The Daily Spotlight

Site Relaunch, Back From Wrestlemania & More- The Daily Spotlight for 4/10/2016

Tom Lynch The Daily Spotlight, Travel, Wrestling , , , , , , , ,

Coming to you live here from a virgin airlines flight, I am officially on my way back from a very fun weekend in the state of Texas.  My plan for the rest of this week is to breakdown all of the wrestling happenings from this weekend and then once I’m caught up on all of the programming I missed while I was away, I am going to break down everything as this is the official relaunch of the daily spotlight.

Let’s start with a little housecleaning as to what I plan to give you from this site.  My plan is for some WWE news each and every day. I’m going to breakdown each week’s Raw, NXT and smackdown as well as some of the bigger stories as they unfold throughout the week.  Then every Sunday morning I’m going to present you with the Spotlight Small Package which will be your one stop source for all of the week’s news and wrestling breakdowns on the site.  That said, I don’t want this to solely be a wrestling website.  Thus I’m going to also be breaking down a variety of sports, travel and reviews.  The reviews themselves will come out every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and focus on my experiences with a particular product, restaurant and/or travel destination (This week’s will focus on Wrestlemania week in Dallas!).  As for the spotlight videos, those are going to be reserved for Tuesdays, Thursdays and the weekend and my plan is to really try to be a bit more consistent with those.  The problem with some of the videos is the quality but my hope is that as we go through the videos, the quality will only continue to improve.  As far as the new schedule, I’d look for that to really begin tomorrow morning, April 11th!  I appreciate all of you being so patient with me over the last couple of months.  It’s been a hard time personally with the death of my father as well as trying to really hit the ground running with a new job that I literally started the day my father passed away.  It’s been crazy but I’m at a point now where I think I can really get things back up and running on a more consistent basis.  We hit one year on the daily spotlight this part week and I couldn’t have been happier to hit that resubscribe button on the site when it came time to do that just last week.  The first year of the daily spotlight has been a lot of fun, I’ve gotten to interact with a ton of people and do a lot of things that I normally wouldn’t have been able to do without the site and for that I couldn’t be more grateful.  I plan of taking the daily spotlight to much greater heights as we take on year two of the blog!  Now let’s get onto this weekend.

I do things for Wrestlemania week a lot different then most fans that come in front out of town for the big show. This is mostly because my girlfriend comes with me for the show and she does so for her birthday.  My job is generous with time off but not generous enough to where I can take a vacation without her, nor would I want to.  My girlfriend has become a pretty big fan of WWE ( so much so that if she hears you say that she only watches because of me, it’ll be sure to tick her off) and I couldn’t imagine going to Wrestlemania without her.  Watching her marvel at the spectacle of Wrestlemania and jump up out of her seat for every big return or nearfall is half of the fun of it for me.  That said, I pick and choose my spots when it comes to going to shows with her.  We always attend Wrestlemania, Axxess and usually one other wrestling show of the weekend (which has become NXT, it was Raw two years ago and NXT has taken over that slot the last two years).  One thing I learned three years ago was that the hall of fame isn’t for her.  We went in 2013, and got dressed up for that matter, and after thoroughly enjoying Mick Foley, Trish Stratus and Booker T, my girlfriend looked at me and said, “ this is cool and all but when are the matches going to start.”  She couldn’t believe a show was dedicated simply to speeches and really struggled through those last few hours of, what was a great hall of fame class.  Thus, we skip the hall and it is a shame for a historian like myself who loves seeing the legends honored.  We also don’t go to any shows that are non WWE related which includes wrestlecon.  At some point I’m going to have to attend some of these shows as some of the lineups that Ring of Honor and Evolve, to name a few, put out seem to be really good and I’ve also been dying to check out one of JR’s shows .  With that said the WWE events we attend tend to get a little pricey so we agree to skip the other shows.  What we also do though is really engulf ourselves into the city that plays host to Wrestlemania and were finally able to do so with plenty of time this time around as we arrived Thursday and stayed until last Wednesday after Wrestlemania.  Thus over the next several posts I’m going to break down each one of the different wrestling events that we attended this past weekend and I encourage you to also do so in our comment section below or interact with us over on twitter @daily_spotlight or on my personal twitter @TommyOnTheSpot!  As always we can also be reached by Email at thedailysptolight2@gmail.com! Don’t worry I have spent the last few days really catchng up on the rest of the WWE content that rolled out during Wrestlemania weekend on the Network and I will get to all of those as the week rolls on!

