– Let’s get spontaneous.
– Let’s not hold nothin’ back.
– Can we talk here ?
– Miami has an all-new Christian music radio station !
– I discovered it for the first time this afternoon at work.
– It’s Life-FM at 90.9, and it’s a powerful 100,000 watt station.
– I think their transmitter is right alongside the 18-Mile Stretch.
– That means that you get a clear and rich signal here in Homestead.
– Life-FM is Christian music for my age range and older.
– Its secular equivalent would be hot adult contemporary.
– I may be approaching 43-years-old, but I still like to rock my face off.
– That’s why I’ll also continue to listen to Call-FM at 91.9.
– My favourite radio deejay in the entire world works there !
– Driving here in America’s Riviera is always very challenging.
– We drive over 80 different ways here.
– That’s because we learned how to drive in over 80 different countries.
– The single problem that annoys me the most is tailgating.
– It’s also the most dangerous problem.
– I get tailgated virtually every day to and from work by multiple drivers.
– I generally slow down when a tailgater is at work.
– If the speed limit is 40, and I’m going 48 I’ll slow down to 42 for a tailgater.
– I do it for my own safety.
– If I have to slam on my brakes for whatever reason then I may be toast.
– I’d rather be that much closer to 0 MPH in the event that I have to brake.
– Tailgating should be a crime right up there with drunk driving.
– I’ve seen police cars tailgate – and also be tailgated !
– It’s a chronic problem down here.
– I appreciate those peaceful, quiet, and uneventful drives here in paradise.
– But they are way too rare.
– This is a multi-anniversary month for me.
– Celebrate Good Times Come On !
– 19 years ago I returned home from Operation Desert Storm.
– 17 years ago I started my post-military civilian life in Melbourne Florida.
– 16 years ago Homestead Air Reserve Base reopened for business.
– All of our F-16 ‘Fighter Falcons’ returned home, and so did I.
– It’s good to celebrate 16 years here in Homestead.
– That’s in addition to the nearly 5 years that I was here before Andrew.
– Homestead has been my home in 4 decades since the late-1980s.
– I belong here.
– I have a purpose here.
– If I didn’t belong here, and I had no purpose – then I’d move away.
– I’ll be here for as long as God wants me to be here.
Category: Career
It’s time to kick-off a fresh new week of blogging here on ‘The Major’s Life Blog’, and I can’t think of any better way to kick it than with the longest-running weekly series in this blog’s history. It’s the flagship series that’s been here since the very start. It’s the ‘Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’ – in HD !
I. Monkey Jungle – 51 weeks after my last visit to my favourite local tourist attraction I went back again this past Saturday morning to check up on my primate buddies. Read what I had to say about my last fun visit on the 14TH of March of 2009. On this visit I bought an annual pass to the joint. It’s worth it. Adult admission is $29.95, and an annual pass is $39.95. Had I bought an annual pass on my last visit in 2009 I could have used it for this visit – 51 weeks later – in 2010. Now I can visit as often as I wish free of charge. I dig that. This was another fun 2½-hour visit. It was also a cold visit with actual air temperartures only in the mid-60s and wind chills in the upper-50s ! My friend Mei the orangutan was so frigid that she kept throwing her new blanket on top of herself like a little kid. The only time she let go of her ‘blanketty’ was when she had to go fetch her food that unintentionally landed in the moat below her. My old buddy King the western lowland gorilla is still hangin’ in there. He’s nearly my age. He came right over when he saw the crowd gather, and he performed all of his usual tricks. He knew that it was time for Lunch. While the vocal animal rights activists may not appreciate Mei and King (and zoos in general) I certainly look forward to checking up on my old buddies with every new visit to the jungle.
II. Operation Desert Storm – TODAY – the 09TH of March – marks the 19TH anniversary of my return home from war on the harsh desert sands of Saudi Arabia. I departed Al Kharj Air Base at 0326 Saudi Arabia time on Saturday March 09TH 1991. It was a 7 hour and 7 minute flight westbound to Torrejon Air Base Spain followed by an unexpected 5 hour and 24 minute layover there. The transatlantic flight to Dover Air Force Base Delaware took 8 hours and 59 minutes. It was a long 21½-hour travel day for me. The next morning I flew from Philadelphia to Miami, and then back home to Homestead Air Force Base as a war veteran. For rest and recuperation the USAF awarded us returning home from war the rest of the month (March 1991) off from work. I ended up driving to my official home-of-record up in the Washington D.C. area to be with my family. That capped roughly 10,000 miles of travel for me in just 6 days.
III. Your Weather Forecast – No ‘Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’ is complete without a weather forecast (or at least my analysis of recent weather). It’s been a record-breaking cold winter season all across America’s Riviera due mostly to the continuing El Niño phenomenon. This is the same weather pattern that destroyed virtually every single tropical system out at sea last summer. It appears that El Niño is now waning, so more normal seasonal weather should be expected for at least the next 9 months or so. In the near short-term look for a return to afternoon temperatures back in the 80s and overnight low temperatures back to where they should be during this time of the year – the mid-60s. Also look for a return to that wonderful South Florida humidity that’s been on hiatus for an extended period of time. Normal probably won’t feel so normal after so much abnormal weather for the greater part of the past year, but I’m sure that we will all get used to it again in no time flat.
IV. Longhorn Steakhouse – Late this morning I enjoyed a delicious Lunch at Homestead‘s Longhorn Steakhouse. I was in the mood for juicy steak, buttery mashed potatoes, and soft warm bread, and I can’t think of anywhere else within a short driving commute to go for such a fantastic feast than the Longhorn. I’m also doing my part to try to keep this place in business. I hear that the joint is jumpin’ every night for Dinner, but it seems like such a well kept secret for Lunch. You can enjoy a delicious Lunch there with excellent customer service for $10 or less – slightly more of course if you prefer to go the steak and potatoes route such as myself. The Longhorn is gradually becoming a Tuesday for Lunch tradition. Who wants to meet me there next Tuesday ? I’ll treat !
We’re just about 48 hours away from another intriguing ‘Thursday Night Mini Thoughts’. Think of what would happen if the ‘Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’ collided with Twitter. It’s what you’d get with the ‘Mini Thoughts’. Each unique thought is presented in 15 words or less, and I pass the savings on to you !
Copyright © 2010. All Rights Reserved.
Let’s kick-off a fresh new week of blogging – right here – right now !
I. Every Other Month – I’ve got my vacation schedule all lined-up for 2010, and it’s an ‘every other month’ deal. I’ve got no vacations planned (yet) for this month (March) and next month (April), but then in May I fly to the Dallas-Fort Worth Texas Metroplex to celebrate a whole series of exciting events with my family to include my sister’s-in-law 29TH birthday, my mom’s and dad’s 44TH wedding anniversary, my niece’s birth into this world, my brother’s 36TH 35TH birthday, Mother’s Day, and my brother’s and sister’s-in-law 3RD wedding anniversary. We’ll celebrate all of those wonderful events during the short time (4 days and 4 nights) that I’ll be over there. Vacations later on in 2010 include a return holiday visit to DFW in July, my 10TH Carnival cruise in September, and then back to DFW for Thanksgiving in November.
II. 7-4 – I’m currently experimenting with a slightly later 7 AM to 4 PM shift at work to see if I like it. I’m able to set my own work shift (within reason), and this is the second change that I’ve made recently. I started with a 6 AM to 3 PM shift, and then I changed it to 6:30 AM to 3:30 PM. The problem with leaving work at 3:30 PM is that I get stuck in thick rush hour traffic on Biscayne Drive and Speedway Boulevard heading in to Homestead due to schools in the local area that are letting out just before that. So far the 4 PM experiment is working out pretty good for me with noticeably lighter traffic at that time. Of course I now have to deal with much heavier traffic going to the base just before 7 AM than I previously had to deal with prior to 6:30 AM. Incidentally for those of you who think that the base is dead with nobody working there and nothing going on there then I suggest that you stand out in front of the base between the hours of 6 AM and 6 PM to see for yourself how dead our base is NOT !
III. DIG ! – And now ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, brothers and sisters, friends and colleagues – I present to you a complete list of everything that I dig according to my recent tweets:
– Publix Coconut Custard Pie
– The 2010 Buick Lacrosse
– My very normal internal parts
– The opening of Staples in Homestead
– My refreshing 25-minute walk in the cold
– My GINORMOUS hot Breakfast at Denny’s
– The booking of my 10TH Carnival cruise
– Tracking the number of miles I drive in a single day
– Eating Lunch at China Garden in Naranja Lakes
– Kelly Ripa (‘The Pipster’)
That is all for now. Be sure to catch my ‘Thursday Night Mini Thoughts’.
17 years ago yesterday – on Friday February 26TH 1993 – I served my final day in uniform as an Active Duty USAF NCO (SGT). I did so at Andrews AFB MD just six months after Hurricane Andrew destroyed my previous duty station – the original Homestead AFB FL. The day was memorable for many reasons – a going-away luncheon in my honour, a snowstorm, and the first terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City. A week later I moved back down to Florida (Melbourne) to start my new civilian life – which would eventually (and unexpectedly) take me back to the USAF in Tampa and then ultimately back to Homestead exactly a year later in March of 1994.
This year as I celebrate my 25TH silver anniversary working for the USAF (military and civilian careers combined) I look back fondly at those final six months in the Active Duty USAF from the end of August of 1992 through the end of February of 1993 up at Andrews AFB MD. It turned out to be the pinnacle of my military career. I certainly left on a high note, and that was truly a blessing in disguise that was unfortunately born out of the destruction and chaos that Hurricane Andrew left behind some 1,100 miles to the south.
Just a short trip down the road from Andrews AFB MD is the suburban bedroom community of Waldorf. Members of the punk-pop band Good Charlotte are originally from there, and they used to hang out as young teenagers at the sprawling St. Charles Towne Center Mall – the very same mall that I shopped at frequently while I was stationed there at the same exact time. Here’s their debut radio smash from a full decade later at the start of 2003. It’s all about those “Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous”.
This concludes another blogging week for me. It’s been a lot of fun getting back into the normal swing of things on here, and I can’t wait to do it all over again next week. Be sure to help me kick-off a fresh new week of blogging come Tuesday night when I present another new ‘Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’. Until then my friends – be safe – be good – and be reasonable.
CountUp 