Category: Shopping

Categories
History Shopping

Monday Night Countdown

TODAY – the 01ST of December – is my 21ST anniversary of living aqui en el Sur de Florida. I arrived at Homestead Air Force Base during the wee early-morning hours of the 01ST of December in 1987. Aside from the 19 months immediately following the destruction of the Homestead area by Hurricane Andrew I’ve been here ever since. This is my home. This is where I belong. These are my TOP 5 favourite shopping malls of all-time here in South Florida:

5.  Cutler Ridge Mall / Southland Mall
It’s much nicer (and safer) today than it’s ever been. It’s officially the first shopping mall I ever visited here in South Florida back in December 1987. I had been going there a few times a year over the past 14 years or so. I’ll be visiting more often since they have a nice movie theatre there now.

4.  Miami International Mall
Before the Dolphin Mall ever existed this was the shopping mall to visit on my way to the airport, the Flagler Dog Track, Miami, or the Beaches. This is your basic standard neighbourhood Simon mall. Sometimes you just need to go back to basics and shop the simple life.

3.  Dolphin Mall
If I lived in the neighbourhood then I’m afraid that I’d be there every single day shopping, eating, drinking, and watching movies. This is as close as it gets to Downtown Disney West Side. It’s a good thing that I don’t live in the neighbourhood. There could be trouble.

2.  The Falls
A stroll through this luxurious outdoor shopping mall is like a stroll down memory lane for me. This was the cool place to hang out a generation ago. When I was a kid I used to hang out there. Of course for me ‘kid’ means early-20s. 

1.  The Shops At Sunset Place
I watched this jumpin’ joint get built a decade ago, and once it opened for business in 1999 I planned entire Saturdays around it. If you couldn’t find me in Homestead on any given Saturday from 1999 to 2005 then I was probably hiding out at the Virgin Megastore, the Barnes & Noble, or the AMC-24.

Categories
Animals Driving Food Health Holidays Home Shopping Television

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

1.  It’s Veterans Day all across the great United States Of America, and it’s the Federal Holiday each year that means the most to me personally. I stopped everything that I was doing at exactly 11:11 AM this morning. I checked out the big three cable news networks – Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC – and not a single one of them had LIVE coverage of any Veterans Day ceremony anywhere. What a shame.

2.  On both Saturday and Sunday I drove more than 80 miles each day. That’s about 4 times my daily average. It was an exhausting first-half of my long holiday weekend, and a more peaceful and quiet second-half (yesterday and today). I actually felt a real subtle hint of a possible 8TH cold in 12 months coming on this morning. I took an extra 500 MG Vitamin C tablet to fight this fight because I don’t have time for another cold this week – or next week.

3.  This morning I went to Publix – where shopping is a pleasure – about 10 minutes after they opened for business shortly after 7 AM. I did my grocery shopping for the next couple of weeks. After that I went to McDonald’s to pick-up breakfast. You get faster service when you actually get out of your car, walk in to the joint, and order the food face-to-face to an actual human being (rather than a drive-thru speaker).

4.  I did a little mini ‘The Major’s Walk-A-Thon’ this morning. I walked to and from the clubhouse near the main entrance of my neighbourhood. That’s a little more than a half-a-mile round-trip. I had to do my annual vehicle registration there. Prior to last year a lazy me would have driven it. Nowadays I see a mile or two and think ‘Walk-A-Thon’. I saw a new cat during this mini walk. The feline looked at me from afar and sighed to himself or herself, ‘Friend – Not Foe’.

5.  Ford Championship Weekend is just two days away at our Homestead-Miami Speedway, so you just know what that means – tens of thousands of out-of-town tourists and NASCAR fans galore descending on our home turf spending their hard-earned money in our stores and restaurants. Show them respect. Be nice to them. Welcome them to our fine city. Invite them back for more fun.

Categories
Driving Food God Shopping

The Major’s Walk-A-Thon / Saturday Night Retro: Special ‘Mash-Up’ Edition

TODAY I took the walk on-the-road, and it was just like old times:

1.  I drove over 80 miles today over the course of 8 hours, and my first stop was Miami Beach. Last year I missed it, but this year I went back to the South Florida International Auto Show at the Miami Beach Convention Center. This is the only annual event that I attend at the Convention Center. It’s the one place where all of South Florida’s automobile dealerships come together and show off their new goods. My visits through each of the exhibits are rather brisk, so I can typically do a round-robin through it all in about 2 to 3 hours. You can easily spend the entire day there. It’s a lot of fun for the whole family !

2.  I spent more time with the Hondas than with most of the other car exhibits. My next car will probably be a Honda Civic Si Coupe. Or maybe I’ll get a Mitsubishi Eclipse. I’ve been driving around in a Saturn for nearly a dozen years. That’s over 131,000 miles of driving. (I’ve been keeping track.) Back in 1997 when I bought my first Saturn they were hip cars from an innovative car company. Nowadays they appear to be a shell of their former selves. They don’t even make any of the three models that I’ve owned anymore. Their exhibit at the auto show was really lame too with a small footprint. That tells me that the’re struggling as a company.