Traveling Insanity, Conor McGregor & Wrestlemania March- The Daily Spotlight for 2/25

Tom Lynch The Daily Spotlight , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hello everyone and a very happy Thursday to each and every one of you.  It’s a very happy Thursday for me as I’m working just a few blocks away from where I live.  There is, to me, nothing better aside from being off altogether than working so close to home.  I get to sleep for, I kid you not, anywhere from an hour to 2 hours more when I work in Queens then when I work in Brooklyn.  Thus, I circle the day on my calendar and look forward to a day like today more than any other.  Even with heading to the city later this afternoon I can’t complain whatsoever.  Heading to the city is delightful for me as I hop on the LIRR and away I go, no I don’t care if the LIRR is relatively boushey.  Anyway, let’s get into the spotlight.

– One thing that has really zapped me throughout the week (and one of the reasons why I was in desperate need for a queens day) has been my lack of recovery from my vacation this week.  That’s right it is officially vacation season for me and this kicked off for me in a big way.  I was able to go visit some family on Valentines Day weekend (relax slappy I took the lovely lady out on Saturday and she came with me for the weekend) over in Hershey, Pennsylvania.  I then returned to work for two days in Brooklyn on Tuesday and Wednesday and then Wednesday night we took off for Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  Now I’m the type of guy who hates taking off work for an illness or just to recover from a trip because my agency doesn’t offer specific sick time.  Thus, we spent Wednesday night to Monday night at 10:30 when we arrived back in New York.  My girlfriend was able to take off until Tuesday but I was up at 5AM, worked two jobs and then hit the gym until the gym closed at midnight.  At 22 years old I would have been just dandy but I was beat up and struggling through all of Wednesday.  I was running on straight coffee just to get through the day and crashed hard a little after midnight last night (I rarely hit the hey before 2).  Thus, it was really good to get a few extra z’s last night.  One great thing about going away by the way was how I was able to pick up a lot of great video content for the site that you can expect to see in the coming weeks.

– I consider myself to be a pretty big baseball fan.  Aside from football and wrestling, baseball is my favorite sport and the only other sport in which I follow the league inside and out.  That said, I am not the same about baseball that I am about football in that when baseball ends, I’m good until about a month before baseball before I feel like I need to get fully invested.  I don’t care about when pitchers and catchers report and if I watch more than 1 spring training game, it’s probably more than usual.  The 175 games that emcompass the baseball season are good enough for me.  This isn’t to say that I’m not invested, I’m a nats fan and one of the reasons I subscribe to Sirius XM is to make sure I can listen to all of the games while in the car and I purchase the mlb package so I can watch all of the Nats games (and I love a good west coast game that starts at 10:35PM our time).  That said, it just isn’t baseball for me until football is long and gone. With football now gone, however, it is in fact time to get into baseball.  I’ve been going through all of the different rosters and have to be honest, it could be a very tough year coming up for my Nats.  I’m not sold on any other team in our division but the middle of our infield is really weak defensively and while I’m happy we went out and got Ben Revere (and more to the point dropped Drew Storen and actually got a return!), I can’t believe that the Nationals did very little to improve our rotation.  While, Bronson Arroyo is a gamer and a winner, he’s in his late thirties now and coming off Tommy John surgery.  That means we’re depending on Gio Gonzalez, Tanner Roark and Joe Ross which scares me.  Maybe instead of trying to stick it to the New York Mets (and more or less failing) this offseason, we should have been worrying about improving our rotation.  Could be a long season, hope I’m wrong.

– I’m pretty bummed that Rafael Dos Anjos got hurt and won’t be facing Conor Mcgregor on March 5th, but honestly I feel like Nate Diaz is a great replacement.  The press conference yesterday was a lot of fun and I think that you have the two perfect guys to prepare for a fight like this on such short notice.  Conor is an absolute must see attraction whenever he fights but it will be interesting to see if Diaz and Mcgregor will be the main event now since it won’t be a title fight and Tate-Holm will be.  Even though everyone assumes this will be a sure fire win for McGregor, I wouldn’t be too shocked to see Diaz put up a really good fight.  Diaz is a gritty fighter who has a big time reach advantage on McGregor and Mcgregor is going up in weight class so much and fighting at 170 so I wouldn’t put the house on Conor in this one.

