Category: Travel

Categories
Driving Politics Travel Weather

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

1.  Walt Disney World’s Pleasure Island went out of business back on Saturday September 27TH 2008. Apparently people began lining up at the entrances to the ‘Downtown Disney’ section at 9 AM that morning just so that they could get in to the joint for one last party to go. From what I’ve read at Wikipedia it was the biggest party that Pleasure Island had seen since its hey day of the mid-to-late-1990s. I believe it too. I spent a lot of time there for about a dozen years from 1994 to 2006. I saw a once-thriving nightclub district begin to diminish and die a slow death as this current decade continued on.

1989-2008
Rest In Peace: 1989-2008

2.  Back in July when gas prices were hovering right around $4 per gallon I boldly stated that they would plummet to the $3.25 to $3.50 range in time for Thanksgiving. Later on I got even more outrageous by stating that gas prices would collapse by at least a dollar per gallon. And so here we are. Average gas prices are now below $3 per gallon in 17 out of 50 states, and several cities in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas now have gas near $2.50 per gallon. Want my next ludicrous prediction ?  Tune in next Tuesday night.

3.  Get ready for a real-life wintertime cold front to sweep through South Florida this weekend. Get ready for our rainy season to come to an abrupt end. Get ready to shock everything metallic in sight as the relative humidity plummets towards arid conditions. Get ready for temperatures early in the morning in the refreshing mid-60s !  Yeah you heard me !

4.  I received my absentee ballot for the upcoming election in the mail last week. Maybe this Saturday I will declare it to be ‘Election Day’ in my living room as I vote on paper and send it on its way via the U.S. Mail.

5.  This young man is cool and smart:

Categories
Holidays Life Travel

Bedtime Stories

Good Evening My Friends,

It’s Sunday night. It’s after 9 PM, and I just felt like posting one more blog entry for tonight before I retire to bed. Tomorrow is Columbus Day – a major Federal holiday here in the U.S. – or as this cat refers to it – ‘a fake holiday’ – a normal work day for Life Pointe Church staff.

This morning as I was driving southbound along the new-and-improved ’18-Mile-Stretch’ (U.S. 1 between Florida City and Key Largo) I was trying to figure out when was the last time I had driven down into the Florida Keys. It was nearly 22 months ago – about 3 weeks before I discovered Life Pointe Church for the first time. It was back during the final few days of December 2006 when I drove all the way down to Key West with my parents who were visiting me here in Homestead for the first time in about 18½ years.

Although it’s been nearly two years since I set foot in the Keys I was a fairly regular visitor for a good decade up until 2006. I mostly went down there to party – back when I used to that. In fact I used to party pretty much within a single mile of where our new campus is located at in Plantation Key (near Mile Marker 90).

There’s a lot of places I don’t go to anymore because of who I am today as a born-again Christian. The Florida Keys (to the south) and Orlando (to the north) are two such places that I no longer have a vested interest in. Well scratch that – because of our new Life Pointe Church campus down south. It felt weird returning to the scene of the crime after all of this time – just as weird as it felt returning to Orlando for a national Christian conference last April after previously abandoning everything that I had up there. My Life (always capitalized) has changed since then. Thanks Jesus for rescuing me from the darkness and saving me. I owe it all to You.

Well that’s ‘Bedtime Stories’ for this glorious Sunday night. Thank You for allowing me to share my Life with you, and until we hang out again – REMEMBER THIS !

SLOW DOWN !
SLOW DOWN !
Categories
History Home Life Television Travel

Saturday Night Retro

Last Saturday night we flashed back 35 years ago to 1973. This week I’m taking you even further back – on a trip to 1969.

As the year began I was 18 months old and beginning to walk alone – without braces (apparently due to pigeon toe / curved feet). I started the year in Selma Alabama (where I was born), but then we moved to Greenbelt Maryland (very near NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center). We lived in the brand new Chelsea Wood rental apartment complex on Greenbelt Road. 40 years later that apartment complex still stands, but they are now condominiums (privately owned). It looks exactly the same today (at least on the outside) as it did all of those years ago.

Chelsea Wood, Greenbelt Maryland
Chelsea Wood, Greenbelt Maryland

We lived in a first-floor unit, and I remember an early birthday party for me with a bunch of the local toddlers that was held right out front of our apartment building in the lush grassy area.

One of my lifelong wishes before it’s too late is to return to the Prince Georges County Maryland region of the Washington D.C. area for a few days. I’d like to spend some quality time retracing the early years of my life through the various neighbourhoods and communities that I lived in and spent a lot of time in for 11 years in Greenbelt, Bowie, Glenn Dale, Lanham, Seabrook, New Carrollton, and Riverdale. After all it was there where the trunk of my life was developed.

I’ve stated before that my childhood was for the most part forgettable and downright miserable; however, it wasn’t all a blur, and it wasn’t all bad either. There were a lot of good times that I experienced during those early years of my life, and I remember much of them to this day. Perhaps it was the good times that I have purposely chosen to remember after all of these years. 

As a curious two-year-old toddler living in my apartment with my Mom and Dad I remember getting bathed in the kitchen sink. I also remember watching and enjoying “Rowan And Martin’s Laugh-In” every Monday night at 8 PM on NBC-TV. That was family night in front of the tube. The entire nation was watching.

Categories
Travel

Homestead Florida In The Wall Street Journal

This article in The Wall Street Journal made me feel awesomely proud to call Homestead Florida my home. It’s one of the most positive well-written news articles I have ever read regarding my city of the past 21 years.