We, we made french toast that morning. It just felt like, it just felt like we're doing, like, these, these adult things. When you're 18 or 19, and for the first time, it's just at the outset of, of college, and you're like, buying food materials on your own, it feels so novel. Went out and bought a brand new thing of cinnamon for our French toast, and -- but, the same hand, you're still kids. Because I remember when we were done with, um, when we were done with breakfast that morning, we were -- again, were just kinda hanging out in my best friend’s kinda, like, basement apartment area that he had as a part of a bigger house that he shared with fellow college baseball players. Goofing around, and somehow, some way this, this girl that I had just met recently that I knew was gonna be so special in my life as long as I don't ruin it… We were goofing around. She was laying on the floor. I remember pouring -- what I was trying to do is pour bottled water into her mouth from like four feet in the air, like it, “This is kind of a cool trick, like look at us go.” It, it's so stupid. I don't know why. I don't know what compelled us to do that other than, like, flirting. It can be very strange for people. I guess, like, we just wanted to goof around with each other. And so I remember, though, I was doing the thing where I was pouring water into her mouth, and I looked to my right, and I saw the cinnamon that we had bought that morning for the French toast, and in my head I remember thinking like, “Cinnamon tastes so good in French toast, and it tastes so good in cinnamon bread. All the cinnamon I've tasted has tasted delicious in my life.” I said, “What if I do this girl a favor, and I, and I swap the water that I'm pouring into her mouth, and I just pour the cinnamon instead. So she gets, like, this tasty treat when she's not expecting it.” It turns out I'm an idiot. This is before the cinnamon challenge. So this was not widespread knowledge -- well, granted, it probably was widespread knowledge, but not for me. So, uh, when I poured…

My aunt, my son's great aunt, passed away, and she wanted all the nephews to be her pallbearers. And my son was 16 at the time, and he was a nephew, so he became a pallbearer. And I explained to him what pallbearers do, and he was like, "I gotta get in the grave?" And I said, "Heck no, you don't get in the grave. You just bring the, the casket to the grave and set it on a, a stand and they take care of it from there." Well, not my aunt. My aunt had the pallbearers put her in the grave. And then the funeral home director said, "Oh my gosh. She requested that her head be facing north and it's not." So they had to pull her out of the grave and flip the casket around and, and put the casket back in. Well, while this is happening, the casket slips and now it's tilted. And my son, bless his heart, he was 16 and a weightlifter and a football player and he was very well stacked. And he jumped in the grave and he held up the casket until they could get the ropes back around it. Climbed out of the grave dusting himself off. And they lowered my aunt into the ground. And I promised him that if he's ever a pallbearer again, that would not happen. My aunt, she was funny.

I was in a cemetery on December 21st, 2023, for the winter solstice. I went to Kaleva, Michigan. They have a big Finnish population in Kaleva, and there is a Finnish tradition that you go to the cemetery on Christmas Eve and light luminaries and put them on the graves of your ancestors. Well, Kaleva decided that people were kinda busy on Christmas Eve usually, so they decided to change the tradition or make their own tradition to be the winter solstice, so the longest night of the year. So they have volunteers that come and light luminaries and place them on the graves all throughout the cemetery there. And it is a very large cemetery, and I think that they said that they light over a thousand luminaries now. And it was beautiful. So, it's obviously dark when you go. They start lighting them I think around four o'clock. And then by the time they're finished, it's dark and then you can either drive through the cemetery or get out and walk and see all of the, um, the graves kind of lit up by these luminaries, and you can look across and see all the dots of where the luminaries are lighting the, lighting the cemetery. So it was a pretty cool thing. I heard about it a long time ago, and I am not often, um, up north then, or in Michigan. I -- when I lived outside of Michigan, and if I, you know, when I came home for the Christmas holidays, I would usually get there, like, the 23rd, sometimes the 24th and very soon before Christmas. I normally didn't have that much time off work to be able to go sooner than, you know, a couple of days before the holiday, but this year I decided to take a little bit of time off before the holiday and was able to go up to Traverse, and then my mom and my sister and I who actually had flown in that day, like she flew -- er no, she had flew in the day before -- late the day before. And we were able to meet a friend of mine who I worked with when I lived in Muskegon. She lives in Manistee, but her husband's family is all from Kaleva, so they actually have ancestors in that graveyard. And we were able to find…

This flight that we went home on Christmas Day -- I woke up at about 3:15 to -- 'cause we were supposed to check in at 4:00. I wake up at 3:15 and the flight has already been rescheduled. Because there was so much fog out of Detroit that planes were not allowed to fly into or out of Detroit. Um, so that was at 3:15. We get to the airport to check in at 4:00. And by the time we get to the airport at 4:00, we get rescheduled again. Then -- 'cause we were supposed to fly outta Minne- -- the Detroit flight was supposed to go outta Minneapolis. So then we get to Detroit, and the flight has been rescheduled another -- a third time. We have to now fly out of Seattle. We get to the Seattle Airport and the flight's been rescheduled for another time, um bec- -- and they won't -- and instead of letting us go on the stand- -- on the empty seats that are on the 11:30 flight 'cause, um -- no, they make us wait to the, to the 4:30 flight. So we arrived four hours later than the tickets that we purchased, um, into Hawaii. The -- there's always standby seats. So there's usually like seven standby seats on every plane. But Alaska Airlines says “No, it's our policy that we cannot let passengers go on the stand-by.” But they would -- Alaska would rather make you wait five hours, five hours at the Seattle airport than give you one of those empty standby seats. I, I -- that, that is just bad, bad attitude. If they have the, if they have the flights, and we've been rescheduled to -- through no fault of our own, they should have let us get those empty seats and not make us wait.

I do have a headline that I actually knew nothing about until yesterday. I knew that the University of Michigan was playing in the Rose Bowl because I heard somebody at work talking about it. And I thought "Okay cool. That's their last -- like that would be their last game." Like -- and I, I asked somebody after the fact, as I'd kind of forgotten that it happened and then I asked somebody about it and they said "Yep, they did win." And I thought "Oh good for them. Like the season's over right?" I mean, I just didn't even think about it. So then I was at work yesterday evening. And somebody came up and was like, "Oh, just in case anybody's interested, you know, Michigan's up 17 to something" and I was like, "Wait a minute, didn't they play? Is this the Rose Bowl? Like didn't they already play?" I was so confused, had no idea that the national championship was a thing or happening or that they were in it had, had absolutely no clue. Um, so I was happy to hear that they won. I have real no allegiance to Michigan or Michigan State at all. I have friends and family that have gone to both universities and I did not attend either university. So I definitely am, am not like a lot of people and have a strong, strong feeling towards one or the other. I think they're, they're both fine institutions, but it's just fun that any school, anybody from this, you know, the state of Michigan, um, was -- you know, did so well and, and was you know that -- the national champion.