Category: Travel

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Career Commerce Food Holidays Television Travel

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

1.  I hosted some out-of-town visitors today at work. They are essentially my counterparts at a higher Headquarters level. It was a lot of fun hanging out with them and discussing how we do business here at Homestead (ARB). We also went out to Lunch at Homestead‘s very own LongHorn SteakHouse. YUM !

2.  Just as I predicted would happen once the Olive Garden next door opened for business there were not too many people eating Lunch at the LongHorn. Customer service was immediate, friendly, and professional. The food was scrumptiously delicious. I enjoyed the Parmesan Crusted Chicken with seasoned french fries and brandied cinnamon apples. It was a MASSIVE Lunch for my MASSIVE appetite !

3.  Meanwhile over at the Olive Garden the parking lot was jammed and crammed to capacity. That joint was totally jumpin’ – no doubt about it. I’ll wait until after the excitement dies down a bit to check it out for myself. The Greater Homestead area is starting to turn in to a little Italian mecca here in America’s Riviera with the Capri and Nazbar (down the road in Florida City), Mamma Mia, Olive Garden, and (soon) The Big Cheese on U.S. 1. It just so happens that Italian food is my favourite type of food, so I say to BRING IT ON !

4.  It’s the 7TH day of July, so you just know what that means !  No ?  Well it may not mean anything special for you, but for me it means that I am now a mere two months away from my next Carnival cruise vacation getaway. I set sail on the 7TH day of September (Labour Day Monday) on my 10TH anniversary Carnival cruise on the same exact cruise ship that I was on for my very first Carnival cruise during the Labour Day Weekend of 1999. GOOD TIMES !

5.  The 11TH season of “Big Brother” on CBS-TV begins this Thursday night at 8 PM EDT. It will air on Thursday nights, Sunday nights, and Tuesday nights through the middle of September. I don’t believe that I have missed a single episode of the series since it premiered 9 years ago in July 2000, and I don’t plan to miss any of the 30 or so episodes that will begin in just 48 hours. My Summer is just not complete until “Big Brother” is occupying the digital airwaves.

And that’s how I rock and roll on this Tuesday night. Thank You for caring !

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Blogging Driving History Holidays Internet Life Music People Radio Television Travel

Saturday Night Retro

I had advance-planned a totally different edition of the ‘Saturday Night Retro’ for this weekend to commemorate the 23RD anniversary of my very first LIVE concert event that I attended in my life, but due to the sudden deaths this past week of Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson I decided to back-up, regroup, and try something different here that wasn’t so planned.

I haven’t decided yet how I wish to handle the great Ed McMahon, and I’ll address Michael Jackson on a very special edition of the ‘Monday Night Countdown’ in just a couple of days.

As for Farrah Fawcett I found something very unique over on the You Tube. It’s one of my favourite songs while growing up as a kid, and it’s set to the opening credits and various clips of the “Charlie’s Angels” television show of the late-1970s (featuring Farrah Fawcett). The song itself is from Alan O’Day (no relation to me), and it’s his U.S. # 1 gold pop radio smash from exactly 32 years ago –  right around the 4TH of July weekend in 1977.  It’s a memorable singalong pop nugget that reminds me of our family’s frequent summertime road trips from Suburban Washington D.C. across the MAMMOTH Chesapeake Bay Bridge and over onto the quaint beach resorts and long boardwalks of Ocean City Maryland.

FARRAH FAWCETT – 1947-2009

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Blogging Food Holidays Travel Weather

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

1.  It’s a special Tuesday night edition of the ‘Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’. I make light of that fact because normally I compile and publish these weekly miscellaneous thoughts during the mid-afternoon hours on Tuesdays. Tonight I’m just getting started at 6:38 PM EDT, so I’m running about 3 hours behind schedule. Let’s see if I can get these done and on the web before 8 PM EDT. (Check out Thought # 5 below to see if I succeeded.)

2.  I ate Dinner this afternoon with a good friend over at the Cracker Barrel in Florida City (where all of the food is). I enjoyed the Tuesday Dinner Special – that’s the Butter Baked Chicken (delicious) and two entrées of my choice. I selected the steak fries (yummy) and the macaroni and cheese (scrumptious). You could tell that I thoroughly enjoyed the chicken by the carcass that I left behind after I totally devoured it. Yo that’s how I roll !

