It was my 19TH Christmas on Earth back in 1985 – and my first away from home and away from my family. I was newly stationed in the USAF in the United Kingdom by 6½ weeks, so there was no chance at all that I could take leave and return back home stateside for the holidays.
While I have vivid memories of my two years spent living, working, and playing in the U.K. I don’t remember much from that Christmas of 1985 away from my loved ones. I don’t remember if I was invited out to a coworker’s home, or if I stayed at the dorm and walked to the chow hall for a very special dinner. It was obviously a cold and forgettable holiday season in my life back then.
Here’s a song that I actually do remember from that Christmas, for it was the coveted Christmas # 1 smash on the radio all across the British Isles. It’s from one of the biggest-selling male artists in British music history. He’s Shakin’ (‘Shaky’) Stevens, and THIS is “Merry Christmas Everyone” !
1. As blizzards, ice storms, and cold and wind events sweep across the free nation from California to Maine we seem to be stuck in a summertime weather pattern aqui a America’s Riviera / El Sur de Florida. I’m forecasting a continuation of our well above normal temperatures for at least another 7 to 10 days. That means afternoon high temperatures well into the mid-80s (with heat indices approaching or exceeding 90°F). We’ll have to wait awhile to get in on some of that cold and crisp air not too far to the north of us.
2. If you’ve been following me via my Twitter account then you already know that I’ve been working on my first big speech that I give tonight at my Toastmasters club. It’s an ice-breaker speech, so that means that I have to talk about a very familiar subject that’s near and dear to me – ME ! It’s all about me for 4 to 6 minutes. I think I’ve got it down to about 5½ minutes, so we’ll see how it all works out. I’m really looking forward to the evaluations afterwards – positive and negative. I can only get better from this point forward.
3. I felt like a Toastmaster today at work. I facilitated a 1-hour and 40-minute briefing over at our Base Conference Center this morning in which I stood behind a podium at the front of the main briefing room and guided the slide presentation and introduced the various speakers. It was actually some great practice for tonight and future nights at Toastmasters as well as my hosting duties on occasional Sunday mornings at Life Pointe Church.
4. On January 04TH 2010 I make the momentous 100TH monthly payment on my current home (out of 180). I’ve got a 15-year mortgage loan on my current home that I bought during the week prior to ‘9-11’ in 2001, so it’s about 55% percent paid off now. It feels weird to know that I’ve been living in this home for 14½ years now – longer than any other by far. (I rented for 6 years before I bought.) When I moved in to this home I had just turned 28-years-old. Now I’m 42½-years-old. (Yes Kelly J. I just said ’42½’.)
5. And now I’ve got a new home on Fleming Island in Clay County Florida (southwestern fringes of the Jacksonville area) that I need to get officially transferred over to my name to make it all legal and everything. My parents lived in it for about 6 years up until this past February when I moved them over to Fairview Texas (within 5 miles of my brother and sister-in-law). Once I get their home officially transferred over to me then I get to pay for it ! BRING IT $ !
Be sure to catch my ‘Thursday Night Mini Thoughts’ in less than 48 hours !
– It’s time for my favourite blog entry of the week.
– That’s because there’s no planning for it.
– It just happens.
– I just do it.
– This afternoon on my drive home from work cops were pulling over people.
– There were 3 cop cars with lights on at 3 separate locations within 3 miles.
– That’s triple the overall average of 0 cop cars !
– One vehicle driving directly behind me was pulled over by a cop.
– I dig that !
– When I see a cop I continue driving as normal while others slam their brakes.
– That’s because I’m a safe and law-abiding driver – unlike most people I know.
– It’s why I’m alive today after my recent trek to North Texas and back.
– 8 out of every 10 vehicles on the road pass me.
– Does anyone know of a good Real Estate attorney here in Homestead ?
– I need one next week.
– I own a 2ND home now, and I need to get everything transferred over.
– NO – I’m not moving away from Homestead !
– My parents gave me their former home up in the Jacksonville area.
– I just need to start paying for it now.
– My Credit Union is going to love me when they find out about this.
– There is no cold air in sight even though it’s December.
– This is an El Niño winter, so that means an abnormally wet winter.
