During the Fall of 2016, my wife and I celebrated our 10th anniversary with a trip to the Bahamas.  A long 10 years ago, our travel agent recommended we go to Sandals Negril, in Jamaica, and we LOVED it!  So for our anniversary, we wanted to go back to Sandals, and we couldn't have been happier with Sandals Royal Bahamian.  

As a certified diver, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to go diving in the Caribbean!  One of the great things about Sandals is that they provide free SCUBA excursions for their guests.  This made my decision to leave my wife for a morning a littler easier.  

The process to dive was rather easy as well.  I went to the dive shop they day or two prior to the day I wanted to dive.  I talked with the dive staff, who were awesome!  They made me feel right at home, and made everything super simple.  They looked at my cert card, and logbook to make sure that I had dove recently.  I dive regularly at work as a diver for the fire department.  There was a medical waiver that I had with me as well, that was needed filled out by my primary physician.  I had dropped the form off at my family doctor, who gave me a clean bill of health and filled out the paperwork.  The Sandals dive staff wanted that paperwork as well.  

The next day, I arrived at the dive shop around 8am.  They handed out some rental gear, mask, and fins.  I opted out of the wet suit, having become used to diving in cold water at home...  I figured I'd be okay with the 70-80 degree Caribbean, and I was.  Throughout the week, we had noticed the dive boat picking divers and equipment up at the main pier, but over the first couple days of our stay, the wind and waves had noticeable increased.  We found out that for our dive, we had to board a small tour bus, travel to the other side of the island to escape the wind a little bit.  We boarded the bus, drove for 20 minutes, to an inland pier where the dive boat was.  Sandals dive staff did all of the heavy lifting, which was awesome!  We boarded the boat, received some instructions and off we went!   

The boat ride was about 30-40 minutes, and the waves made it interesting!  I thought it was great, but someone that is prone to sea sickness could have had a problem with it.  Everyone on the boat survived without yarfing up their breakfast and we reached our first dive spot.  

Our first dive was the deep dive, max depth of 70'.  We were going to dive along a shelf, then to a couple of wrecks.  Here's the video!

On my fire department, and many other departments around the county, the fire service is the "tail wagging the dog".  The fire service has become the big brother to emergency medical services or at times the not-so-nice step father...  Where I'm from, our city had two different entities, fire and EMS, that were merged in the early 2000's.  While this was seemingly a good thing, it was not and is not without it's challenges.  

Fast forward almost 20 years later, we continue to be a slow changing, inefficient, stuck-in-our ways department that is teetering on the edge of trouble.  We continue to have paramedic shortages, disgruntled paramedics and EMT's, and management that is hesitant to address the issue.       

We did ourselves a disservice by advertising the 911 system so well.  We receive calls through the 911 system for anything from a rug burn caused by a piece of yarn, a toe nail that caught in a blanket and possibly ripped off, a quicker ride to the hospital because the waiting room was too busy, and someone who inserted something into something he shouldn't have.  And YES, those are all calls I personally have been a part of!  People are calling 911 and seeking help from the emergency departments for ailments and injuries that deserve a family practitioner, a nurse, or sometimes, just a little ice and to go to bed.   Instead, ambulance calls are on the rise and emergency rooms are too full.     

Last night, I was excited to try out a new bourbon.  Our local liquor store had this bourbon from New Holland.  I've had a couple of their beers:  Dragon's Milk is my favorite of theirs, a kick in the head, 11% stout aged in a bourbon barrel.  I've also tried their Poet, an oatmeal stout that was very good.  After the good beer tastings, I thought I would give their spirit game a try! ​

During the Bourbon Tour in Louisville, while at ​​Buffalo Trace, we were  treated with the milky, creamy, bourbony? goodness of Bourbon Trace's Bourbon Cream.  Our first taste was straight.  It's very creamy, cool, and had the right amount of bourbon aftertaste to make it wonderful!  Next, we mixed it 1:1 with a local made premium root beer.  This created the perfect ratio and an adult root beer float!  Well I didn't have any premium root beer, but diet A&W Root Beer worked REALLY well!  The 1:1 is a great ratio for a shot glass sized sipper or maybe even a slightly bigger quantity.  My wife tried and LOVED it, and she doesn't care for bourbon...  I know, I know, I'm working on it!  

