“Isn’t that how the Crocodile Hunter died?” That’s the first question I asked when Susan informed me we would be swimming with stingrays while on vacation in the Cayman Islands. Turns out it’s everyone’s first question, so let me address it right up front. Over the past 80 years, 20 people have been killed by stingrays. To put that number in perspective, in 2021 1,554 people died from falling off furniture. You are nearly 80 times more likely to die from falling off your couch than being killed by a stingray. They’re pretty safe. Our cruise ship was too large… (read more)

After nine days away, Susan and I have returned home from vacation. We spent five days cruising on the Carnival Paradise, and four days driving to and from Tampa. This time our cruise ports were the Cayman Islands and Cozumel. We’ve been to Cozumel multiple times, but this was was our first time to the Grand Cayman Island. In Cozumel we returned to our favorite resort (Mr. Sancho’s) and on Grand Cayman Island we went on an excursion that involved interacting with stingrays. I’ll be writing more about both of those excursions later this week. The Carnival Princess is the… (read more)

Before I can talk about these shoes and how important they were to me, I have to first talk about shirts. Around the time I graduated high school I discovered “cool” t-shirts. In college I purchased an Edward Scissorhands shirt and a yellow shirt with a black zig-zagging line that resembled Charlie Brown’s. One of my favorites was a white shirt with a can of Spam on the front. (This was a couple of years before the term would become associated with email; I just liked Spam!) Within a few years, that fun went away. I outgrew XL t-shirts, and… (read more)

For the past eight years I have been tracking every movie, documentary, and television show I’ve watched. I didn’t do as good of a job in 2023 of writing everything down as I have in past years, so I’ll need to be more mindful of doing that next year. The two categories of movies that rarely get captured are films I end up watching on television while flipping channels, and films I only partially watch. This list is more about movies I sat down to intentionally watch and not things I happened to catch, especially in regards to television shows.… (read more)

In 2022 I bought one of those 12′ skeletons from Home Depot. Those skeletons are so tall and unwieldy that I had to call my buddy Jeff to come help me assemble it. We stood it up in front of my workshop facing the pool and strapped it to one of the porch’s support beams after a gentle wind blew the whole thing over. The skeleton is so tall that you can clearly see it over the fence when driving down the main road behind our neighborhood. I’m sure the neighbors were pleased. I left him standing the entire month… (read more)