Category: Travel

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Television Travel

Monday Night Countdown

26 states (and the District Of Columbia) lie entirely east of the Great Mississippi River, and I’ve set foot in all but a handful of them.

Here are the TOP 5 states that I have not set foot in, but would love to some day:

5.  Vermont – I’d love to stay at the historic Stratford Inn and hang out for awhile with Dick and Joanna, Michael and Stephanie, George, Larry, his brother Darryl, and his other brother Darryl. (I’m sure that Vermont is just like “Newhart“.)

4.  Rhode Island – As a little kid I ventured into the southeastern corner of Delaware every Summer that we visited Ocean City Maryland (just across the border). Delaware’s the 2ND smallest state in the Union. I want to visit the tiniest state of them all.

3.  Massachusetts – I know a lot of people from Boston. The’re mostly on TV and in the movies. I’d like to be a tourist for a long weekend in the big city that they all came from.

2.  Maine – I’ve been to the southern terminus of both I-95 and U.S. 1 many times. I’d love to see where it all starts. I’d also love to visit Eastport and watch the first sunrise of the nation.

1.  New York – In my 41+ years on God’s Great Earth I’ve never been to the city so nice they named it twice – New York, New York. I want to spend an entire week there and just sightsee !

Categories
Driving Travel

The Major’s Drive-A-Thon

I’m back home. Here’s a look back at my recent road-trip / vacation:

1.  From start (early Thursday morning) to finish (mid Sunday afternoon) I drove a grand total of 764 miles from here to there and then back again. That’s 372 miles on Thursday, 0 miles on Friday, 23 miles on Saturday, and 369 miles on Sunday.

2.  I filled up with gas twice on this road-trip – both times at the same exact Chevron station on North Wickam Road just off I-95 north of Melbourne. I basically filled up there on Thursday afternoon, drove 326.6 miles, and then filled up there again on this Sunday afternoon. I paid $3.679 per gallon both times. I averaged about 29 MPG on this road-trip. That’s down a bit from previous road-trips, but then again my car is middle-aged now (over 5-years-old). 

3.  Much of East-Central Florida received anywhere from a foot to two feet of rain due to Tropical Storm Fay a couple of weeks ago. It looks that way along I-95. The median and road sides are green, lucious, and overgrown with a lot of standing water all around. I’ve seen this area during brush fire season in the middle of a severe drought. What a complete turnaround from that time !

4.  My fellow drivers up and down I-95 were unusually polite during this road-trip. There were the usual suspects – such as the speeders and the tailgaters – but all-in-all it was a pleasant drive to and fro the northeast of Florida. Traffic was light to moderate during much of the trip on Thursday and on Sunday. I expected it to be much heavier due to the holiday weekend.

5.  My longtime ‘old-school’ Sunpass device that I’ve had for all of these years CRASHED at the start of my road-trip on Thursday. It worked fine for the first tollbooth north of Homestead on Florida’s Turnpike, but then it stopped working after that. It basically burned up (internally) in the hot sun. I had to use cash from that point forward. I was rocking the dedicated change lanes like it was 1999 !

Categories
Driving Home Movies Travel

Saturday Morning Shenanigans

Here at my undisclosed location somewhere within the great state of Florida I’ve been able to go to bed early – during the 9 PM hour – and wake up late – during the 7 AM hour. I’m certainly not getting a MASSIVE 10 hours of sleep, but I am getting plenty of relaxation time whether it’s sleeping, laying in bed, or chillin’ on a chair watching television. It feels great to be on vacation, but I also can’t wait until I get back home again where all of my junk is. It’s only been about 59 hours (as I type this at 5 PM on this Saturday afternoon) since I left my junk behind, but I already miss it all. No worries though, for I’ll be back home again in less than 24 hours from now. I always appreciate Homestead once I’ve been away for awhile.

