Welcome back to #TravelThursday, and the first edition of 2025, and my first blog post of 2025. I posted on 173 days in 2024. That’s every Thursday, Sunday, and Monday in 2024 as well as 16 special posts on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. I’ll do it again in 2025 – starting with this one.
Less travel is my theme (and goal) for 2025. That’s less road-trips to and from Homestead Florida. That’s no retirement road-trip like last year. Just a low-key year, as I enter my 3RD year here in my dream home in my dream neighborhood in my dream part of Florida – and 2ND year of retirement. The priority this year is neighborhood, museum, and church, and my duties, responsibilities, and relationships at each.
I drove 11,954 miles in 2024. That’s up from 11,721 miles in 2023. That’s the most number of miles driven since 2004. I exceeded 1,000 miles in a month just twice, but one of those months was April – when I drove 3,290 miles. That included 2,807 miles to and from North Texas during the first 18 days of April. From May to December my monthly average was 784 miles.
I’ll likely have no 1,000-mile months in 2025, and I’m projecting about 9,000 miles total for the year. I do plan a few road-trips to and from South Florida and Southwest Florida, but I’d like to explore more of the Heartland of Florida. That’s the name given to the rural inland region in and around my dream part of Florida.
Next #TravelThursday – I’ll write about my first such local exploration. It’s a fun New Year’s Day morning and hike through the ancient scrub out at Archbold Biological Station in southern Highlands County Florida. Let’s keep traveling together.
All rights reserved (c) 2025 Christopher M. Day, CountUp
Welcome back to #TravelThursday. While most of my travel posts have to do with driving or flying somewhere – this post is about another form of transportation – my own two feet.
17 years ago this past Christmas Eve I started something new that I had never done before. I intentional walked around my neighborhood. I did it for a few reasons back in 2007. I did it for fitness – to get healthier and stronger. (I was neither back then.) I did it to honor my dad. He was slowly losing the ability to walk due to the effects of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) – AKA “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”. I did it for my Lord + Savior Jesus Christ – to thank Him for rescuing me and saving me and blessing me with His gifts – such as the gift to pray for my neighbors, and my neighborhood, and my city, and beyond.
This is the start of my 18TH year of walking around my neighborhood. (Technically – each season begins near the start of the dry season here in South and South-Central Florida.) In this 18TH season – I’m still walking for fitness, and for my dad in Heaven, and for God. And when I walk around my neighborhood – I’m praying for my neighbors, and for my neighborhood, and for Sebring, and beyond. The Lord placed me in my dream home – in my dream neighborhood – in my dream part of Florida. I can’t stop thanking Him for that, for I’m living my best life today !
Statistically – Season 17 (2023-2024) – was the biggest one yet. I walked 87 times for a total of 113.50 miles. That’s an average of 1.30 miles per walk. I walked from September 2023 through July 2024. Season 18 started this past September 2024. My goal for this season is to walk 100 times. I’m about one-fourth of the way there, and I’m way behind last season’s numbers at this point. I need to get to steppin’ !
Next #TravelThursday – I’ll write about my driving year in review. Let’s keep traveling together.
#CountUp & #TravelThursday is on Facebook. I usually post there on Mondays and Thursdays. I’m also the Social Media Director for the Sebring Historical Society. I post on our Facebook page 6 days a week – Mondays to Saturdays.
All rights reserved (c) 2024 Christopher M. Day, CountUp
I wish each and every one of you following me and reading my blog a very Merry Christmas.
My traditional family “Christmas” actually occurred 4 weeks ago in North Texas on Thanksgiving Day. For the past many years my brother has prepared a hearty home-cooked Breakfast for he and I, and then shortly after that we’ve opened all of the presents underneath the Christmas tree. Once they are all opened it’s time to watch football for the rest of the day and into the night – including for about an hour while we’re enjoying a traditional Thanksgiving dinner at around three or four in the afternoon.
