⛸️ We're gonna skate to one song...

🗣️ I love you, Mom. Delayza Diaz is now 9 years old. This winter, she spoke for the very first time.

Diaz was born without an opening through her voice box. This rare congenital condition not only inhibits speaking, it can prevent normal breathing, making survival a tall task for newborns. Thanks to the team at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, Diaz did survive, but she couldn’t develop a voice.

In 2022, she underwent surgery - at Doernbecher once again - which saw her airway reconstructed with the appropriate opening between her vocal cords. After almost a year of recovery and rehabilitation, Delayza finally spoke. One of her first phrases uttered?

“I love you, Mom.”

I’m sure she has some other stuff to get off her chest after 9 years, but that’s one heck of a start. Best of all? Her positive attitude has never wavered. Dr. Derek Lam, who has cared for Diaz since she was a baby, had this to say: “What’s most amazing about Delayza’s story is that through all of it, she’s never lost her happy, positive spirit.”

The world has gained a new, positive voice. What could be better than that?! We can’t wait to hear more from Delayza.

 🦦 No otter alternative. “They're overpopulated in this region and they're decimating the grub worm population. You got a f***ing problem with that?“

Sack Lodge’s delivery may have left something to be desired in Wedding Crashers, but he had a point about quail. Overpopulation can have serious ecological knock-on effects. In California, an explosion in the population of shore crabs is credited with destabilizing the shoreline and causing erosion. Erosion leads to vulnerabilities from flooding and storm surge.

This isn’t a problem easily or inexpensively corrected through manufactured human intervention.

It turns out, though, that it is a problem easily corrected by sea otters. That’s right, they’re not just cute dogs of the sea. They happen to love snacking on crabs. Though they neared extinction throughout the 1900s, the sea otter population in California was preserved and eventually expanded.

Now, scientific experimentation has shown that the presence of otters enabled revegetation of the marsh, while otters’ absence allowed crabs to thrive, burrow, and feast on plants. The study suggests the otters prevented approximately 10 inches of marsh loss annually.

It’s amazing what can happen when we allow nature to function exactly as it should.

🫀 Heartwarming…and heart-strengthening. Heart failure. As far as two-word combinations go, that’s a pretty scary one.

Treatment methods are limited, and it’s often the case that a heart transplant eventually becomes the only option available. A daunting solution. But a breakthrough device could reduce or delay the need for heart transplants. A new implant serves as a pacemaker of sorts, stimulating nerve endings to strengthen the heart’s function.

Close to 30 patients have successfully received the implant, in many cases very quickly and dramatically improving their well-being and quality of life. Let’s get those tickers ticking again! We want ‘em louder than an analog clock during the SATs.

Heartening stuff, to say the least.

🎤Jelly Roll in the jailhouse. Singer and rapper Jelly Roll is no stranger to the inside of a prison. He spent many of his teenage years and beyond in and out of confinement. But he knows as well as anybody that inmates can turn their lives around. That they shouldn’t give up, and just as importantly, others shouldn’t give up on them.

That’s why he took a detour from his performance in Detroit to visit a jail in Flint, Michigan and perform, sharing messages of inspiration with the inmates.

Talk about not forgetting where you came from, for better or worse. A really incredible gesture to some people who could probably use a special moment of encouragement.

P.S. We all need some of the vibes the corrections officer is serving up. My man is absolutely glowing!!

🧊 Ice ice, baby. NHL Hockey. Disney On Ice. Blades of Glory. The Mighty Ducks.

All things that wouldn’t have happened without the invention of the artificial ice rink. And it was on this day all the way back in 1879 that the first one ever became operational at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Where else?!

At the time, it was an incredible innovation, and even now, it’s kind of incredible to think about. You could be in stifling heat in Las Vegas….or Los Angeles…or Phoenix, and you might still have to throw on some layers to go watch some people skate around on ice indoors.

Without that invention, we might never have known the bad boy of figure skating, Chazz Michael Michaels. He skates to one song, and one song only: “Lady Humps” by the Black Eyed Peas.

🕷️ He must be Spider-Man. “Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.”

