Category: Food

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Food Philosophy

The Fortune Cookie Message Of The Week Club

Late this morning I enjoyed a hot and delicious Lunch courtesy of my all-time favourite take-out Chinese Food joint in the neighbourhood – Shanghai.

fortune-cookie

Here’s this week’s fortune cookie message:

– ‘Spectacular accomplishment is never preceded by less than spectacular preparation.’

I disagree somewhat with this one. You can over prepare for an event. The result can sometimes be just as bad – even worse – than a lack of sufficient preparation. Sometimes a little spontaneity can be that added touch that lifts something from standard to spectacular. Spectacular preparation is not always the key to success.

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Commerce Driving Food Health History Money Shopping Weather

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

It’s the 102ND edition of the weekly ‘Grab Bag’ of my miscellaneous thoughts:

1.  It’s not supposed to be in the lower-80s outside when we wake up early in the morning, and we shouldn’t have heat indices way up into the mid-90s late in the afternoon – during the final week of October !  This is not normal South Florida weather for this time of the year. If you want more normal weather then stick around. I see a very gradual cooling trend beginning this weekend with a noticeable cooldown in about 10 days. How much cooler ?  Stay tuned !

2.  I tend to accumulate a lot of loose change in one of the small compartments of my car. Sometimes it gets totally out-of-hand where if I were a real annnoying person I could actually buy an entire fast food meal for over $5 in all loose change – but I would never do that. What I try to do is to pick out about $0.75 or so in quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies so that I can use it for exact change whenever I walk in to a fast food joint or store. Whenever I do that it always seems like the total cost of my bill is so many dollars and 98 cents, so I end up using no change at all. When I don’t prepare in advance with loose change I end up getting a bill for something like so many dollars and 2 cents – or 14 cents – or 26 cents – or whatever so that I end up getting another pound of loose change. Make cents sense ?

3.  For a whole year from November of 2007 through November of 2008 I suffered through 8 colds. It’s been nearly an entire year since then, and I can only remember one minor cold over the past 12 months – and even that one cold may not have actually been a real cold. There have been sick people and their nasty germs all around me everywhere I go, and yet I’ve miraculously stayed on the healthy side. I know though that it’s only a matter of time before the germs gather strength and invade my body like there’s no tomorrow – when I least suspect it no doubt.

4.  One of the places that I now avoid as much as I can is Starbucks. It’s where I picked up at least several of those 8 colds from 2007 into 2008. Once I stopped going there (both locations – Homestead and Florida City) – the colds stopped. Nevertheless I have a dilemma to deal with now. Yesterday morning I tried this for the first time ever, and it was outrageously scrumptious. It was perhaps the most delicious instant coffee that I’ve ever tasted in my entire life. I want more now !  I may eventually find myself at a nearby Starbucks purchasing some more of them, or I may even buy some online.

5.  4 years ago this week we were dealing with the aftermath of the surprisingly devastating Hurricane Wilma. It was the most destructive hurricane to affect South Florida since Hurricane Andrew 13 years earlier. Water, power, and telephone service (mostly cell) was out in some areas in a wide swath of South Florida for up to a month, and traffic jams lined up at the rare gas stations and grocery stores that were actually open for business. Due to a blatant lack of preparation on my part I waited in line for gas for about 8 hours on one of those early days of the aftermath !  It seems like it’s been more than only four years since that chaos.

Be sure to check out my ‘Thursday Night Mini Thoughts’ later this week !

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Annoyances Blogging Computers Food God History Holidays Music People Philosophy Politics

