Category: History

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God History Holidays Music Radio Travel

Saturday Night Retro

This is perhaps one of my favourite weekly series here on this blog to prepare for, compile, and then ultimately publish for your reading and viewing pleasure. It allows me to reminisce about my storied past. It’s a past that spans from a mere millisecond ago to sometime in 1966 when God created me.

Allow me to do a bit of reminiscing here.

A week ago tonight I was exploring and enjoying the Carnival Fantasy as she sailed southbound down the Mississippi River towards the Gulf Of Mexico.

5 years ago on this holiday weekend I spent 2 days and 2 nights up at my former playground of the Walt Disney World area. I used to go up there for wild and crazy fun several times per year for about a dozen years. Other than once on church business (last April) I haven’t been up there in nearly 27 months.

10 years ago this week in 1999 I was rockin’ and jammin’ to Barenaked Ladies, Fatboy Slim, Goo Goo Dolls, Matchbox 20, and Sugar Ray. Y-100 was the radio station to listen to back in the day. I awoke daily with ‘Footy & The Chix At Six’.

18 years ago this week in 1991 I was living in a MASSIVE tent city in Saudi Arabia serving during Operation Desert Storm. At that time I didn’t know when I would be able to return back home stateside. War is tough, but ironically I had a lot of fun in the sand over there. For many reasons (including the successful war campaign) 1991 was the greatest year of my active duty military career.

34 years ago on tomorrow’s date in 1975 I had my first Communion ceremony at Catholic school as a second grader. Communion means so much more to me today than it did 34 years ago – or even 4 years ago. Tomorrow morning during the first church service I’ll be at my usual position serving Communion to my brothers and sisters of Life Pointe Church at one of four stations set up inside the theatre.

It’s fun to reminisce about the past, but it’s all about facing the future and moving forward aggresively while chasing daylight.

Here’s a cool tune from a cool band out of Australia that’s still alive and touring today all over the world. From 1978 it’s “Reminiscing” from Little River Band. It’s one of my favourite songs of its genre of all-time. Enjoy !

Categories
Annoyances Driving Food History Shopping Weather

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

Here’s what’s on my mind on this Tuesday night:

1.  I just returned home from Publix at the Oasis Plaza in Homestead. It’s where shopping is a pleasure. It would have been more of a pleasure if there were less people there. That joint was jumpin’. There is no recession in effect at Publix.

2.  Traffic in and around Homestead has been extra nightmarish lately with all of the tourists mixing in with all of the snowbirds from Quebec mixing in with us natives of the land. I’ve been averaging at least a couple of near-death experiences on the roads per each mile traveled.

3.  I just turned on the A.C. in my home for the first time in two weeks. It was approaching the 80°F mark in my living room. Our next frigid outbreak is still on track to arrive during the day on Friday. On Saturday we may actually struggle to reach 60°F all day long !  Are you paying attention Kelly J. ?

4.  The hot new Burger King on Speedway Boulevard just north of Biscayne Drive (in front of the Home Depot) is now open for business – and half of the base clogged up their parking lot – and their arteries !  That’s 4 Burger Kings around Homestead – but not in Homestead.

5.  There’s a really cool video on You Tube of a dude who is a passenger of a vehicle that’s driving all around the Homestead Air Force Base that once existed in 1989. He’s using his camcorder to record the drive all throughout our absolutely gorgeous and totally vibrant base at the time. He probably sent it home for his family to watch way back then. The video brought tears to my ears. Our current Air Reserve Base is merely a shell of what it once was, but I must admit that we have made substantial progress since Hurricane Andrew destroyed everything that we had nearly 17 years ago.

Thank You for sharing your time with me by reading these thoughts o’ mine.

Categories
Animals Driving History Home Life Music Radio

Saturday Night Retro

1998 – What a crazy year it was (for me anyway). It was a party year. It’s the year that I went from 30 to 31-years-old. I was living in my current home. I was working at the place that I still work at today. I had my young and healthy feline buddy Boots running energetically all throughout my home. When I wasn’t at home or at work I was probably driving around in my dark green 1997 Saturn SL1 that looked just like this:

1997 Saturn SL1
1997 Saturn SL1

I was a loyal Y-100 listener in 1998, and some of the hottest pop and rock bands on the radio back then included ‘N Sync, Fastball, Matchbox Twenty, The Goo Goo Dolls, and Aerosmith.

Here’s a track that was particularly big all around the world (aside from here in the U.S.). It’s a modern 1998 Eurodance update to a 1974 U.S. Disco smash. You probably know the original version, and some of you can even perform the dance moves to it as well. It’s “Kung Fu Fighting”, and Carl Douglas performed it originally while the British dance crew Bus Stop modernized it in 1998. It went a little something like this:

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Driving History Life Music Radio Travel

Saturday Night Retro

1989 – I started off the year in January by buying a brand new car for the first time in my entire life. I was tired of riding my 10-speed bike all over Homestead Air Force Base, so I bought a bright and shiny new red 1989 Geo Spectrum. It would go on to become my longest-tenure car. I had it for over 8 years – driving it for 96,745 miles. Since the purchase of that first car exactly 20 years ago this weekend I’ve driven just over 230,000 miles !  That’s an overall average of exactly 11,500 miles per year – just below the national driving average.

I bought that car when I was 21-years-old and living in one of the many dormitories on base. That car gave me the freedom that I wanted at the time to explore the South Florida all around me. It took me through 8 crazy years of my life – through the remainder of my turbulent 20s. It took me on countless road trips up north. It sat idle for a couple of months while I was in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. It survived the Category 4 hurricane winds of Andrew on the morning of August 24TH 1992. It moved me back up to the Washington D.C. area a week after the hurricane destroyed Homestead, and it returned me back to (Central) Florida about 6 months later. It eventually brought me back down to Homestead and the air base in March of 1994. It moved a lot of my possessions to my current home here in Homestead in June of 1995 – including my little feline buddy Boots.

What a cool little car that was – chock-full of a lot of great memories of my life at the time. No other Saturn since then has even come close.

This song reminds me so much of that year of 1989. I bought it on cassette single (that was the hot music medium at the time), and I played it over and over again. This is one of those few songs that I consider to be a pivotal theme song of the autobiographical soundtrack of my life. It’s from the legendary rock band Poco. They’ve been in existence as a group for the past 40 years – virtually my entire life !  Here’s their huge pop radio smash from 1989 – “Call It Love”: