Category: Life

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Saturday Morning Shenanigans

It’s the Summer replacement series for ‘The Major’s Walk-A-Thon’ which is now on seasonal hiatus. It’s … ‘Saturday Morning Shenanigans’. This should be a fun weekly series for all of us.

Saturday morning is pretty much the only morning of the week when I don’t have to set my alarm clock to wake-up earlier than I would if I didn’t set my alarm clock. During the week it’s typically set for 5:10 AM, and it typically wakes me up. On Sunday mornings it’s usually set for 6:30 AM, but I usually wake up before that time. And then there’s Saturday mornings – no set alarm clock, but I still wake-up before the dawn. I think that it has everything to do with me totally being ‘a morning person’. I’ve been waking up between 4 AM and 6 AM for the past 30 years. Before my current Air Force / Department Of Defense career I delivered newspapers early in the morning before school.

This morning I ventured on over to Florida City (where all of the food is at), and I ate a MASSIVE breakfast at the Cracker Barrel courtesy of my longtime waitress Debbie. Incidentally Debbie is one of the few good people that was an integral part of the last few years of my previous life who is now a part of my new Life. Oh yeah – the meal was livin’ large and outrageously scrumptious. This just in – I’m up a pound or two to 166.

Saturday mornings are also ‘laundry mornings’ in my household. Every 38 minutes I’m washing a new load of dirty clothes, and every 48 minutes I’m drying a new load of clean clothes. I’m efficient like that.

And so there ya go – the debut edition – the pilot episode if you will of ‘Saturday Morning Shenanigans’. We’ll do it all over again next week, and in next week’s edition I’m gonna reveal a secret passion (and talent) of mine that developed over the course of a decade of Saturday mornings back in the 1970s into the 1980s. It’s a ‘can’t-miss’ episode that all of Life Pointe Church will be talking about the next day at Homestead Bayfront Park. You won’t want to miss it pal ! 

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Animals Bugs God Health Holidays Home Life People Weather

The Major’s Walk-A-Thon: Season 1 Recap

There was no walk around my neighbourhood on this Saturday morning. It was about 73°F and the relative humidity was very near 100% with lower visibility due to light fog. The South Florida summertime weather pattern has taken hold, and it will have a firm grip on us for the next 5+ months.

Last Saturday morning was the season finale of ‘The Major’s Walk-A-Thon’, and so I present to you a recap of the season that started on Christmas Eve with my TOP 10 thoughts (in chronological order):

1.  Monday December 24TH 2007 – If this were May, June, July, August, September, or October then I would have probably been eaten alive by every bug known to mankind, but this is December and it is just so refreshingly delightful outside !

2.  Tuesday January 01ST 2008 – You can tell where the party-animals live here in my neighbourhood. Their dumpsters are overflowing with leftover holiday week garbage. The dumpsters that were still able to be closed from the top are where the retired folks live … Dogs can be party-animals as well. I came within inches of stepping in some of their ‘holiday leftovers’ during my walk this morning. It was a close call !

3.  Saturday January 05TH 2008 – Walking is a great time for praying. I prayed for the residents of Homestead, Florida City, Redland, Leisure City, Naranja Lakes, and Princeton to be blessed by the Glory of God. I prayed that the believers stay strong and unwavering with their personal relationship with Jesus. I prayed that the non-believers be guided onto the on-ramp of the fantastic journey by the believers. There’s plenty of room for everyone who truly believes in Him !

4.  Saturday February 16TH 2008 –  A friend from afar recently asked me why I started this weekly walk. Besides the obvious health and fitness reasons this walk – inspired and encouraged by this fellow WordPress blogger – is symbolic of my walk with Jesus Christ. I’ve been walking with Him on His fantastic journey for about 18 months now. I was once a mannequin – plastic and rotting. Now I am alive. Since I am alive I am living Life (always capitalized) the way that I should have lived it during my previous 39 years on His great Earth. That includes throwing everything up in the air like ‘Tossed Salad’ (catch the symbolism there) and only catching the good stuff – the right stuff. A physical walk is now on my agenda to complement my spiritual walk with my Creator. No longer am I sitting still in neutral. I am now moving forward and going places with my Life. The Lord Almighty is driving me. I am merely His passenger.

