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Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

1.  I receive a lot of junk mail in my old-fashioned traditional mailbox. I wish there was a way where we could select which specific stores we would like to receive weekly advertisements for, and then only receive junk mail from them. But then I guess that it wouldn’t really be ‘junk’ mail, but rather ‘want’ mail. I receive weekly ads from Winn-Dixie, Sedano’s, and Diaz Supermarket (among others). I don’t shop at any of these fine grocery stores. I do shop at Publix, and I think that I would actually pay a small fee just to receive their weekly ad in the mail.

2.  It’s ‘The Major’s Lunch-A-Thon’. This past Sunday I ate at Longhorn Steakhouse. On Monday I ate at Beef ‘O’ Brady’s. Today I ate at Olive Garden. The tour de force of fine dining establishments in and around Homestead continues on Wednesday and Thursday before I head out-of-town on Friday. Lunch – It does a Chris good !

3.  ‘For Crying Out Loud !’ – Where does that phrase actually come from anyway ?  It’s a phrase that some people utilize in lieu of cussing – particularly when the’re astonished and can’t believe their eyes. I don’t think that I’ve ever uttered that phrase intentionally or otherwise. I suppose it’s a phrase (like many others) that’s probably inherited from generation to generation within the family. Incidentally how can you not ‘believe your eyes’ ?  Have your eyes ever lied to you ?  Well maybe after drinking !

4.  I filled up my car with gas this afternoon on my way home from work. I’ll be doing it again this Friday morning up near Orlando along Florida’s Turnpike. And then I’ll do it again about 5 hours later up in the northwestern panhandle of Florida along I-10. And then I’ll probably do it again another 5 hours after that at my first pit stop on my road trip. The adventure begins in less than 60 hours !

5.  The weather should be nice and seasonal on my way to the Dallas Texas area this Friday and Saturday with temperatures within a rather narrow range on both days – pretty much mid-60s to mid-70s on Friday and low-50s to mid-60s on Saturday – so neither cold nor hot. I should be able to maximize my gas mileage during my trip there by not using the A.C. We’ll see.

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Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

It’s the 102ND edition of the weekly ‘Grab Bag’ of my miscellaneous thoughts:

1.  It’s not supposed to be in the lower-80s outside when we wake up early in the morning, and we shouldn’t have heat indices way up into the mid-90s late in the afternoon – during the final week of October !  This is not normal South Florida weather for this time of the year. If you want more normal weather then stick around. I see a very gradual cooling trend beginning this weekend with a noticeable cooldown in about 10 days. How much cooler ?  Stay tuned !

2.  I tend to accumulate a lot of loose change in one of the small compartments of my car. Sometimes it gets totally out-of-hand where if I were a real annnoying person I could actually buy an entire fast food meal for over $5 in all loose change – but I would never do that. What I try to do is to pick out about $0.75 or so in quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies so that I can use it for exact change whenever I walk in to a fast food joint or store. Whenever I do that it always seems like the total cost of my bill is so many dollars and 98 cents, so I end up using no change at all. When I don’t prepare in advance with loose change I end up getting a bill for something like so many dollars and 2 cents – or 14 cents – or 26 cents – or whatever so that I end up getting another pound of loose change. Make cents sense ?

3.  For a whole year from November of 2007 through November of 2008 I suffered through 8 colds. It’s been nearly an entire year since then, and I can only remember one minor cold over the past 12 months – and even that one cold may not have actually been a real cold. There have been sick people and their nasty germs all around me everywhere I go, and yet I’ve miraculously stayed on the healthy side. I know though that it’s only a matter of time before the germs gather strength and invade my body like there’s no tomorrow – when I least suspect it no doubt.

4.  One of the places that I now avoid as much as I can is Starbucks. It’s where I picked up at least several of those 8 colds from 2007 into 2008. Once I stopped going there (both locations – Homestead and Florida City) – the colds stopped. Nevertheless I have a dilemma to deal with now. Yesterday morning I tried this for the first time ever, and it was outrageously scrumptious. It was perhaps the most delicious instant coffee that I’ve ever tasted in my entire life. I want more now !  I may eventually find myself at a nearby Starbucks purchasing some more of them, or I may even buy some online.

5.  4 years ago this week we were dealing with the aftermath of the surprisingly devastating Hurricane Wilma. It was the most destructive hurricane to affect South Florida since Hurricane Andrew 13 years earlier. Water, power, and telephone service (mostly cell) was out in some areas in a wide swath of South Florida for up to a month, and traffic jams lined up at the rare gas stations and grocery stores that were actually open for business. Due to a blatant lack of preparation on my part I waited in line for gas for about 8 hours on one of those early days of the aftermath !  It seems like it’s been more than only four years since that chaos.