Thursday Night Mini Thoughts

– Let’s get spontaneous.
– Let’s get radical.
– It’s another night of ‘thoughts’ here on the big blue blog.
– On Sunday it’s my thoughts from Life Pointe Church.
– On Tuesday it’s the thoughts that started it all – in paragraph form.
– On Thursday it’s my ‘Mini Thoughts’ – in 15 words or less.
– So that’s where we are.
– My telephone has been ringing off the hook lately.
– All of the calls (dozens so far) have been from people and numbers unknown.
– The joke is on them, as I never ever answer the telephone from unknowns.
– Most of the calls are City Of Homestead election-related.
– I already absentee voted – so there !
– There’s not enough love in this world.
– Some people just don’t know how to treat other people with respect.
– Why are a lot of those people on television ?
– I am a Creationist, and I always have been.
– In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
– It doesn’t get any more straightforward and real than that.
– Windows 7 is out today at retail.
– It is to Windows Vista as Windows 98 was to Windows 95.
– Windows 98 was the greatest operating system ever made.
– It fixed everything that was wrong with Windows 95.
– Windows XP was the 2ND greatest operating system ever made.
– It more than made up for the whole Windows ME / Windows 2000 debacle.
– We still use Windows XP today at work.
– Just as soon as these ‘Mini Thoughts’ are posted I plan to eat a rare Dinner.
– There’s a Marie Callender meal in my not-too-distant future.
– My mouth is watering just thinking about it.
– Don’t forget that tomorrow night is Disco night on here.
– I’ve got a special double-feature planned.
– It includes one of the funkiest Disco songs ever made – complete with afros !
– Then on ‘Saturday Night Retro’ Halloween starts a week early.
– I’m taking you back to that house on the hill.
– Be sure to be here to have some fun.
– You won’t regret it pal !
– Laterz Gatorz !

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Animals Blogging Driving Food God Holidays Movies Music Radio Shopping Travel Weather

The Major’s Walk-A-Thon: Special On-Location Edition – Southwest Florida

1.  It’s Columbus Day, and it’s a day of relaxation for me after a lot of walking and a lot of driving. I drove 415.5 miles over 37 hours. That’s about 3 weeks of normal every day Homestead driving for me, and it’s just as I had planned out prior to embarking on the road trip. 201.3 miles of driving occurred on Saturday as I drove from Florida City to Lehigh Acres by way of Everglades City, Naples, and Estero. The remaining 214.2 miles of driving occurred on Sunday on the return trip back home to Homestead from Estero (where I spent the night) – via Naples and Plantation Key.

2.  On my Saturday morning drive over to the southwest coast of Florida I stopped for brief visits at the Big Cypress National Preserve Oasis Visitor Center as well as the Everglades National Park Gulf Coast Visitor Center just south of Everglades City. I don’t think that I have ever been to Everglades City before. (If I have then I don’t remember it.) It’s very small and very historic. About 500 people live there full-time. I plan to return back there during the cooler winter months to walk around the historic downtown area and check out the museum there.

3.  After a MASSIVE Lunch at Pinchers Crab Shack at Tin City on the waterfront in Naples, a walk to the end of the long city pier over the Gulf Of Mexico, and a nice scenic neighbourhood drive along the peaceful and quiet south coast of Naples I proceeded up to the big movie theatre north of Naples to get out of the mid-90s heat and sun – and to see the current box office smash “Zombieland“. It was campy and hilarious – perhaps a future cult classic ?

4.  It was so great to hear my radio station – The Call – over in southwest Florida. They just recently moved over from 107.5 FM to 107.7 FM in Naples. It’s an extremely weak translator station, and it was a bit ‘staticky’ all around the city – but a weak CALL-FM was definitely better than no CALL-FM. Up closer to Fort Myers I picked-up the much stronger 91.9 FM signal of The Call. It sounded great up and down I-75. On Saturday night I made my way over to Lehigh Acres (10 miles east of I-75 and Fort Myers) to attend a rock concert at a church featuring Jubilee, Horizons Fall, and Manic Drive. Rob from The Call was there. It was cool to hang out with him for a little while. All three bands rocked the joint hard and LOUD !

5.  On Sunday morning (after church in the park) I visited the Naples Zoo to check up on my animal friends. I then walked around the Coastland Center Mall to cool off a bit before making the return trip back to the southeast coast of Florida. This was my first visit over to the Naples area in about 20 months – way too long. My next visit will be much sooner than that – hopefully sometime during the upcoming cooler and dryer winter season. I think that it’s reasonable to state that it’s no longer ‘possible’ that I plan to eventually live in Naples, but that it’s ‘probable’. I fell in love with Naples all over again, and I wish to live there in the future. There is so much that I wish to see and do over there, so that will justify my more frequent visits to the area, and with each new visit I’ll be looking around for potential new neighbourhoods to call my future new home.

LATER TODAY – 2 MORE BLOG POSTS:
– ‘Celebration Community Beach Church At The Park’
– ‘Life Pointe Church Plantation Key Lime Pie’