5.  Saturday February 23RD 2008 – I received some disappointing news at my Doctor’s office yesterday afternoon. After numerous analyses of my blood work over the past several years he has finally made the determination that diet and exercise alone is not bringing down my bad cholesterol (LDL). It’s still in the ‘elevated’ range, and it doesn’t appear to be coming down on its own. He has prescribed Lipitor for me – 10 milligrams per day to start off with. He gave me a free 14-day sample of it to ensure that it doesn’t cause any bad side effects with me. If I feel fine after the first 14 days then it’s on to Walgreens to get my prescription filled. I take my first dosage this afternoon. This will probably be the start of daily medication for the rest of my Life. I am no longer a young buck. Apparently I am now a middle-aged dude with high cholesterol. I am facing the music.

6.  Saturday March 08TH 2008 – My semi-basic 1.4-mile walk on a rare full stomach was done so during treacherous weather conditions – with thick dark clouds hanging low overhead, strong gusty northwesterly winds of up to 25 MPH, cold air pouring in, and even a little bit of leftover drizzle on this fresh side of the powerful cold front. I will dream of mornings like this from April through October when it’s hot and sticky outside with no wind … The ducks were out and about this morning, and they appeared to be lost, dazed, confused, and perhaps even drunk. They were stumbling about, wandering around with no sense of direction, and I saw one of them nearly tumble over in a state of mass chaos. They were wondering why the weather had suddenly changed on them. Some of them probably drank too much (rain).

7.  Saturday March 29TH 2008 – Whenever I walk the walk I feel like I’ve taken back my neighbourhood. I’ve lived here for nearly 13 years, but I’ve only really lived here for the past 3 months. Before Christmas Eve 2007 the only walking I did was to and from the mailboxes and the dumpsters. From 1995 to 2007 I merely existed in this neighbourhood. Now I am fully alive. Taking back my neighbourhood from obscurity has been just like taking back my Life from the darkness. I’ve wrapped my arms around my entire neighbourhood just like I’ve embraced this new Life that God has given me.

8.  Saturday April 19TH 2008 – I may not have big muscles to show for it, but I am the most physically fit today than I have ever been in my entire life and Life. I am in far better shape today than I was during my late-teens and early-to-middle-20s when I had to run a mile-and-a-half every year in the Air Force.

9.  Saturday April 26TH 2008 – ‘The cat by the dumpster’ was there again. He looked at me with his sad yellow eyes with no fear. I think if I dropped a few morsels of tasty food by his side then he would have gobbled it all up in a split second and then followed me for the remaining mile-plus of my walk. 10 years later … 

10.  Saturday May 03RD 2008 – 2 little dogs were out for some early-morning shenanigans without their owner. I think they escaped from their patio. They were having a good ole time running all around in the street and on the grass – until they saw me !  That’s when they ran behind me and straight outta sight – probably back to where they belong. I wonder which one of those little dogs was the trouble-maker ?  Which one said to the other one, ‘Hey, follow me. We’re gonna go out and paint this town. We’re gonna go and get us into some monkey business this morning. Let’s go dog !’

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Life

Age Is Just A Number

33 years ago tonight my Mom was in the hospital getting ready to give birth to my little brother Danny. He was eventually born the next day on May 03RD 1975. It just feels funny stating that ‘my little brother’ is 33-years-old. Why I remember when I was 33-years-old. I like to refer to that year in my life as ‘2000’. It seems so long ago. Of course 2006 seems so long ago based on what has happened to me since then. (My ‘life’ became a ‘Life’.)

In just about a month I will officially celebrate my 41ST birthday. Of course for the past half a year or so I’ve been telling everyone that I’m 41. I just feel that it’s more accurate to state the age that I’m closer to rather than the age that I was on my last birthday. I’ve been closer to 41 since the start of last December. In about 6 months I’ll be telling people that I’m 42 – and proud of it.

If you were born in May of 1992 then you will be able to get your driver’s license this month. I can’t believe that there will actually be drivers on the road that will be a full 25 years younger than me. It’s already difficult to comprehend the fact that we actually have civilian and military personnel that are currently working on the base (where I work) – that were born after I started working there in 1987 – as a 20-year-old !