3.  One of my favourite games at the auto show is to try to guess the colour of the car. What looks red or green or blue isn’t really red or green or blue. The actual names of the particular colours are much more complicated than that. A lot of cool car colours have the word ‘copper’ in them. I saw three spectacular car colours in particular that were named ‘urban titanium’, ‘polished metal’, and ‘black cherry’. The first two colours were essentially dark variations of bluish-gray while black cherry looked black to me until I got up real close to it and noticed a hint of maroon. I can see myself driving around in an urban titanium coloured car.

4.  After my tour throughout the auto show I took I-395 to U.S. 1 straight down to The Shops At Sunset Place. It was my first visit to one of my former playgrounds here in South Florida in a couple of years. I watched that joint get built exactly a decade ago, and when it finally opened for business in 1999 it was the place to be. I planned entire Saturdays around that place with the Virgin Megastore, the Barnes & Noble, and the AMC-24 being must-stops. Walking through that mall nowadays is like walking through time and remembering the way my life (not capitalized) used to be. The more things change the more things stay the same. Many of the original stores are long gone and replaced with something different, and the mall is definitely showing its age – perhaps quicker than it should be. It needs a good pressure washing and a paint job !  But if there ever was a mall here in South Florida that I ‘grew up’ at it’s this one – even if that growing up occurred during my wild and crazy 30s. As I walked through that mall this afternoon I got the chills here and there. It was my first visit to this mall as a born-again Christian.

5.  After a movie at the AMC-24 I ate dinner at Splitsville. What’s Splitsville you may ask ?  Think Dave & Busters or Gameworks – but instead of video games it’s an upscale bowling alley along with an upscale restaurant. It’s brand new at the mall, and I had never heard of it until I saw it there (located right next door to the AMC-24 box office on the second floor). I enjoyed a MASSIVE dinner there, and I can tell you this. I will be back for more. The customer service was great. The food was awesome. The ambience was perfect. I can see my Singles Life Group hanging out there sometime in the near future.

Ever since I found myself on God’s fantastic journey back during the Summer Of 2006 I’ve been somewhat protecting myself from the evils of darkness that exist in the outside world. I’ve been unfairly holding myself hostage in my own home to keep myself away from all of those places that I used to visit and all of those things that I used to do. It’s as if I’ve been denying that the past ever existed at times. As time has progressed my faith in God just keeps on getting stronger and stronger. I’ve realized that I am so far into the goodness of daylight that there’s no going back now to where I’ve come from. But it’s OK to get out and mingle with the world again. I am strong enough to know that with God guiding and directing my every move and my every decision I’ll be just fine going ‘Retro’ – even retracing former steps – and enjoying my Life (always capitalized) out in the world today.

Categories
Food Health Shopping

Walmart: It’s What’s For Breakfast

So I’m officially at home today (Friday) on sick leave. As an employee of the Department Of Defense I’ve accumulated well over 1,300 hours of sick leave (about 166 work days), so I’m using a minuscule percentage (0.6%) of my sick leave today.

I really am sick today. This is officially Day 3 of my 7TH cold in 12 months, but unofficially it’s Day 5 because I felt something bad coming on as early as Monday. On Wednesday the right-hand side of my nose was closed for business. Yesterday it had a soft reopening, but then the left-hand side of my nose had its share of problems. Today both sides are equally experiencing technical difficulties. I also have a headache (due to excess sinus pressure), partially-blocked ears, and occasional hot-flashes of sweat.

So I set out (rather late) this morning to eat a MASSIVE breakfast over at Denny’s of Florida City (where all of the food is). That didn’t happen because when I got there the parking lot was crammed to capacity (like I’ve never seen it before), so I just kept on driving by.

At that precise moment in time and space I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to go to Walmart of all places (also in Florida City – where all of the commercial merchandise is). It was the first time that I had set foot in that store in years !  The joint has changed a lot since I was last there. It’s cleaner, more organized, and brighter now. They must have all-new management in place now because this is not the same scary Walmart that I used to set foot in every few years. This supercenter is now shoppable !  I spent nearly an hour there. I even bought a few groceries there in addition to a lovely birthday gift that I bought for one of my little buddies whose party I plan to attend tomorrow morning (health-permitting).

I must say though that Walmart’s grocery prices are nothing to sneeze about. During a general price survey of the joint I realized that their prices are either slightly lower – or in some cases slightly higher than what I’m used to at Publix. I expected much lower prices, but I guess that with a nicer store to shop at they had to raise their prices a bit. I’ll probably shop there more often than I have in the past (more than once every two or three years).

I should have gotten breakfast at Walmart. They have an actual McDonald’s inside the joint !