– Last piece of business to take care of.  As many of you know WrestleMania is under six weeks away.  In the past I’ve been reminiscing on different Survivor Series events and Royal Rumble events of years past.  Well in the month of March, I’m going to take things to the next level and bring you a WrestleMania a day.   I’ll break down a different WrestleMania from my perspective as a fan.  It works out perfectly with 31 days of March and 31 Wrestlemanias.  I’ll break them down each event from my experiences (the biggest moments, the best matches) as a fan and then I’ll parallel each WrestleMania with what I remember most from each year of being a fan of WWE.  I’ll include everything from pictures to videos, if I have them, to everything in between.  I want to really intertwine this idea with the youtube channel and get that off the ground as well.  This will all lead you right up ro WrestleMania weekend in which I will be on hand live to get you the most comprehensive coverage that someone who attends the event with his girlfriend, for her birthday, can possibly give you.  It’s bound to be a lot of fun and I’m excited for it.

Nobu, John Scott & Colin Kaepernick…a New York Jet?- The Daily Spotlight for 2/2

Tom Lynch The Daily Spotlight , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Happy Tuesday Guys & Gals! What you didn’t think after declaring a February filled with updates that I would stop on Feb 2nd would you? Let’s turn on the spotlight & get right into it. 

-Unfortunately we have to start with another sad piece of news on the wrestling front. It’s being reported that WWE Hall Of Famer Blackjack Mulligan was rushed to the hospital yesterday and isn’t doing very well. Mulligan is the grandfather of current WWE Superstars Bray Wyatt & Bo Dallas, which explains why they were off of Raw as WWE actually sent them home to be with Mulligan. Mulligan was inducted into the WWE Hall Of Fame back in 2006 with longtime tag team partner Blackjack Lanza by fellow Hall Of Famer Bobby The Brain Heenan. This sad news comes just 24 hours after the news about Bret Hart revealing that he is currently fighting Prostate cancer. Our thoughts & prayers are with Mulligan and his family during this very difficult time. 

– Had a chance to catch up on this entire John Scott situation and I can’t get over just how bad the NHL looked during the entire thing. An all-star game is supposed to be all about fun (my main reason why I hate that baseball puts homefield advantage during the World Series on the line during theirs) and it’s supposed to be an event for the fans. Sure, in theory, it’s supposed to be the best vs the best but by allowing a fan vote, you allow fans to choose the players that they want to see the most. The NBA All Star Game is going to be all about Kobe Bryant and he’s obviously not having an all star caliber year for the 9 win Los Angeles Lakers. Can you imagine the outrage if the NBA asked Kobe Bryant to sit out during his final all star game because “the game isn’t for him” or if they questioned Kobe about whether his family would be proud of him for accepting the all star spot despite his bad year? It would never happen! The good news for Scott is that he had the miracle ending and finished with the all star game MVP. The better news is this whole story is likely going to become a movie, and the NHL will look just as bad in cinematic form. 

– So it appears that Colin Kaepernick is seeking a trade out of the San Francisco 49ers organization and is interested in playing…for my New York Jets! Now I’d like to make it clear that I’m not a Colin Kaepernick fan. I always found that he came across very arrogant & I hated the way that the 49ers treated Alex Smith. That said, Colin Kaepernick has led his team (with a defense similar to that of the Jets & comparable weapons on the offensive side of the ball) to a Super Bowl and to two NFC Championship games. Kaepernick is a dynamic dual threat that in the right system can give your team the chance to win any game. I love Ryan Fitzpatrick but he’s only had one winning season and never made it to the playoffs, Colin Kaepernick would instantly become the most athletic quarterback the Jets have had since Bubby Brister….or ever! He’s certainly worth a shot. Sidebar but check out New York’s secondary teams (The Jets & the Mets)  becoming desirable landing spots in the same season, pretty cool to see. 

