It's the night before the Super Bowl, and since my beloved Philadelphia Eagles aren't in it, I don't know if I'll bother to watch it much except to see if Taylor Swift will make it to the game.

If she does, and the Chiefs win, I don't know why, but I have this image of whatshisname (not the fat Kelce, the other one), dropping to his knees on the 50-yard line and proposing to Swift.

However if they lose, all bets are off. :)

I found out yesterday that one of the people who were involved in the theft (and sale), of my belongings when I lived in Europe a few years ago, is back in the neighborhood. The thing that hurt me the most about that robbery were the family mementos that I lost.

My high school diary. The only video of my late grandmother dancing (or in fact, doing anything at all). All of my Navy uniforms, campaign pins, my boot camp yearbook, and other keepsakes from my military days (including my Shellback Initiation certificate and card, from when we crossed the Equator).

Gone.

In fact, the only Navy items I have left are my seabag which I took with me to Europe, and one of my dog tags.

That's it.

As the historian of the family, I put it on myself to save all of that stuff, and planned on digitizing it upon my return from Germany, never thinking that my whole life would be sold.

So the point of today's post is to remind everyone to save (and savor), your memories.

While the items might be gone, the memories remain.

Don't do what I did and put preserving those important items until later. Do it now. Another thing I learned is to spread those things out in multiple locations, as opposed to keeping them all in one place. That's a real lesson learned from all this.

But remember, even if you've lost a memento that meant something to you, you'll always have the memories, feelings, sights, sounds and scents of that event, to relive whenever you want.

And no one can ever steal that. :)