That’s Spider-Man’s famous tagline, and if he actually exists, then we just might have found him….in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.

Bystanders spotted a toddler that had wandered out through a window onto the balcony of a building, frequently walking over to the edge. Our Great Samaritan, standing below, repeatedly told him to go back to no avail. So he took matters into his own hands.

He somehow scaled the building to reach that balcony one story above, preventing a precarious situation from taking a turn for the worse. We celebrate this friendly neighborhood Spider-Man with the only fitting GIF.

🧑‍🚀 He’s a rocket man. What’s the longest trip you’ve ever taken?

It might be a semester abroad, maybe a honeymoon, or a summer at camp.

Safe to say Oleg Kononenko has us all beat, both on the duration of the trip and how far away it took him. The Russian cosmonaut set the world record last week for total time spent in space. Over the course of his career, he’s been up there - mostly at the International Space Station - for 878 days (and counting).

Count me all the way out on going to space, but these people must have insane perspective. Imagine the feeling of setting foot back on earth after floating way up above us for hundreds of days? Seeing what’s changed and what hasn’t. Realizing how small and inconsequential our problems must look from up there.

Here’s hoping being up there turns out a little better and a little more uneventful for Oleg than it did for Matthew McConaughey’s character in Interstellar. Or Matt Damon’s in The Martian. Or Tom Hanks’ in Apollo 13. Or Bruce Willis’ in Armageddon. Or Sandra Bullock’s and George Clooney’s in Gravity.

Damn. It’s no wonder I want nothing to do with space. One of these days, they need to make a movie where someone just has some disaster-free fun up there.

🏈 Mongo makes the Hall. Steve McMichael was a menace for one of the best NFL defenses in history - the 1985 Chicago Bears.

Sadly, McMichael, or “Mongo,” was diagnosed with ALS in 2021. The disease has progressed rapidly, and Mongo is worse for the wear, but he’s been hanging in there, fighting, in hopes of hearing a few sweet words: “Welcome to the Hall of Fame.”

Though overdue, McMichael finally got that news last week, as he had amassed sufficient votes for admission into the Hall. The induction ceremony is in a few months, and again, Mongo will continue to battle in hopes of reaching that special day.

Though ALS has robbed him of almost all movement, you can see just how much the news means to him.

All of us will be hoping he’s able to enjoy the induction moment. But if he isn’t, he can rest. He’s achieved a remarkable dream.

☎️ Calling plays and making calls. In the aftermath of last night’s Super Bowl - and all the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce fanfare - we thought it worthwhile to share one of the more wholesome couples moments in NFL history.

You know how, sometimes, you see quarterbacks talking on a phone on the sideline, typically with a coach who’s up above in a stadium box? Well, it turns out, those phones can dial out…at least some of them. Legendary quarterback Joe Montana once decided to call his wife on a whim, and it worked! She was as surprised as anybody:

Is there any better way to earn husband points? Calling from the sideline in the middle of an NFL game - for no real reason in particular - as one of the sport’s best players is a strong move.

And his wife reciprocated with a gesture of her own.

Before the 1989 Super Bowl, Jennifer Montana snuck the quarterback’s jersey from his 1985 Super Bowl victory into his bag. A good luck charm. With it, a note: “Maybe you want to wear it again.”

He wore it…and won another title. Couple goals.

⛳️ Lightning strikes twice. Some golfers play in search of a hole-in-one for an entire lifetime. Imagine that when that moment finally comes, you don’t get to see the ball go in the hole. That would kind of be a bummer, right? A little anticlimactic.

Easy solution: just hit another a few holes later.

Cliff Romme thought he hit his tee shot on the 4th hole over the green. With wedges in hand, he searched for his ball, but little did he know, it was already in the cup. Amazing stuff, but we all want that moment of jubilation watching the ball disappear into the hole.

So on the 7th - just three holes later - Romme hit a beautiful draw from 125 yards out. It landed five feet from the hole and rolled in, in full view of Romme and his group. When it rains, it pours.

Even the seemingly impossible can and does happen. If you’re out there hacking away in search of that elusive hole-in-one, keep swinging! you might just hit two.