-Lastly I was able to check out Nobu for my girlfriend’s sister’s birthday and let me tell you, Delmonico’s may have competition for my favorite restaurant in New York City. I grew up the type of guy that enjoyed simple American chain restaurants. Applebee’s, Chilis and Friendlys ranked among my favorites, as I refused to try anything different. Well, over the last decade or so I’ve really expanded those horizons (partially because my relationships had a limited shelf life with weekly trips to Friendlys) andlast night may have been the pinnacle. From octopus to short rib to a variety of raw fish and sushi to a multitude of Sake, I tried it all and loved every bit of it. With a party of 10 we ended up getting 2 dishes of each one of the four course options offered on their restaurant week pre fixe menu. It was so much fun trying the many different delicacies and a major kudos has to be extended to the staff at the midtown Nobu location who treated us like kings and queens, while offering us special dishes on the house. I can’t give this place a higher recommendation and with New York City restaurant week still in effect until Friday, get out there and take advantage! 

That’s going to do it for me as its times to go burn off some of that sushi! Talk to you guys down the road. 

Bret Hart, UFC on Fox & More- The Daily Spotlight for 2/1/16

Tom Lynch The Daily Spotlight , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hello everyone and happy Monday to ya, this is the Daily Spotlight for Monday, February 1st! Can you believe it is already February 1st? I sure can’t! My goal for this month is quite simple, to post a daily spotlight update for all 28 days of the month and I’m sticking to it! Of course, for those who don’t know (and how don’t you at this point?) the daily spotlight is a separate entity for the usual reviews you see here on the site and instead is a running blog of my day to day thoughts and adventures. Let’s get right into it.  

-Have to start with a real sad note to start with here, literally as I was piecing together the pieces of the spotlight, word came down that WWE Hall of Famer Bret Hart has been diagnosed with Prostate Cancer. In a Statement released on Bret’s Official Facebook page, Hart posted the following

 “It is with great remorse that I feel compelled to speak truthfully to my friends, family and my millions of fans around the world. In the past few years, I’ve spent more than enough time paying the price for all those years trying to be the best there ever was as a professional wrestler. I executed excellently and my proudest claim was that I never seriously hurt or injured another wrestler in my 23 year career. I’ve paid a price for all that “fake” wrestling. Aside from a devastating career-ending concussion and numerous surgeries when I was younger, in recent years I’ve had two knee replacements, two hernia operations, surgery on my right elbow, and, just a few months ago, I underwent a four-corner fusion of my right wrist that even now makes it most difficult to write or type.
Mark Helprin wrote: “We are all perfect clocks that Divinity has set to ticking when, even before birth, the heart explodes into a lifelong dance.” I’ve had a great lifelong dance and I’m a survivor of many hard battles. I now face my toughest battle. With hesitation and fear, I openly declare myself in my fight against prostate cancer. In the next few days, I will undergo surgery with the hope of defeating this nemesis once and for all.

My fans have always looked upon me as a hero and I’ve always done my best to live up to that in and out of the ring. I beat the odds when I suffered my stroke in 2002, but it is now yet again, that I draw upon the many adults and young children I’ve met throughout my life who courageously fought and usually lost in their battles against this deadly disease. One year ago, I watched a brave young man named Whesley fight brain cancer to the end. If I can find even an ounce of his courage to stand unafraid and face the tough road ahead of me, I will march toward this destiny with his spirit chanting in my ear.
I make a solemn vow to all of those that once believed in me, the dead and the living, that I will wage my fearsome fight against cancer with one shield and one sword carrying my determination and my fury for life, emboldened by all the love that’s kept me going this long already. Love is my weapon and I’ve got much of it around me all the time, for which I’m truly blessed and eternally grateful. My children, grandchildren, and my loving wife Steph have been and will constantly be at my side. I refuse to lose, I will never give in or give up, and I will win this battle or die trying.

Most important of all, I hope I can take the fight to prostate cancer. To be a leader in awareness and to set the example for men everywhere who find themselves in my very same shoes, that prostate cancer can be beaten.”

Bret Hart is one of the all time greats in the history of WWE and one of my favorite Superstars of all time. I wish Bret a speedy recovery and my thoughts and prayers go out to he and his family during this difficult time.  

