Category: Health

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Driving Food Health Humor Shopping

Saturday Morning Shenanigans

CHEVRON – I filled up my car with regular 87 octane gasoline this morning at my favourite Chevron on the congested Homestead corner of Useless-One y Campbell Drive (SW 312TH St. / NE 8TH St.). It’s my first fill-up in exactly 14 days, and that’s a few days below my overall average. Typically I can go up to 17 to 19 days before I need to fill-up with gas. I spent $4.069 per gallon of gas (nipping the previous all-time record by a mere penny), and I spent a total of $45.00 for the fill-up (nipping the previous all-time record by a single dollar). KA-CHING !

WALGREENS – The highlight here is that I now have enough Omega-3 Fish Oil (1200 milligrams per softgel) to take me into January 2009 providing that I take one of them per day every day until then. (They had a ‘Buy 1 Get 1 Free’ sale on them this week.) I adore the bargain$. THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKIN’ ‘BOUT, WILLIS !

STARBUCKS – I visited our Homestead Starbucks for the first time ever, and what a quaint little place it is with such a quaint little parking lot and a bustling drive-thru. Recently my friend Phil teased me for only going to Starbucks for the ‘frou-frou designer’ espresso coffees that cost over $4. He told me that I should try out their regular coffees that cost under $2. As is always the case for me at Starbucks I get lost, dazed, confused, and sometimes even dizzy looking at their all-encompassing menu board. (Travis I am not.) In my entire life I can still count on two hands the number of times I have been to Starbucks. Have no fear my dear, for I received excellent customer service from my personal barista behind the counter. She helped me to make a decision on what I really wanted. I got the grande Pike Place Roast ($1.89) with caramel flavour added ($0.30), and also a pastry item. My barista also told me all about the benefits of purchasing a Starbucks card. As it turns out I could have gotten the caramel flavour added free-of-charge if I already had the card. I may get it. The coolest part of this particular Starbucks is that they open for bid-ness at 5:30 AM during the week. I totally dig that since that is a half-hour before I need to be at work. BOO-YAH !

… And those – my friends – are my ‘Saturday Morning Shenanigans’ …

I HEARD THAT !

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Food Health Shopping

The Major’s Walk-A-Thon – Summertime Special

This ‘Summertime Special’ edition of ‘The Major’s Walk-A-Thon’ comes to you from The Falls Shopping Center in South Miami-Dade County Florida:

1.  Yesterday was my birthday, so that only means one thing today – it was time for my regularly-scheduled annual eye exam. (My eye doctor has his office adjacent to LensCrafters at The Falls.)

2.  If you’re not getting an annual eye exam then you must be mad crazy like that. It doesn’t matter if you’ve had 20/20 eyesight for your entire life (which is extremely rare). What you don’t know about your eyes could hurt you in the future. It doesn’t take very long for a thorough eye exam, and it’s very painless. Don’t be a wimp. Go and get your eyes checked for Goodness sake !  😯

3.  My least favourite part of the eye exam is also painless, and it brings back hazy memories of the 1980s and 1990s. It’s when my eye doctor dillates my pupils so that they are MASSIVE !  He puts these drops into my eyes, and then within 30 minutes everything gets very blurry and my eyes become extremely sensitive to sunlight (or simple daylight for that matter). Once the pupils are GIGANTIC he checks them for various diseases. As I type this exactly 4 hours after he initially put those drops into my eyes to begin the dillation process my pupils are still much larger than normal, but my eyesight and sensitivity to light has slowly returned back to normal again.

4.  During the peak of the MASSIVE pupils I continued a longtime annual tradition by running – not walking from LensCrafters over to T.G.I. Friday’s to consume a MASSIVE Lunch to complement my MASSIVE pupils. I received excellent customer service from my waiter, and the food was absolutely scrumptious. I adored the ‘Parmesan-Crusted Chicken’. It’s ‘a sautéed chicken breast basted with Caesar dressing – then finished with a Parmesan-crust topping.’ It’s ‘served with three-cheese tortellini tossed in spinach alfredo sauce and a side of our fresh tomato salad.’ Oh yeah for dessert I dug an ENORMOUS chunk of the legendary ‘Vanilla Bean Cheesecake’. I didn’t regret it pal !

