Category: Life

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Blogging Computers Food Health Internet Life Television

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

It’s the longest-running episodic weekly series in the entire history of this blog:

1.  Friends – I don’t want the deadly swine flu. I don’t even want the ‘at-home-in-bed-sick’ swine flu. I’m just putting that out there for everyone. Please wash your hands thoroughly after you touch things. This personal health and hygiene message was provided to you as a public service by the ‘Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’. The More You Know.

2.  An extended coworker recently stated that I remind him of Ernie Douglas from “My Three Sons“. Well that’s certainly a nice obscure reference from some 45 years ago !  The funniest thing about it is the fact that it was one of my favourite TV shows to watch as a kid of the 1970s.

3.  This season’s cycle of “The Celebrity Apprentice” on NBC-TV has been one of the most interesting, exciting, intriguing, suspenseful, and downright shocking seasons of any prime time reality show in television history. This has been one season where I refuse to record it for later viewing. I must watch it LIVE, and I must not be interrupted for anything whatsoever while it is on !

4.  I do not use Twitter, I do not know how to use Twitter, and I do not wish to learn how to use Twitter. This WordPress blog right here is as technologically-enhanced as I plan to get for the unforseeable future. If you wish to know what I’m doin’ or what’s goin’ on in my Life then feel free to read all about it right here. Although I post a lot of fun things on here during the week (filler material) this blog is also a ministry for me. It is how I disciple to the rest of the world. If you’re interested then stay tuned to what I have to share with you. If you’re not interested then check out other blogs that are out there on the interwebs.

5.  I’m hangin’ out with some good friends o’ mine at Homestead‘s White Lion Cafe tomorrow night. This just in. I love to eat ENORMOUS quantities of food !

Categories
History Life Music Radio Television

Saturday Night Retro

In 1979 I was an 11-year-old that became a 12-year-old in June. I graduated from Magnolia Elementary School in Lanham Maryland (right in my own neighbourhood):

Magnolia Elementary School, Lanham Maryland
Magnolia Elementary School, Lanham Maryland

That was my school for Kindergarten from 1972 to 1973, and then again for 3RD, 4TH, 5TH, and 6TH grades from 1975 to 1979. The street that I lived on (Red Wing Lane) was located directly in front of the school by a couple hundred yards, but that was not the proper way to walk to and from school because you had to climb the fence and walk in other people’s yards to do so. The proper way to walk to and from school was up / down the hill and over to the left-side main entrance.

Incidentally the more things change the more things stay the same. That school looks exactly the way it used to look 30 to 35 years ago – right up to the facade of the building, the spray paint residue on the left-hand side, the breezeway out front, and the lightposts. A lot has changed since the mid-1970s. The outside of that school is not one of those changes.

If you walk through the front entrance, take an immediate right at the first hallway, and take that hallway down all the way to the very end you should come across a big painted map of the U.S.A. directly on the surface of the wall (if it’s still there). My class painted that as a special project way back then. I specifically painted Hawaii. It was a masterpiece !

It’s amazing the things that I remember from back in the day.

And now for your ultimate ‘Saturday Night Retro’ review I present to you this # 1 gold pop smash that everyone was singing and dancing to in their living rooms and in their cars just before 1979 morphed into 1980. This my friends is English musician Robin Scott – better known at the time as simply ‘M’. Here’s the official music video for “Pop Muzik” – one of the first videos ever made for television – more than two years before MTV even went on-the-air. This video was sleek, stylish, solid, and state-of-the-art for its time. Check it out:

Until next Saturday night my friends – keep on makin’ history !

Categories
Career Driving History Life Music Travel

Saturday Night Retro

22 years ago in 1987 I was a 20-year-old living in Gloucestershire in the southwest of England. Cirencester (to the west) and Swindon (to the south) were the nearest cities, and I visited both of them fairly often. Swindon was the place to go shopping and hook up with British Rail on my trips over to London. Swindon was also the home to this highway monstrosity:

The Magic Roundabout - Swindon, Wiltshire, United Kingdom
The Magic Roundabout - Swindon, Wiltshire, United Kingdom

I never drove a car while over in the U.K., as I rode with friends or took public transportation. I lived perhaps a mile from the village of Fairford. I walked to and from the village at least once a week or so.

11TH Strategic Group, RAF Fairford, United Kingdom
11TH Strategic Group, RAF Fairford, United Kingdom

That’s my military unit from November 1985 to November 1987.

NO edition of the ‘Saturday Night Retro’ is complete without a big hit song from the times, so here we go with this week’s retro classic flashback from the past. It’s the 1987 European dance remix of the 1975 disco smash “You Sexy Thing” from Hot Chocolate. Get up and dance my friends !

Categories
Blogging God Life Travel

Blatant Promotion

TONIGHT I spent a couple of fun hours with about 20 or so of my closest brothers and sisters on this fantastic journey. We hung out at the house of J.T. and Anne J., and we ate a wide variety of food, talked, laughed, hugged, solved some of the problems of the world today, and played games. It was probably the most loud and rambunctious fellowship that I’ve ever experienced, and I loved every single second of it. I can’t wait to do it again real soon.

This Saturday morning a bunch of us are heading down U.S. 1 for about 130 miles to Key West. Once we get there we’ll be participating in a very special edition of ‘The Major’s Bike-A-Thon’ all around the island. Be sure to read all about our adventures late on Saturday night once we all return back home from that.

In the meantime I’ve got an all-new ‘Bible Stories’ planned for Wednesday night as well as an intriguing ‘Thursday Night Mini Thoughts’ and the always dependable ‘Friday Night Blogroll Review’. Be sure to post your finest blog entries of the week between now and then for consideration of the ‘Major Bloggie Award’.

Until we hang out again here on the big green blog take good care of yourselves – and each other.