Sunday, June 4, 2017

The Rest of May

Horray Horray for the month of June. Summer time will be coming soon. Welcome to opening days/weekend of the 6th month of the 17th year of the 21st century. 

I will always remember the month of May 2017 as the time we went on vacation to Destin, Florida. But there were 3 other weeks in May that had their events and memories.  

So now for you, here are some of the things that made up life for me after vacation throughout the rest of May. 

Let's start with the day after we got back from vacation. It was Mother's Day and we ended the day with dinner with our kids. 
We met them at Longhorns, my wife's favorite steak places. 

The busiest weeks of the schedule in my grand-daughter, Aria's, first year playing little league softball were supposed to be played in May. 

I really liked going to see her play a couple of times before we went on vacation. 
Although not all enthusiastic about it, she even got to be catcher for an inning or two. 

But a stretch of rainy weather, caused a lot of games during the last half of May to be postponed.

But when they did play, she and her team continued to improve. Here's a video of one of her at bats. 


My grandson, Gabriel, finally cut his first couple of teeth at the start of the month. This improved his mood and demeanor quite a bit. He was a lot happier overall. 
On the 19th he turned 7 months old. 
But for me, it was a few minutes during a weekend visit to our house that was the highlight of the month. While I was being silly with him he giggled about as hard as he ever has at me. 

As far as my personal hobbies are concerned, in May I finally completed a project that wasn't supposed to take very long but did. I finished assembling my new corner desk for my office. 

Now I won't go into details why it took more time to get this desk together than it should have. But I will share the fact that the experience was simultaneously a epic fail and an accomplished success. The fact that I now have a permanent place for both desktop computer and my recording studio is what I'm taking away from the whole thing.  

I was going to include a picture of the desk but I haven't quite finished setting up the room. I will show you when that's done. 

Of course I can't write about hobbies without mentioning Lego. I really didn't build many during May. 

When I went on vacation I took this one with me. 
But I never got around to building it. So basically, I took the box for a ride to Florida and back. 

Lego in May began with the completion of an amazing mini-figure blind bag experience. On May 1 I went to the Lego store in Nashville to pick up some blind bags of the new Series 17 mini-figures. 

With the help of my nephew, Bobby, I opened a complete set with only 1 duplicate. 
I then went to Toys R US and got some more blind bags to get my granddaughter a couple of mini-figs that she wanted. I got both of them after only opening 3 of them. 

That's the most success I've had with mini-figure blind bags to date. Hopefully, I'll continue with the next series I collect sometime next year.  

When I went on vacation I took this one with me. 
But I never got around to building it. So basically, I took the box for a ride to Florida and back. 

On the last day of the month I did put them together. 





Here's the other models I built in May. 



Convinced by way I handled (or didn't) the physical activities on vacation that I have to get in better shape; I started walking for exercise again the week after we got back home.  

Other than the physical benefits of trekking through the grove, my morning mile gave me a chance to catch up on some of my backlog of podcasts I have missed. I was behind because my desktop computer had not been connected for a little more than a month. I couldn't download podcasts on my Ipod during that time.

On my 2nd day of walking I pulled my calf muscle. It really bothered me and I had to rest it for a while. But while limiting myself to ever day activities, my calf kept hurting. After putting some heat on it and resting, by the end of the Memorial Day weekend it was pretty much healed. But I'm going to take it slow going forward. 

A bit of luck came my way on May 25. As I occasionally do, I bought some scratch off lottery tickets. Based on the list of prizes still available on the official lottery website I bought some Willie Wonka Golden Ticket scratch offs. One ticket had a "win all" symbol on it. That meant I won all the prizes on the ticket. 

If you add up all the numbers you'll come up with $500. My biggest lottery win yet. 

Although it wasn't something that I had anything to do with directly, I enjoyed another win on May 22. That's when my favorite hockey team, the Nashville Predators won the NHL Western Conference title and made it to the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time ever. 
I have been a very devoted fan this season and watching this #8 seed rise to this level was a very happy and moving experience. 

On May 29th they would start their quest for
"The Cup" but came up short in their initial efforts. They lost the first 2 games in Pittsburgh. 


As I write this post they are behind in the series 2 games to 1. But I am hoping they come back and win it all. Only time will tell. 

Last but not least I want to mention one of the ways Paula and I enjoyed our Memorial Day weekend: at the movies. 

We went and saw Alien: Covenant 
and Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. 

"Covenant" the 2nd Alien prequel was nothing sensational but it was a necessary step in continuing the franchise. The only interesting characters were the androids and the woman played by the woman who also played in the Fantastic Beasts movie. 

I wasn't all that excited about seeing the next installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. My wife wanted to see it so I agreed to go. Much to my surprise I enjoyed it. 

The story was a little weak and predictable. But it was the main characters that kept me interested. Jeffery Rush's Barbosa turned out to be a pirate with a heart. Johnny Depp's performance as Jack Sparrow falls in the "Less is more" category. 

But the thing that really turned me around about this movie was it's look. The universe that the co-directors created in this installment is true to the one in the original film. I really enjoy being immersed in it. 

The 5th "Pirates" sequel won at the box office over Memorial Day weekend. But since it has dropped off significantly. I liked it and recommend anyone who liked the original film go see this one. 

As I finish writing this post it's the 3rd of June. I have had a couple of very interesting and busy days to start the month. I may or may not share a lot of that with you in a future post. 

Although our days in Destin will always be the best part of May 2017 these other things I have shared with you were important parts of it too. Thank you for letting me share them with you.    





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