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Blogging Food Holidays Travel Weather

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

1.  It’s a special Tuesday night edition of the ‘Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’. I make light of that fact because normally I compile and publish these weekly miscellaneous thoughts during the mid-afternoon hours on Tuesdays. Tonight I’m just getting started at 6:38 PM EDT, so I’m running about 3 hours behind schedule. Let’s see if I can get these done and on the web before 8 PM EDT. (Check out Thought # 5 below to see if I succeeded.)

2.  I ate Dinner this afternoon with a good friend over at the Cracker Barrel in Florida City (where all of the food is). I enjoyed the Tuesday Dinner Special – that’s the Butter Baked Chicken (delicious) and two entrées of my choice. I selected the steak fries (yummy) and the macaroni and cheese (scrumptious). You could tell that I thoroughly enjoyed the chicken by the carcass that I left behind after I totally devoured it. Yo that’s how I roll !

3.  Yesterday was one of the hottest days in modern recorded weather history as temperatures soared into the upper-90s to near 100°F in most locations here in America’s Riviera. Homestead hit 95°F yesterday afternoon – a good 5°F above normal for this time of the year. To make up for yesterday’s unusual heatwave it was at least 20°F cooler for much of today as frequent thunderstorms kept us stuck in the mid-70s. The cause of yesterday’s heatwave and today’s severe weather ?  That would be an unusual wintertime-like cold front that’s sitting directly over us. It doesn’t belong this far south during this time of the year. It gave our subtropical atmosphere an upset stomach !

4.  Let it be known that I have no further extended weekend vacations planned (out-of-town) for the next (nearly) 11 weeks. My next scheduled vacation is a Carnival cruise during Labor Day week. It’ll be my 8TH Carnival cruise overall – and my 10TH anniversary (to the week) as a Carnival cruiser. Once I hit 10 cruises with Carnival I become a Platinum cruiser. I will so totally dig that !

5.  This evolved into an ‘old-school’ edition of the ‘Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’. Once upon a time this was a totally spontaneous weekly blog series in that I had absolutely no clue what I was planning to write until I actually did so. That actually has not been the case for most of the past 5 months ever since the ‘Thursday Night Mini Thoughts’ has been in existence. The ‘Grab Bag’ has been partially scripted in that I had a rough outline prepared in advance of what I wanted to cover, while the ‘Mini Thoughts’ has been the totally spontaneous spur-of-the-moment weekly blog series. Tonight’s edition of the ‘Grab Bag’ has deviated from that recent formula. It was compiled and published on this Tuesday night (rather than Tuesday afternoon) – and it was totally spontaneous. I had absolutely no clue what I was going to write until I actually sat down here at my computer 41 minutes ago to get started with it all.

Be sure to catch the totally spontaneous ‘Thursday Night Mini Thoughts’ in less than two days, and remember – if it’s Tuesday – then it is time for the ‘Grab Bag’ !

Categories
Home Life People

The Major’s Picture Gallery – Family Portraits

This past Saturday morning in a well orchestrated event planned many months in advance by my brother’s wife – Christina – we went to a local photo studio (in Allen Texas) to get our pictures taken. It was me, my Mom, my Dad, my Brother, and his wife / my Sister-In-Law. We got our portraits professionally taken – first all 5 of us, then just my Mom and my Dad, then me, my Brother, and my Sister-In-Law, then just me and my Brother, and then just my Brother and my Sister-In-Law.

And now for the very first time in the entire 25-month history of this blog I present to you the overwhelming evidence that I actually have a real-life Brother and a Sister-In-Law that live northeast of Dallas Texas:

Chris & Danny
Chris & Danny
Danny, Christina, & Chris
Danny, Christina, & Chris

   

Categories
Holidays

Father’s Day 2009

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY !

Father’s Day – Wikipedia

Father’s Day – The Holiday Spot

Father’s Day Presidential Proclamations (2000-2008)

Father’s Day – Holiday.Net

Father’s Day – History.Com

Categories
Career Driving History Life Music Radio

Saturday Night Retro

I’m coming up on the 6TH anniversary of my current car – a 2003 Saturn Ion Quad Coupe 3. It’s all paid off now (as of a year ago), and it’s the first time that I’ve actually paid off a car of mine in over 15 years. I’ve owned this 3RD Saturn of mine almost as long as I owned my first two Saturns combined during the immediate 6 years and 2 months before I bought this current Saturn.

–> 6 years ago this June the average cost per gallon of gas was less than $1.50.

A lot has occurred and evolved in my life over the past 6 years. Back in June of 2003 I was working in a job that I didn’t really like with people that I didn’t really care for. All I really wanted was a way out of that bad situation, but I kept getting offered more money to stay.

I was heavily into the European trance, techno, and house music scene. If you couldn’t find me on a random Friday or Saturday night at home then perhaps I was 260 miles away up in the Orlando area partying on the dancefloors with crowds of fellow touristas. 6 years ago this June I was still more than 3 years away from the light of the day that God led me to. God knew me, but I didn’t know Him yet.

–> 6 years ago in 2003 my favourite radio station was WPYM Party-93.1 Miami.

Here’s one of the European trance jams that I was dancing in the dark to back then. It’s DJ Valentin and Vocalist Kristine Hendricks – better known collectively as the duo of QED. This is their # 1 club dance smash from exactly 6 years ago – a modern remake of Def Leppard‘s 1988 power-rock ballad “Love Bites”. Enjoy: