Category: Holidays

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Holidays Life Travel

Bedtime Stories

Good Evening My Friends,

It’s Sunday night. It’s after 9 PM, and I just felt like posting one more blog entry for tonight before I retire to bed. Tomorrow is Columbus Day – a major Federal holiday here in the U.S. – or as this cat refers to it – ‘a fake holiday’ – a normal work day for Life Pointe Church staff.

This morning as I was driving southbound along the new-and-improved ’18-Mile-Stretch’ (U.S. 1 between Florida City and Key Largo) I was trying to figure out when was the last time I had driven down into the Florida Keys. It was nearly 22 months ago – about 3 weeks before I discovered Life Pointe Church for the first time. It was back during the final few days of December 2006 when I drove all the way down to Key West with my parents who were visiting me here in Homestead for the first time in about 18½ years.

Although it’s been nearly two years since I set foot in the Keys I was a fairly regular visitor for a good decade up until 2006. I mostly went down there to party – back when I used to that. In fact I used to party pretty much within a single mile of where our new campus is located at in Plantation Key (near Mile Marker 90).

There’s a lot of places I don’t go to anymore because of who I am today as a born-again Christian. The Florida Keys (to the south) and Orlando (to the north) are two such places that I no longer have a vested interest in. Well scratch that – because of our new Life Pointe Church campus down south. It felt weird returning to the scene of the crime after all of this time – just as weird as it felt returning to Orlando for a national Christian conference last April after previously abandoning everything that I had up there. My Life (always capitalized) has changed since then. Thanks Jesus for rescuing me from the darkness and saving me. I owe it all to You.

Well that’s ‘Bedtime Stories’ for this glorious Sunday night. Thank You for allowing me to share my Life with you, and until we hang out again – REMEMBER THIS !

SLOW DOWN !
SLOW DOWN !
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Blogging Commerce Computers Driving Food Holidays People Politics Shopping Sports Television Travel

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

CBS has ‘60 Minutes‘, FOX has ‘American Idol‘, ABC has ‘Dancing With The Stars‘, NBC has ‘America’s Got Talent‘, and I’ve got your ‘Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts. Let us pray:

1.  I wish that actors and musicians – particularly those on the far-left-wing – would act and play music rather than try to convince me that President George W. Bush is Satan, Senator John McCain is his identical evil twin, and Senator Barack Obama is God. The actors and the musicians certainly don’t represent me, and they don’t even represent a majority of this country. They are the loud and obtrusive minority.

2.  I ate Lunch today at Panda Express, and a portion of my Lunch consisted of a bowl of orange chicken. As I ate the orange chicken I was dreaming about the new Homestead Pavilion shopping and dining complex that will open up in just a couple of months. There – That should rack-up another 450 views to this blog !  😀

3.  The sparkling new Chevron gas station / convenience store / car wash is now open for business (finally !) at the northeast corner of Campbell Drive and Speedway Boulevard (NE 8TH St. & NE 43RD Ave.) in Homestead. Regular gas went on sale this morning for $3.93 per gallon.

4.  Why does every soccer-mom mini-van (SUV) in front of me always have at least two tires that are near flat ?  If they kept their tires properly inflated then their gas mileage would probably increase by at least 5 MPG. If they drove a regular car instead then they could probably double their current gas mileage.

5.  I may buy a hot new computer system this Saturday morning at either Best Buy or Circuit City, and it may just be a lightning-fast desktop computer system in lieu of a moderately-fast laptop. Either way it’s gonna be an HP Pavilion with at least 4 or 5 GB of RAM and a 500 to 750 GB hard drive.

6.  Publix Hot & Spicy Wings are neither hot nor spicy – and that’s why I like them. I wouldn’t eat them if they were indeed hot and spicy.

7.  It was great to see my ‘new-look’ Washington Redskins in action this past Sunday night. Before the game I had never heard of Colt Brennan. Now I want him to be our new starting quarterback !  Sure he’s not your conventional quarterback, but isn’t that what they said about Tom Brady and Kurt Warner ?

8.  When I saw Coach Joe Bugel by the sidelines during Sunday night’s game I nearly fell out of my chair. I thought for sure that he had retired along with Coach Joe Gibbs. Apparently he’s running the running game this season while Jim Zorn spearheads the passing game. I like that plan !

9.  I’m flying to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex for Thanksgiving Week again this year, and I’m already booked to go non-stop direct on American Airlines. It’ll be the most expensive round-trip flight for me ever !