5.  In addition to the eye exam and the Lunch I also did a fair amount of walking all around The Falls Shopping Center (a few times around). That makes it a valid ‘Walk-A-Thon’. I’ve been visiting The Falls longer than any other shopping mall here in South Florida – over 20 years. When it all comes down to it The Falls provides the most pleasant (and most natural) shopping environment of any shopping mall that I know of. They don’t have very many stores that I’m a fan of, and their longtime movie theatre which was once state-of-the-art (back in 1990) is now totally obsolete. But it just feels right to walk around that shopping mall at a nice slow pace and glance into the stores to see what I’m not buying. If I lived within the surrounding neighbourhoods then I’d probably be mall-walking around The Falls every week – even in the heart of the summertime. That place is so cool !

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Food Health

Beef O’ Brady’s: It’s What’s For Lunch

TODAY at 11 AM if you were looking for me then you had to look no further than the Homestead area (just outside of the city limits) Beef O’ Brady’s location. I ADORE that place !  I eat there about once or twice a month, but I should eat there much more often than that because the food is hot and delicious, they have a large menu selection of food available, you get big portions of everything, and customer service is excellent and fast. You pay a wee bit more than other places, but it’s all worth it. The ambience is near-perfect as far as I’m concerned. It’s neither too big and noisy of a joint nor is it too small and uneventful. It’s the perfect size, and I always feel welcome and comfortable there – even when I eat there solo.

I enjoyed a half-pound cheeseburger and curly fries today – two foods that I rarely eat nowadays ever since my MASSIVE heart attack several years ago (just kidding). Where’s my Lipitor ?  Oh yeah – I already took it for today. I’m obedient like that.

Catch me at Beef O’ Brady’s again next week my friends !

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Annoyances Blogging Career Food God Health Internet Life Music Politics Shopping

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

1.  I’m starting this week’s ‘Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’ at 6:21 PM. That’s the latest that I think I’ve ever started it. I just got home from a long 12-hour day of work here and here.

2.  Jesse says that there’s one Mexican restaurant in particular that serves their food above all of the rest, and that’s really saying something for a place like Homestead where there’s a Mexican restaurant on practically every other block. Maybe one day Jesse will take his closest friends (including me) over to this place to experience the real deal.

3.  Jesse also says that Hooters makes some of the best wings in the free nation. Since I don’t go to Hooters I encouraged Jesse to go out and get us a whole bunch of those amazing wings and then bring them back home to Homestead to share with his closest friends (including me).

4.  Google may be the runaway # 1 smash Internet search engine in the universe, but I hardly ever use it. I prefer Yahoo. I’ve always been a fan of Yahoo – even before it became a household name.

5.  Lysol disinfectant kills viruses, bacteria, mold, and mildew. It kills 99.9% of germs in 30 seconds. I know a whole bunch of public places in and around Homestead that could use a good soaking of Lysol daily !  I wonder what’s the deal with the remaining 0.1% of germs. Does Lysol kill them as well, but it just takes longer than 30 seconds ?

6.  A lot of great pop music came out during the Summer of 1998. I just took a look at my # 1 hits from my once successful music web site during June, July, August, and September of exactly a decade ago, and it brought back a lot of good times and memories from that era. I think I hung out with my little brother a lot during that fun Summer.

7.  I’ll be hanging out with my little brother in just about a month at the River Walk en San Antonio. I’m looking forward to it. It’ll never be as good as ‘the good old days’, but it’ll still be good enough. Any time with my little brother is precious time.

8.  I hope that John McCain selects Mike Huckabee as his running mate, but the fact of the matter is that I will vote for John McCain no matter who he selects as his Vice Presidential running mate.

9.  I prefer paper clips over staples. That reminds me. I need to get on over to Office Depot to buy some more paper clips of assorted shapes and sizes.

10.  I’m ending this week’s ‘Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’ at 7:12 PM. It took me less than an hour to come up with everything that you just read within this blog entry. That’s how spontaneous this is. I had nothing before I started, and now I have this creation. I created this masterpiece, and I used the skills that were provided to be by my Creator – the Creator of all things that exist – God. He’s good like that. He’s amazing like that. There is no one and no thing that is greater than Him !