Be sure to check out my ‘Thursday Night Mini Thoughts’ later this week !

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The Major’s Walk-A-Thon: Special On-Location Edition – Southwest Florida

1.  It’s Columbus Day, and it’s a day of relaxation for me after a lot of walking and a lot of driving. I drove 415.5 miles over 37 hours. That’s about 3 weeks of normal every day Homestead driving for me, and it’s just as I had planned out prior to embarking on the road trip. 201.3 miles of driving occurred on Saturday as I drove from Florida City to Lehigh Acres by way of Everglades City, Naples, and Estero. The remaining 214.2 miles of driving occurred on Sunday on the return trip back home to Homestead from Estero (where I spent the night) – via Naples and Plantation Key.

2.  On my Saturday morning drive over to the southwest coast of Florida I stopped for brief visits at the Big Cypress National Preserve Oasis Visitor Center as well as the Everglades National Park Gulf Coast Visitor Center just south of Everglades City. I don’t think that I have ever been to Everglades City before. (If I have then I don’t remember it.) It’s very small and very historic. About 500 people live there full-time. I plan to return back there during the cooler winter months to walk around the historic downtown area and check out the museum there.

3.  After a MASSIVE Lunch at Pinchers Crab Shack at Tin City on the waterfront in Naples, a walk to the end of the long city pier over the Gulf Of Mexico, and a nice scenic neighbourhood drive along the peaceful and quiet south coast of Naples I proceeded up to the big movie theatre north of Naples to get out of the mid-90s heat and sun – and to see the current box office smash “Zombieland“. It was campy and hilarious – perhaps a future cult classic ?

4.  It was so great to hear my radio station – The Call – over in southwest Florida. They just recently moved over from 107.5 FM to 107.7 FM in Naples. It’s an extremely weak translator station, and it was a bit ‘staticky’ all around the city – but a weak CALL-FM was definitely better than no CALL-FM. Up closer to Fort Myers I picked-up the much stronger 91.9 FM signal of The Call. It sounded great up and down I-75. On Saturday night I made my way over to Lehigh Acres (10 miles east of I-75 and Fort Myers) to attend a rock concert at a church featuring Jubilee, Horizons Fall, and Manic Drive. Rob from The Call was there. It was cool to hang out with him for a little while. All three bands rocked the joint hard and LOUD !

5.  On Sunday morning (after church in the park) I visited the Naples Zoo to check up on my animal friends. I then walked around the Coastland Center Mall to cool off a bit before making the return trip back to the southeast coast of Florida. This was my first visit over to the Naples area in about 20 months – way too long. My next visit will be much sooner than that – hopefully sometime during the upcoming cooler and dryer winter season. I think that it’s reasonable to state that it’s no longer ‘possible’ that I plan to eventually live in Naples, but that it’s ‘probable’. I fell in love with Naples all over again, and I wish to live there in the future. There is so much that I wish to see and do over there, so that will justify my more frequent visits to the area, and with each new visit I’ll be looking around for potential new neighbourhoods to call my future new home.

LATER TODAY – 2 MORE BLOG POSTS:
– ‘Celebration Community Beach Church At The Park’
– ‘Life Pointe Church Plantation Key Lime Pie’

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Food Holidays Home Shopping

The Major’s Tweets

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If you’re not following me on Twitter then have no worries, for I’ve got the best of the best tweets from this past week. They are listed in chronological order:

– Hello Friday. It is SO great to see you. Let’s do stuff. [6:11 AM Sep 25th from Junkyard Dog]

– Jingle Bells: It’s exactly 3 months to Christmas Day !  [10:00 AM Sep 25th from Junkyard Dog]

– I finally replaced my old home office chair from the mid-1990s with a new modern 2009 model. I could sit in this thing all day long !  [2:22 PM Sep 25th from twitter.com]

– I would love to sit in this new home office chair at Life Pointe Church on Sunday morning, but I don’t think that it would fit in my car !  [7:48 PM Sep 25th from twitter.com]

– Every 52 days I get a haircut at the legendary Woody’s, and this morning was no exception. Now my hair’s so short I don’t have to comb it !  [9:09 AM Sep 26th from twitter.com]

– If you’re looking for that perfect Christmas gift for me then you simply can’t go wrong with ‘The Slanket’. I’ll take the Camo. [1:46 PM Sep 26th from twitter.com]

– Talkin’ Turkey: Thanksgiving Day is exactly 2 months from today !  [3:01 PM Sep 26th from twitter.com]

I just ate 14 hot wings courtesy of Publix – where shopping is a pleasure – and their hot wings are barely hot – but that’s how I like them. [12:57 PM Sep 27th from twitter.com]

Follow me @majorhitwaves.