3.  Yesterday was one of the hottest days in modern recorded weather history as temperatures soared into the upper-90s to near 100°F in most locations here in America’s Riviera. Homestead hit 95°F yesterday afternoon – a good 5°F above normal for this time of the year. To make up for yesterday’s unusual heatwave it was at least 20°F cooler for much of today as frequent thunderstorms kept us stuck in the mid-70s. The cause of yesterday’s heatwave and today’s severe weather ?  That would be an unusual wintertime-like cold front that’s sitting directly over us. It doesn’t belong this far south during this time of the year. It gave our subtropical atmosphere an upset stomach !

4.  Let it be known that I have no further extended weekend vacations planned (out-of-town) for the next (nearly) 11 weeks. My next scheduled vacation is a Carnival cruise during Labor Day week. It’ll be my 8TH Carnival cruise overall – and my 10TH anniversary (to the week) as a Carnival cruiser. Once I hit 10 cruises with Carnival I become a Platinum cruiser. I will so totally dig that !

5.  This evolved into an ‘old-school’ edition of the ‘Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’. Once upon a time this was a totally spontaneous weekly blog series in that I had absolutely no clue what I was planning to write until I actually did so. That actually has not been the case for most of the past 5 months ever since the ‘Thursday Night Mini Thoughts’ has been in existence. The ‘Grab Bag’ has been partially scripted in that I had a rough outline prepared in advance of what I wanted to cover, while the ‘Mini Thoughts’ has been the totally spontaneous spur-of-the-moment weekly blog series. Tonight’s edition of the ‘Grab Bag’ has deviated from that recent formula. It was compiled and published on this Tuesday night (rather than Tuesday afternoon) – and it was totally spontaneous. I had absolutely no clue what I was going to write until I actually sat down here at my computer 41 minutes ago to get started with it all.

Be sure to catch the totally spontaneous ‘Thursday Night Mini Thoughts’ in less than two days, and remember – if it’s Tuesday – then it is time for the ‘Grab Bag’ !

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Blogging Driving Food Health Humor Shopping Travel

Saturday Morning Shenanigans

Good Morning my friends !  It’s just about 6:30 AM CDT as I begin composing this blog entry – that’s 7:30 AM EDT for those of you along the vast Eastern Seaboard.

Since Thursday afternoon I’ve been livin’, eatin’, and playin’ here in the northeastern corridor of Suburban Dallas Texas – the affluent cities of Allen, Fairview, and McKinney.

Much of yesterday me, my Brother, his wife, and our Mom played “Million Dollar Password“. We kept giving each other one-word clues in an attempt to figure out what the password was that we were trying to describe. I recommend that we play this game at our next Life Group fellowship !  Last night we picked up Taboo, so we’ll be playing that tonight. That’ll be lots of fun, and I have lots of experience with that game !  Good Times !

Yesterday morning me and my brother went on an approximate 8 to 9 mile bicycle ride for about an hour all throughout the neighbourhoods, parks, and streets of northeastern Allen Texas. It’s possibly the first time that I’ve been on a bicycle ride in over 21 years since 1988 when my bicycle at the time was my only form of personal transportation. (That was the year before I bought my very first new car in South Florida.)

3 MASSIVE MEALS thus far since I’ve been here. Match the restaurant in the first group with what my main course was in the second group with the day and the meal that I enjoyed it on in the third group:

RESTAURANT:
1.  Saltgrass Steak House
2.  Scotty P’s Hamburgers
3.  Brio Tuscan Grille

MAIN COURSE:
A.  Original Hamburger, Sweet Potato Fries, Coke
B.  Chicken Milanese Pomodoro, Caesar Salad, Sierra Mist
C.  Pat’s Ribeye, Broccoli Cheese Au Gratin, Caesar Salad, Peach Tea

DAY & MEAL
I.  Friday Dinner
II.  Thursday Dinner
III.  Friday Lunch

I’ll reveal the correct answers in a future blog entry. Be sure to catch a fresh new ‘Saturday Night Retro’ tonight, but FIRST – REMEMBER THIS !