10.  It’s almost time to vote again aqui en Miami-Dade County. I know this because today my (old-fashioned) mailbox was stuffed solid with campaign literature from various cats that are running for District 9 School Board, Group 19 Circuit Court Judge, State Committeeman, and Senator. I’m not voting for anyone in any of these positions.

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Blogging Driving Food Holidays Home Life Money Music News Politics Shopping Sports Television

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

Let’s roll:

1.  If you don’t know what’s goin’ on in my Life today then you simply don’t read this blog. I pretty much reveal it all throughout the week on here. You snooze. You lose.

2.  As I compiled, wrote, and then ultimately posted last night’s ‘Monday Night Countdown’ on all things green I was pretty much laughing the whole time. When this lunatic posted his effectively sardonic comment late last night he thoroughly threw me over the edge – laughing hysterically all the way !  😆

3.  I ate a MASSIVE Lunch today at Beef O’ Brady’s, and for much of my meal I was the only customer in there. I had the whole joint to myself. I enjoyed the mother of all mouth-watering half-pound melted cheeseburgers – well-done !  Throw in a moundful of tasty curly fries and a large Coca Cola Classic, and THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKIN’ ‘BOUT WILLIS !

4.  We are not in a recession. We were never in a recession. We probably won’t be in a recession anytime soon. Having stated the facts it’s all irrelevant if a majority of Americans have the perception that we are in a recession. If they think it is so then it is so.

5.  Home prices in Miami-Dade County plummeted an estimated 28% year-to-year from May 2007 to May 2008. That’s the second-steepest drop in the entire country – second to the Las Vegas metro area. My Homestead condo was once worth nearly $200,000. Now I’d be lucky to get $150,000 for it. That’s still triple the price that I paid for it less than 7 years ago !

6.  Gas prices are on the way down (just as I forecasted several months ago). I really think that they could drop down to the $3.25 to $3.50 per gallon range in time for the Thanksgiving – Christmas holiday shopping season. Remember I wrote that.

7.  Do you see me ?  I’m the one on the two-lane road that’s right in front of the tailgater and right behind the slow-poke.

8.  The NFL exhibition season begins this Sunday night on NBC-TV as my Washington Redskins take the field in Canton Ohio against the Indianapolis Colts in the Pro Football Hall Of Fame Game.

9.  Twice in a row I’ve received what I consider to be subpar service at the Homestead Starbucks drive-thru early in the morning. Three strikes in a row and they may be OUT !

10.  Music Choice needs a digital music cable channel for Christian Rock. The closest channel that they have is one called ‘Contemporary Christian’, but it’s too ‘adult pop’ for me. I ROCK !

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Holidays Travel

Getting From Here To There By The Numbers

I’ll be spending the Thanksgiving week with my family over near Dallas Texas at my brother‘s and sister’s-in-law house. According to Mapquest it’s 1,368.87 miles from my home to their home (exact addresses utilized). Mapquest estimated the time to drive that at 21 hours and 11 minutes. In order to drive that number of miles in that estimated time I would have to drive an average of 64.6 MPH. That won’t happen. I typically use a base average of 60 MPH when I estimate how long it will take for me to drive from here to there on long road trips. It takes into account my average highway speeds as well as various stops along the way for gas, food, drink, bathroom, etcetra. So at 60 MPH it would take me nearly 23 hours to drive from Homestead Florida to Allen Texas – minus an hour for the time difference – so that’s 22 hours. That would be a two-day event – and not half on one day and half on the next day either. I don’t think that I would want to drive 11 hours in one day and then 11 hours the next day, but I think that I could drive perhaps 15 or 16 hours on the first day and then the remaining 6 or 7 hours on the second day. That would create an overnight hotel stay somewhere in Louisiana on the way over, and near Lake City Florida on the way back home.

How much would the 2,737.74 mile round-trip cost in gas alone ?  I estimate that gas will actually drop down to the $3.50 per gallon level by Thanksgiving week. So at 30 MPG that’s a little more than 91 gallons for a total cost of not quite $320.

Round-trip airfare between Miami and Dallas will cost more than that. In fact I checked earlier today, and had I booked the round-trip flight that I really wanted it would have cost me over $600 !  Right. I’ll wait a bit until that drops down into the $400s. I don’t book my airfare based on the lowest round-trip cost on the cheapest airline. I book it based on the exact flight that I want. I just wait for the cost of that specific flight to drop down to a reasonable level. Airfares fluctuate daily, so I’ll be monitoring it regularly.

I’ll probably fly to Dallas for Thanksgiving week, but some day I will drive the miles. When I do that I’ll take my time and explore places along the way. There are a lot of cool things for me to see between here and there !