Category: Career

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Career History Life Music People Television

Saturday Night Retro

It’s a special Friday night edition of the ‘Saturday Night Retro’ !

Back in November and December of 1985 I spent my first two months overseas in The United Kingdom at my first active duty Air Force permanent duty station. As a newly-assigned Airman I lived in one of the old post World War 2 era dormitories on base – rambler style with centralized community bathrooms. In other words you had to leave your room and walk down the hallway to use the toilet, take a shower, shave, wash your hands, and brush your teeth. There was no plumbing within the actual dorm rooms.

In the military a ‘day room’ is essentially a community living room with assorted furniture and a television. Our ‘day room’ in our particular dorm was damaged / unusable / off-limits, so we ‘dorm rats’ gathered together and took over an adjacent dorm’s day room. We met nightly after work to hang out, eat junk food, smoke cigarettes, drink beer (not me), watch British television, play Uno, and pretty much party like it was 1985 (sometimes all night long). Those are some of the greatest memories of my entire military career – from nearly 25 years ago. One of the biggest mistakes that I made early on was to buy my own television set for my dorm room because once I did that I unintentionally removed myself from that day room camaraderie. A few months later I went back over there, and it was never the same as it once was during those first two months. All of my old buddies had moved on – just as I had done.

One of the great Thursday night traditions that began in that day room and continued on during the entire time that I lived in the U.K. (the next two years) was watching “Top Of The Pops” on BBC-1. It aired weekly for over 40 years, and it was essentially their version of our “American Bandstand”. Here’s how a mid-December 1985 episode started at 7 PM GMT. It was one of those episodes that I watched alongside my day room buddies. On that week’s show Amazulu (an all-female British pop band) were in the Top 20 with their vivacious hit at the time “Don’t You Just Know It”.

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Blogging Career Driving History Holidays Music Sports Travel Weather

Thursday Night Mini Thoughts

– Let’s get spontaneous.
– Can we talk here ?
– I’ve only worked 2 days this week, but it seems like I was there all 4 days.
– It’s been a weird, wild, and wacky week at work, but I’m used to that.
– Tomorrow is Friday, so let the weekend commence at 1530 !
– It’s a 3-day holiday weekend, as we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
– This Saturday night on the ‘Retro’ I’ve got a very special tribute to Dr. King.
– It’s a really cool song from a really cool electronica band of the 1980s.
– And now with the weather here’s our amateur weather forecaster Chris !
– This morning was our 13TH and final morning in a row below 50°F.
– That ends the longest cold spell in South Florida weather history !
– We won’t be back in the 40s again anytime in the near future.
– Our normal early-morning temp. for this time of the year is the low-60s.
– Our normal late-afternoon temperature is the mid-70s.
– We should see a couple of 80°F days during this upcoming weekend.
– Remember last Saturday when we were stuck in the low-40s all day long ?
– That was one of the coldest days since weather records have been recorded.
– It rained all day, and some people claimed that they saw sleet and wet snow.
– Much of the grass was burnt by two mornings of frost.
– It was green and lush, but now it’s mostly brown and lifeless.
– I’ve got NFL playoff action to look forward to this weekend.
– The Cardinals-Saints game should hopefully be exciting and high-scoring.
– New Baltimore plays Old Baltimore on Saturday night.
– On Sunday I want the Vikings to totally blow out the Cowboys.
– After that I’m rooting for the J-E-T-S to upset the Chargers in the P-S-T.
– After my most recent road trip up to the JAX area and back I’ve got stats.
– I’ve driven over 4,300 miles over the past 8 weeks.
– Typically I drive a tad over 1,000 miles every 8 weeks.
– My 2003 Saturn is aging before my very eyes.
– I remember when she was hot, fresh, and new.
– Now she’s cold, stale, and old.
– But she survived the Arctic blast of the North Pole of Florida.
– She’s not all that bad after all.
– Shaun Cassidy Alert ! – Tomorrow night on the ‘Disco Party’.
– Be there as we totally rock the roller disco dude !
– Groovy man !

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Career Driving History Home Life Music Radio Travel

Saturday Night Retro

Where were you in ’94 ?  16 years ago at the start of a fresh new year we all knew as 1994 I was living and partying in the heart of Melbourne Florida from Friday nights to Sunday afternoons – and living and working on the other side of the state in Tampa Florida from Sunday nights to Friday afternoons. It was about a 2½ to 3-hour drive in each direction, but it was my cool life at the time. I did it for about 7 months from August of 1993 through March of 1994. That was after Hurricane Andrew had destroyed Homestead Air Force Base and it was being partially rebuilt.

I had gotten out of the USAF (Active Duty), and rejoined on the Active Reserves side over at MacDill Air Force Base. They were the first to offer me a job back then while I was unemployed and looking for a job over in the Melbourne area. I served over there as an aircraft maintenance statistician – a fun job during a fun time of my fun life. A couple of months later in March of 1994 my Air Force Wing and myself moved back down to Homestead Air Reserve Base – where I remain today as a number cruncher.

Here’s a quirky song that built its momentum ever so slowly – one radio station at a time – over the course of an entire year. From college radio to modern rock radio to mainstream TOP 40 radio it eventually became a U.S. TOP 10 gold pop smash as well as a huge hit all around the world. As far as I’m concerned it’s one of the greatest songs of the entire crazy decade that was the 1990s.

From the first few months of 1994 here’s Beck with “Loser” !

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Career Home Life Travel Weather

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

1. As blizzards, ice storms, and cold and wind events sweep across the free nation from California to Maine we seem to be stuck in a summertime weather pattern aqui a America’s Riviera / El Sur de Florida. I’m forecasting a continuation of our well above normal temperatures for at least another 7 to 10 days. That means afternoon high temperatures well into the mid-80s (with heat indices approaching or exceeding 90°F). We’ll have to wait awhile to get in on some of that cold and crisp air not too far to the north of us.

2.  If you’ve been following me via my Twitter account then you already know that I’ve been working on my first big speech that I give tonight at my Toastmasters club. It’s an ice-breaker speech, so that means that I have to talk about a very familiar subject that’s near and dear to me – ME !  It’s all about me for 4 to 6 minutes. I think I’ve got it down to about 5½ minutes, so we’ll see how it all works out. I’m really looking forward to the evaluations afterwards – positive and negative. I can only get better from this point forward.

3.  I felt like a Toastmaster today at work. I facilitated a 1-hour and 40-minute briefing over at our Base Conference Center this morning in which I stood behind a podium at the front of the main briefing room and guided the slide presentation and introduced the various speakers. It was actually some great practice for tonight and future nights at Toastmasters as well as my hosting duties on occasional Sunday mornings at Life Pointe Church.

4.  On January 04TH 2010 I make the momentous 100TH monthly payment on my current home (out of 180). I’ve got a 15-year mortgage loan on my current home that I bought during the week prior to ‘9-11’ in 2001, so it’s about 55% percent paid off now. It feels weird to know that I’ve been living in this home for 14½ years now – longer than any other by far. (I rented for 6 years before I bought.) When I moved in to this home I had just turned 28-years-old. Now I’m 42½-years-old. (Yes Kelly J. I just said ’42½’.)

5.  And now I’ve got a new home on Fleming Island in Clay County Florida (southwestern fringes of the Jacksonville area) that I need to get officially transferred over to my name to make it all legal and everything. My parents lived in it for about 6 years up until this past February when I moved them over to Fairview Texas (within 5 miles of my brother and sister-in-law). Once I get their home officially transferred over to me then I get to pay for it !  BRING IT $ !

Be sure to catch my ‘Thursday Night Mini Thoughts’ in less than 48 hours !