You are 18 and legal this Summer if you were born during the Summer of 1990. I know what I was doing during the Summer Of 1990 on Panama City Beach. I actually remember (most) of it. That was a wild and crazy summer that occurred in a life that is just so far away from where I am today. I was 23 and dumb back then. Now I am 41 and alive. What a difference 18 years makes. What an adventure it has been over the past 21 months on God’s fantastic journey !

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Career Driving Food God Internet Life People Travel

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

1.  I drove from Homestead to Orlando this morning with a crew of about 16 (including kids) from Life Pointe Church. We took 4 vehicles with us (including mine). This is the longest one-day road-trip my car has been on since the first couple of weeks of March 2007 when I drove all the way up to the northwestern suburbs of Atlanta Georgia for a work-related conference.

2.  I paid a record-shattering $3.799 per gallon for gas along Florida’s Turnpike. 10.660 gallons of it went into my car, so that came out to a mind-boggling $40.50. I never thought that it would cost over $40 to fill up my fuel-efficient Saturn with less than 11 gallons of gas !

3.  Venus pointed out to me several times that perhaps my driving is just a wee-bit on the conservative side for her personal tastes. In fact she hinted that I drive like an old retired Floridian. She stated that she likes to hang out on the road with her ‘speeding buddies’. I inquired as to why she’s always late for everything if she’s always speeding. I also suggested that she leave much earlier to get to her destinations so that she wouldn’t have to speed, and she would arrive alive on-time. 

4.  To ‘rubberneck’ is to unnaturally turn your head at pretty much a 90° right angle and essentially stretch your neck so that it looks like it’s made out of rubber. When you’re driving along and everyone drives real slow so that they can examine the aftermath of a bad accident along the side of the road most people stretch their neck and hence ‘rubberneck’. Venus and I discussed that for a few minutes as Anne J. took a well-deserved nap.

5.  This is the first time since November 2006 that I’ve been here in Orlando. Once upon a time in a previous life not quite so far away I used to visit this city 3 or 4 or 5 or more times per year. Orlando used to be my playground – my home away from home – my South Beach – my Panama City Beach – my Cancun.

6.  Actual proof that it’s been awhile since I’ve been here in Orlando is the fact that I’ve made the wrong turn on at least 3 or 4 separate occasions right along the north end of International Drive – a road that I used to roll on quite frequently during a decade of fun.

7.  I’m attending the 2008 National New Church Conference here in Orlando. It’s also known as the ‘Exponential’ Conference – subtitled ‘The DNA Of Reproducing Churches’. I took a whole bunch of notes ‘chicken-scratch’ style during the first afternoon of sessions. Eventually I will decipher my notes and then transpose them into a separate blog entry that is most worthy to be included within the prestigious ‘Tossed Salad’ brand name here on this blog. Judging by how many raw notes I took this afternoon alone this may turn out to be a multi-part mini-series of ‘Tossed Salad’ editions rather than one big one. It’s all good. There’s a lot of learnin’ goin’ on here, and the funnest part of learnin’ is sharin’ the knowledge. Knowledge Is Power !  Power Is Fame !

8.  Pastor Travis and Pastor Paul are recording their notes from the conference via the new and modern way – directly onto their laptops on-site – and in Travis’s case – directly onto his blog and-or his Twitter. Believe it or not in the specific breakout session that I personally attended on blogging we spent a good 10 minutes talking about Twitter. That word – ‘Twitter’ – must have been uttered at least 50 times. Before P.J. introduced the entire Twittering concept to me and his tens of fans via his blog I had never heard that word spoken before in my entire Life.

9.  Our entire crew met up at Giordano’s for dinner over in Lake Buena Vista (very near the far-eastern entrance to Walt Disney World). We ate a bunch of their ‘World Famous Stuffed Pizza’, and in no time flat we were pretty much stuffed, walking funny, and making wacky sounds with our bodies. I took my Lipitor a good 5 hours later than normal. Better late than never – especially after this potentially heart-damaging meal !  Paul – Remind me to give you my Doctor’s business card upon our return back home to Homestead.  🙂

10.  I couldn’t possibly have more genuine fun here in Orlando than I did today, or on any other day that I’ve spent here in Orlando over the past 15 years. I am so totally humbled and blessed to be able to participate in this wonderful experience along God’s fantastic journey.