– I had a chance to check out UFC Fight Night on Fox Saturday night and let me tell you, when I first looked at this card I wondered how this show didn’t make it to a pay per view. You had one of the most exciting young fighters in Sage Northcutt, you had Josh Barnett returning for just his second fight in two years and you had Ryan Bader riding an impressive 5 fight, 2 year win streak going up against one of the best pound for pound fighters in Anthony Johnson. In the end, Northcutt was handled easily, early in round 2, Barnett tapped out for the first time in his career and Bader was knocked out in less than 90 seconds. It ended up being a pretty good for nothing show but what I will say is that the presentation on fox is a lot of fun (with the classic NFL music), and the highlight of the show for me was Daniel Cormier in the analyst role. He’s got such a natural good guy charisma and I can’t wait to see him and Jon Jones go at it, if and when that fight takes place.  
– We’re on the road to Wrestlemania and that really kicked off for WWE in a big way last week when The Rock made his return to Raw. What a fun appearance by the great one who is simply incomparable. It doesn’t appear that The Rock will be back on television until Wrestlemania and that’s ok in my book as he was able to get his moment in Miami and also establish that he’ll be at Wrestlemania. A few folks seem a little dejected that it doesn’t appear that the Rock will be back in the ring at this year’s Wrestlemania (and that hasn’t been confirmed by the way but that is the widespread belief) but I don’t think it’s particularly necessary for the Rock to be back in the ring. Sure his two Wrestlemania matches with John Cena were a lot of fun but I feel like the Rock has added so much to the show in his non wrestling appearances. Starting with his return as the host of Wrestlemania 27 to the opening of Wrestlemania 30 with Hulk Hogan and Stone Cold Steve Austin to showing up in California last year the night after hosting Saturday Night Live for an unforgettable moment with Ronda Rousey, the Rock always finds a way to steal the show whether it’s in the ring or out of the ring and it’s just great to have him as a part of the show.  
– Lastly, it’s been a busy time with my girlfriend’s family over the past two weeks. Just two weeks ago, my girlfriend’s niece turned 18 and held back to back (and belly to belly) birthday celebrations, culminating with a great meal over at Blend on the Water in Long Island City. Just last night my girlfriend’s other niece and our god daughter celebrated her 3rd birthday in grand fashion with a standing room only guest list of over 60 family and friends (54 more guest than I had at my plenty of seating room birthday party back in October, what’s up with that?). This all leads to tonight where we’ll be celebrating my girlfriend’s sister’s birthday in New york City, taking full advantage of Restaruant Week and trying Nobu (Nobu, Nobu, Nobu, Whoo…what no other Drake fans?) for the first time. I’m excited about that and will report back to all of you guys tomorrow about that experience.  By the way, this is a surprise party so I sure hope she isn’t reading this. 

That’s going to do it for me, but I will be back a bit later on with more fun content right here on thedailyspotlight.com… Until then, let’s knock this week out of this park! 

The Daily Spotlightfor 12/29- Remembering My Father

Tom Lynch The Daily Spotlight

I’ve started this entry quite a few times and then I’ve stopped it because of the fact that I didn’t know exactly how to write it but I’ve been MIA for a couple of weeks and so I wanted to share with all of you the reason why.  I’ll ask you to bare with me as this will be the hardest post I ever had to write.  Exactly three weeks from tomorrow while I had been working a double shift, I received a call from my mother and she had asked if I spoke to my dad.  I said I had and had spoken to him the day before.  He called to ask me how my new full time job had gone. My mom thanked god and mentioned how there was a bad car accident and that there was a fear that my father was involved but the accident occurred Monday so if I spoke to him yesterday there was nothing to worry about.  I too was relieved and continued about my shift.  As time passed, I thought about speaking to my dad and remembered that we spoke about the Jets-Giants game that we watched the day before.  As a Jets fan, I never liked the Giants as they’ve won a total of 4 superbowls and 5 NFC titles in my lifetime, in comparison to zero titles for my lovable Jets.  On top of that the Giants had beaten the Jets during every regular season meeting since 1993.  This year’s meeting didn’t look any better as the Jets were down by 10 in the second half of that game and looked to have no chance.  It got so bad that for the first time ever I asked my father to turn off the Jets and put on redzone as I just couldn’t stomach another loss to the Giants.  My father told me to relax and assured me that the Jets had it.  The Jets went on to win the game and my father and I spent hours gloating and watching as much postgame footage as we could.  In any event, we continued to speak about the Jets win on this phone call and the different scenarios in which they maybe could actually make the playoffs this year.  Then at the end of the conversation my father told me how proud of me he was and said “Ya know, I’m really proud of you, you put yourself through grad school, you landed a good job in just over a year out, you’re really going to make it in this world, you’re gonna do real well for yourself”.  It was at that point we hung up the phone.