On the day after Thanksgiving (“Black Friday”) Christmas is done and over for me. Well – sort of. For the first 3 weeks of December I get to observe and celebrate bits and pieces of Christmas here and there by listening to Christmas music on the radio, watching Christmas shows on television, writing and sending Christmas cards and messages to family and friends from afar, and enjoying several Christmas meals with friends and neighbors. I’m especially looking forward to my second Christmas potluck dinner with 100+ of my neighbors in our clubhouse.
We all celebrate Christmas in our own unique and traditional ways. May you spend this holiday season with your loved ones. Make and share good memories that will last a lifetime. Honor each other. Love one another.
And let’s remember why we celebrate Christmas.
And she will have a Son, and you are to name Him Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.(Matthew 1:21 NLT)
The LORD saves.
All rights reserved (c) 2024 Christopher M. Day, CountUp
Today it’s the return of a Christmas classic that’s been featured on my blog before in various forms. It’s the story of the greatest Christmas gift ever – the arrival of a cat.
It started out as a morning like any other, but just a few hours later it would become a morning that forever changed the lives of me and my little brother, and our Mom and Dad.
Exactly 41 years ago yesterday morning – on Friday December 23RD 1983 – me (age 16½) and my little brother (age 8½) looked out our living room window at the snow and the ice on the ground of our backyard. It was a bitter cold morning in McLean Virginia 2 days before Christmas, and we were happy to be warm and comfortable inside.
But there was a creature stirring outside that was not warm and comfortable. It was a lonely young cat with no tail that was wandering around aimlessly on our ice-covered backyard patio deck, and it was shivering in misery. Me and my brother decided rather quickly that it did not belong in the harsh elements of the outside at that moment, so we opened the door and she walked right in to our more sheltered screened-in ‘Florida Room’.
We gave her some milk to drink. She loved us for it. We gave her some love. We heard a strange sound coming from her that we hadn’t heard before. It was the friendly and inviting sound of her purring. We let her in to our warm and comfortable home. She never looked back. In fact she refused to leave after that. We pretty much named her ‘Fluffy’ that day, and she instantly became an important part of our family – the missing link if you will.
That’s a young me in 1985 holding a young Fluffy. I was about 60 pounds lighter than I am today.
She was the 5TH member of our family, and she was the start of nearly 30 years of felines in our family. Fluffy loved us all, but she clearly adored me the most. During her younger years she anxiously awaited me to open the basement / laundry room door for her first thing in the morning so that she could run (and beat me) to my bedroom upstairs for a long round of petting and purring. During her later years in Jacksonville Florida when she was slowly dying she literally came back to life over and over again and jumped and loved on me and ran upstairs to my parents’ guest room whenever I arrived for a short visit. She lived a long, happy, and healthy life (until April of 2001), and she provided lots of love to our family starting with that very first Christmas of 1983.
There have been other cats and dogs within our family over the years since then. Fluffy eventually gained a feline roommate with Barney (also known as “the cat that never liked me”). After Fluffy’s death Barney eventually gained his own feline roommate with Pumpkin. Boots was my own loving cat and housemate for 12½ years in Homestead Florida until his (expected) death on May 17TH 2007. He was the coolest cat that ever lived.
But it all started with “Fluffy The Manx Cat”. She was the Matriarch of all of our family pets (to this day). She was the Queen of her castle. She was the stability of our family. She was our family’s common denominator. She was the center of attention. She was the most lovable cat that ever lived.
Fun Fact: This WordPress blog is a spinoff of my former hit music based massivesmash.com web site that I created in 1995. That web site grew out of a previous web site known as “MANx On The Net”. That first web site was a spinoff of “MANx Cat BBS” (1993-1997) – a dial-up bulletin board system run via MS-DOS typical of its time that was inspired by and named after Fluffy.
All rights reserved (c) 2024 Christopher M. Day, CountUp
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