket said, like 8:17, and she, she thought that was like, no big deal. She was like, you know, just a couple minutes difference. I'm like, there's no way it would be different if we were on the same flight, you know, like, that's weird. So I was like, "Give me your ticket." So I'm like, looking at them and comparing them and stuff. And I realize that her ticket had a different date on it and she had accidentally booked her return ticket for the next month. So Instead of February It was in March, and I just was dying laughing because it was so her, like, that's exactly something she would do. But I was also like, "Oh s***!" because now what? So we were running late that was why we were trying to see if we had enough time. So when we got there, like she went up to the desk and told him what the issue was and they were like, "Well not sure if we can get you on this flight, but we can try." And I was like,…

Oh, yeah, I guess, I just have a couple of examples. About a mile away from my school last winter, there was a woman who tried to do that maneuver where instead of walking to your mailbox, you pull your car beside the mailbox and then you just reach out your window and pull it  out. She did that but she accidentally drove into  kind of like a snowbank. So I stopped and dug her out. And another time, this was just shortly after that, after the snow had melted. I rolled up on someone's car who was just dead in the middle of a road, at a four-way stop. And I got out and pushed her car over to the shoulder and then left. She did have a cellphone and she, I think her boyfriend was coming or something. But those are empowering. People always say, like , you should want to help people because it feels good not because there's the hope of a reward or something and I can confirm that helping people just feels good. There's always a tendency to like, I wish I could follow up and see if everything worked out for them. But a lot of times it's just help, get back in move on with your day and hope that your generosity perhaps moved the needle, just a touch in the world toward toward it, being a better place. That said I could do it even more. I'm sure there's plenty of other ways I could help that I don't. But when you get those little tastes, you know, it kind of puts you on the lookout for more opportunities to help.

Have I ever missed a plane, bus, or a train. No, actually, I haven't. I actually haven't my, my aunt one time missed a train as she was going back down south about- we got train service at that time. She missed, She was like, she was perpetually late - my dad always said she ever had to catch and she said, "If she had a train to catch, she'd miss it!" Well doggone  she did. So, my mother and she and I got into our old - or about then it was our brand new 1966 Ford, Galaxie 500 XL with a 390, and my mom herded her to the next town, to try to catch a train, just missed the train. And so, we beat feet about 27, miles south on the next stop of the train. Hopefully, to catch the train. My mother had kind of a leadfoot and we beat the train to the next town and my aunt was a able to catch a train and progress by themselves. And so that was kind of cool. It kind of an adventure for a me as a young kid. I probably was about, I don't know, might be about twelve years old, something like that. So I thought it was kind of cool.

The day that we had our first COVID deaths at our hospital. That was a challenging day. I came in,I must have been working second shift that day. Because I came in and the nurse that I was working with had lost that first patient shortly, before I came came in. And then, during the evening, we had somebody who transferred in from one of the, the nursing homes. And was basically just there for palliative care. We knew that the nurses knew that was not somebody who was going to make it. So with the ICU rooms, we can watch the the patients stats, you know, their oxygen levels, their heart rate, blood pressure, all that kind of stuff from out in the hall at the nurses station. And I remember standing around with the nurses watching, 'cuz we knew imminently we were going to have to go in that they could see stats, steadily declining. They had paged for the doctor to come, but it was becoming clear doctor wasn't going to to make it probably in time. And I don't know the exact rules, but there was rule something along the lines that either, you know, you would have a doctor there to, to pronounce time of death or two nurses could do it, or, like the nurse supervisor with another nurse, something like that. So, we were watching the stats declining and  it was clear that doctor wasn't going to get there and the nurse that had already lost one patient earlier in the day just, was - she  we rushed to get into the room because she she didn't want the patient to to die alone. So I remember rushing to, to get her, you know, get her gowned up. Fumbling with the the gown strings because we could see the numbers going down down, getting her connected with the paper, and with her her kindness, and her compassion as she went in and sat at the patient's bedside, those last moments. So, that was not, not something I ever planned to, to be witnessing.

There were some good questions this week about theater and my thespian career. My - I mean an opportunity to talk about my, my time, as a as an actress, haha. But I sort of have this vague feeling, that I've told this story before, and to this diary, so guess I might be a little repetitive. But you know, whenever like there'd be a school type performance in like K-12- not K-12 like through through elementary school or whatever. I get, I tend to get picked for stuff like that. Or a church I should say also. Just because, mostly because I was good at memorizing lines and had a loud voice. So I mean, of course, I would get a role. But high school where, I had a, a friend, a guy, I worked with that was really into theater and he encouraged me to try out for a play. And at first, I, I think I didn't get the role. I got maybe a bit part, but whoever got the role couldn't do it. And so, I got it even though I was like only a sophomore, which was- And back then my high school started in like tenth grade. Yeah, so we didn't have freshman, freshman in high school. So as sophomore. It was young to have a lead role like that. But I did it. And it did kind of get me hooked. I really liked the camaraderie of the cast and crew working together and I think, I like the challenge of, you know, having to memorize lines and memorize blocking and stage craft and all of that. and, what really stuck with me - And I can remember all these years later, was the way we felt on opening night. At least, the way I felt on opening night because, I was so nervous. And, you know, I think there was a part of myself that was asking like, like, "Have you lost your mind? Why did you ever sign up to do this?" Because the thought of walking out on stage with all those eyes on you and you had to say, you know, the lines like they were written and move to your mark. I mean it just seemed like it was just an impossibly hard thing to do. It was terrifying and then we got through it and it went really…