As time went on that night after my mom called, I called my father and his phone went to voicemail, which never happened.  I started to become a little unsettled and went back into my phone to see when exactly we spoke.  It was just then I realized that we actually spoke on Monday, not on Tuesday. Still in the middle of a shift I started to panic and googling every accident in town.  It was before long I saw it, my father had passed away two days prior on Monday night.
It turned out that my father had suffered a heart attack and passed away prior to getting into the accident.  Thankfully nobody was hurt from the accident and due to my father passing prior to it, he experience no pain from it.  That said, this has easily been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through.  When I heard of his passing I was filled with a myriad of emotions including complete shock, sadness and guilt.  I was there for my father a lot and enjoyed watching football with him every Sunday but I really do regret that I didn’t speak to him every day.  It pains me that I didn’t know he passed away for two days because I didn’t speak to him on Tuesday.  Of course I can’t help but also go back and revisit every time I ever did something wrong to my father or ever complained about him.  I realize in hindsight that it’s a lot better to remember the good times and to reflect on the good memories rather then to focus on the bad, which were a few and far between.
The truth was that my father wasn’t doing the best health wise since around 2012 when he had his first heart attack and doctors only gave him an 18% chance to live.  But from that point on my father made a conscience effort to really enjoy life and make the most of it.  In 2013 he made a real effort to get sober and did just that at the age of 58, proving that it’s never too late to change.  I’m so proud to say that next month he would have hit two years of sobriety.  He may have been struggling healthwise but he tried so hard to get better and would never let my sister or I know if he wasn’t feeling well because he never wanted us to worry.  He was always so protective of us and did all he could to make sure we never felt uncomfortable or worried about him.  When my parents split back in 1997, my mother and father still came together for every holiday, birthday and whatever else we needed them for.  My dad also came over every Monday, Wednesday and Friday night so that we still got to spend so much time with him.  He was dating a nice lady for about 12 years after my mom but hid her from us for many years.  There was funny story that for years we would go to his place and see a bunch of her photos all over the place and then when we would get up to use the bathroom, he would always put the photos down or place them about face so we couldn’t see.  This wasn’t because he was ashamed of the lady he was with, he just didn’t want my sister or I to feel uncomfortable.  He and my mother both were both committed to keeping our family together.
In the past few years my father and I grew increasingly closer.  As I said earlier my father got pretty sick in 2012 and was in and out of the hospital for the better part of three months.  Well, during this period of time I had gotten rear ended in an automobile accident by a driver who just wasn’t paying attention. This pretty much destroyed my back and left me out of work for about four months. What it also did do though was allow me to be there for my father every step of the way.  We were together in that hospital day in, day out as he recovered.  I really felt that while we still had that father-son bond, we were now also best friends.
My father was also my biggest supporter.  He would read every single entry I posted here on thedailyspotlight and talk to me about them afterwards.  There were times when I actually felt that I was writing to one person because I knew that he would be reading and enjoying everything I wrote.  If you’ve read my past blogs about past wrestling shows you know my father was a big reason as to why I got into wrestling in the first place and could see from there how much my memories with him meant.  From there, my father was a big reason I posted videos and posted pictures onto either my site here or my facebook because I knew he appreciated them and looked at every one of them.  Just a few months ago I went to Dubai and I got a lot of flack for it from people who were either scared or just plain ignorant about it.  This wasn’t the case with my dad, however, he instead, looked up things for my girlfriend and I to do in Dubai and mentioned how he wished he was there with.  He just didn’t have a judgmental bone in his body.
In the end, I could go on about my dad forever.  Dealing with his loss has been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with.  There are still so many times when I reach for my phone and look to text or call him.  It doesn’t feel right that he’s gone.  Thankfully through a good support system and many people reaching out with good memories and others willing to listen to my memories, I’ve been able to navigate my way through it. I apologize for being away but I do plan on returning over the next couple of days and really kicking things back off after the new year.  If there’s any advice I can give you guys from all of this it’s a few things.  For one, never take your time with someone for granted and reach out and tell the important people in your life how much they mean to you, whenever you can.  Next, show support for others that are having a tough time.  I can’t tell you how much I truly appreciated everyone who came out to my father’s wakes and his funeral.  It meant so much to me and made me realize how much more I can do when relatives of people I care about pass away.  Finally, appreciate life and the people you have, you never truly know when today can be your last day.
~RIP DAD~