Give this one a try!  Go out and grab Buffalo Trace's Bourbon Cream, throw it in some root beer, drink it straight, or a little bit in your morning coffee, I'm not going to judge! ​

Well, the end of the Cleveland Cavaliers run is over.  So the season ended with the Cavs losing rather soundly to the Golden State Warriors.  Shortly after that, the owner fired the GM David Griffin, who Lebron supported.  Lebron went on record saying he wasn't happy and wasn't going to "actively recruit" other players to come to Cleveland.  

Cleveland sat at watched as big name free agents moved on, i.e. Gordon Hayward, Andre Iguodala, Kyle Lowry, Jeff Teague, J.J. Redick, and Blake Griffin.  They also sat at watched as other teams around the league made trades for big names like Chris Paul and Paul George.  And rumored trades for Carmelo Anthony and even the highly sought after youngster Kristaps Porzingis.  Kyrie said that the Cavs offseason has been a "very peculiar place".  And just a couple days ago, injury proned, no, injury PLAGUED Derrick Rose is making news for sitting down with Cleveland and having serious talks about signing with them....      

This is the first time visiting Chubby Trout's new location. The building is awesome, super cool, barn wood everywhere with an amazing little patio area. We were there a little before dinner so the place was pretty well empty. Having been to their old location, we knew we were going to enjoy some sushi!

Yeah, yeah, I know.  But my kids loved it, especially my daughters.  Plus I'm a little weird too!  My son had a few caterpillars in his classroom and his classmates watched as they turned into chrysalis', then hatched into an amazingly colored monarch butterfly.  Well I thought I would give it a shot, so here's what I learned...  

Milkweed, lots of milkweed.  The first step for me was figuring out what milkweed looked like.  

Now that you know, you'll start to see this everywhere.  in Indiana, it starts growing early Spring, will blossom purple blooms around early July, and will stick around until Fall.  I actually dug some of this type of milkweed up, planted in a landscape area a couple years ago and it has taken off!  But in 3 years, no caterpillars...  

We have a great county park down the street, so I would wander through the park and try to find caterpillars on their milkweed, but still no luck!  During one of my walks, I thought I would search for other types of milkweed, which landed me here...  

As a firefighter, my retirement plan is based largely on a pension, called the 1977 Police Officers' and Firefighters' Pension and Disability Fund, whew...  a mouthful.  It's also called the 77 Fund or I'll call it the Fund.  The Fund was created to serve public safety officials in the State of Indiana.  Cities/towns and employees contribute to the Fund, which then pays benefits to retirees, disabled members and survivors of members.  The Fund has been performing well and is well "funded", meaning there is enough money in the fund to pay the members their share.    

The money that goes into the Fund comes from both the city or town, and the employee.  According to IN.GOV and the latest information, the contribution percentage is around 23-25%.  17-19% of this comes from the employer, leaving the last 6% coming from the employee.  With that being said, the employer may chose to pick up some of the employees 6%, which is the case on my department.  

After 20 years of employment, you become "vested" or allowed to collect some of the benefits from the Fund.  You can't collect those benefits until you are 52 years of age.  So, after 20 years of service, you can collect around 50% of base salary, which in our case is "New Guy Salary", aka Not Much Salary.  You can continue to improve your percentage until you hit 32 years of service, capping out at 74% of Not Much Salary.  You will continue to collect at that dollar amount until you die.  There are a couple different stipulations and situations that can cause that to change, but those are for another post.     

Over the last couple of years, I've been fortunate enough to see some of the most amazing parts of the world.  Ranging from Nicaragua, Hawaii, San Fransisco, Florida and Indiana (well, maybe not Indiana).  Just about everywhere I go, I grab my GoPro Hero Session 4.  I also added a couple accessories to make filming a little easier. 

I've liked this camera since the day I got it.  I love how durable it is, and the size is amazing!  The camera, by itself, is waterproof up to 33', making it great for beach shots and pool shots.  I had to buy a couple accessories in order to dive with it, I'll discuss those later.  The camera takes a MicroSD card, and off you go.  One thing I like about the camera too, is that you can preview what you're filming and you can see what you've already filmed, without the need to connect the camera to a computer.  This is all done through the Capture App.