– El Niño winters can produce double, triple, and even more the normal rain.
– It can also get cold for extended periods of time (several weeks).
– That usually happens later in the season.
– It should be an exciting winter season weatherwise.
– The murder of an unborn baby is absolutely despicable.
– Yet it is so unbelievably acceptable.
– Just 18 days following conception that heart is beating.
– Brain waves follow soon after.
– Tens of millions of human lives have been murdered since Roe V. Wade.
– That sounds like a Holocaust to me.
– Pro-Choice = Pro-Death
– I was once a firm believer in the death penalty.
– I no longer support it.
– It’s been a gradual change in thinking for me over the past 40 months.
– I don’t believe that anyone has a right to kill anyone else – no matter what.
– The One who creates the Life must be The One who ends the Life.
– That can only be God.
It’s time for the informal debriefing of my recent long road trip. Let’s roll:
1. First I’ve got some raw stats – 1,381.3 miles going from Homestead Florida to Allen Texas – and an unbelievably close 1,383.4 miles going from Allen Texas to Homestead Florida. That’s a difference of only 2.1 miles – or a mere 0.15%. That’s ridiculously close for both legs of the longest road trip of my lifetime. Here’s another crazy fact. I drove 0.0 miles from the moment that I arrived in Allen Texas on a Saturday afternoon until the moment that I departed the following Saturday morning. I meant to drive around and explore the local area, but I never got around to doing so. My brother drove us everywhere that we went, and I was happy with that. He has far more experience driving amongst the crazy North Texas drivers. He is one !
2. I generally drive an overall average of about 21 miles per day – or close to 7,750 miles per year. (It’s great to live and work within 7½ miles of each other.) I amassed a grand total of 2,764.7 miles on this road trip from start to finish – or about 132 days worth of driving (nearly 4½ months) in a mere 4 days (2 days over and 2 days back). My car’s already due for its next routine 3-month preventive maintenance just a little more than 3 weeks after its last one !
3. There were a lot of horrifying traffic experiences along the way to (and especially) returning back from Texas. It was truly a miracle from up above over and over again that I did not get hit by any other vehicles big and small by all of the various crazy lunatic drivers that were all around me. I knew that I was driving some busy highways on the busiest travel days of the year, but I always thought that the airports were busy more so than the highways. This past Sunday I-75 from I-10 to Florida’s Turnpike was so thick and congested that traffic occasionally came to a grinding halt at times – 0 MPH. The same was true over much of the entire length of Florida’s Turnpike all the way down to the Broward / Miami-Dade County line. Ironically the Miami-Dade County portion of the Turnpike southbound was the most peaceful portion of my trek as I hit the final home stretch en route to my home sweet Homestead.
4. One horrific moment that’s still rather clear in my mind occurred high atop the mighty Mississippi River Bridge on I-10 on the eastbound approach into Baton Rouge Louisiana. It is apparently the highest bridge over the entire length of the river, and I believe it ! I was in the middle lane which came to a grinding halt (due to thick heavy traffic at the time); however, both of the other lanes were still moving slowly. As I was stuck in my middle lane for what seemed like forever at the time (but was surely for less than a minute) I could actually feel the bridge sway back-and-forth with the movement of the other vehicles. This frightened me to bits and pieces, and I decided that the best thing to do at that precise point in time and space was to grip my steering wheel harder than I ever had previously. I suppose that during that short ordeal it made me feel just a little bit more secure (for no logical reason whatsoever).
Mississippi River Bridge - I-10 - Baton Rouge Louisiana
5. Would I do it all over again ? Of course I would ! Before I embarked on this longest road trip ever I figured that once I got this out of my system that I wouldn’t want to do it again. That was then, but this is now. I want to do it again. I may plan my travel days a bit differently next time so as to minimize the horrific traffic experiences along the way. I really enjoyed the freedom of being able to take whatever I felt like taking on this road trip without any of the various space, weight, and security limitations that exist via flying. I made light of some of the horrific traffic experiences along the way, but there were plenty of peaceful, quiet, and uneventful stretches of this road trip as well. Those experiences made it all worth it, and I’m looking forward to doing it all over again – perhaps as soon as 5 months from now !
CountUp 