This morning I took the ‘Saturday Morning Shenanigans’ to the regional-famous Orange Park Mall (southwest of Jacksonville Florida). I saw a movie at the constantly-busy yet well-maintained AMC-24 there. There were a whole bunch of comedy movies that I wanted to see this weekend (such as “College“, “Disaster Movie“, “Hamlet 2“, “Pineapple Express“, “The Rocker“, or “Step Brothers“), but I ultimately decided on the sleeper smash of the late-summer box office season – “Tropic Thunder” – based mostly on my brother‘s glowing recommendation. I agree with him. I laughed hysterically all throughout the movie in unison with my fellow movie patrons. It was one of the most star-studded original screwball comedies I’ve seen on the big screen in awhile !

Those are my ‘Saturday Morning Shenanigans’ for this 5TH and final Saturday of August in 2008. Be sure to catch me next time – ‘At The Movies’ – for some more box office monkey business !

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Food Internet People Politics Sports Television Travel Weather

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

Why wait until tonight what I can do right now – at 9 AM on a Tuesday morning. That’s right – it’s a special Tuesday morning edition of the ‘Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’.

You think a girl named Fay is on my mind ?

1.  Tropical Storm Fay passed several hundred miles to our south late on Sunday night, and she passed about 75 miles to our west early this (Tuesday) morning. She made two landfalls – at Key West yesterday (Monday) afternoon and south of Naples early this (Tuesday) morning. She’s now taking an inland route through Florida northward along I-75, eastward along I-4 over to Daytona Beach, northward along I-95 up to Jacksonville, and then she’ll meander westward along I-10 over to Tallahassee and Panama City Beach between now and the weekend.

2.  Since she’ll be spending the next 5 or so days over the state of Florida before she dissipates we’ll be feeling the effects of her for the remainder of this week via gusty west winds out of the Everglades, and torrential downpours at anytime – especially with the heating of the day during the afternoon hours. We could see temperatures soar into the lower-to-middle-90s because of Tropical Storm Fay. Expect lots of sunshine in-between the tropical monsoons.

3.  Homestead has received just a little over 4 inches of rain out of Fay. That’s less rain than we’ve received on selected days during this rainy season thus far. Gusts of minimal tropical storm force (40 MPH or greater) were also felt here at times.

4.  I took a planned day off from work on Friday, I worked for 4 hours on Saturday (a rarity), I worked for 6 hours on Monday when I didn’t have to (since the base was theoretically closed), and today is another day off from work. I can’t wait to return to a more normal routine back at work tomorrow (Wednesday). I actually enjoy working at my job.

5.  How do you spot a survivor of Hurricane Andrew here in Homestead ?  He’s (She’s) the one that tends to overreact to all tropical systems that come within 1,000 miles of Homestead. Common sense is generally not a player during these overreactions. As a survivor of Hurricane Andrew I am not of the norm down here. It’s because I am a weather forecaster. I just don’t play one on TV !

6.  This morning on ‘The Early Show‘ on CBS-TV the ‘Happy Days’ gang had a LIVE reunion up in Milwaukee Wisconsin as they prepared for the unveiling of a statue of The Fonz. It was cool to see Fonzie, Potsie, Ralph, Joanie, and Mr. and Mrs. C back together again. I watched them every Tuesday night at 8 PM for 11 seasons back in the day. It’s one of the greatest television shows of my lifetime !

7.  Pastor Rick Warren did a fantastic job interviewing Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama this past Saturday night from his church. He was on ‘Larry King Live !‘ last night.

8.  If you do a Yahoo search on John McCain and Barack Obama then you may find that there are some 322,000,000 results for Obama – and 233,000,000 results for McCain. If you Google Obama then you’ll get 56,000,000 results compared with 40,800,000 results for McCain. So in conclusion Obama has a 58% to 42% lead on both Yahoo and Google.

9.  My Washington Redskins are undefeated at 3-0 in the preseason. Backup quarterbacks (veteran) Todd Collins and (rookie) Colt Brennan are looking impressive – even moreso than starting quarterback Jason Campbell. Is there a quarterback controversy brewing in the nation’s capitol ?

10.  I think that today may be a Domino’s day. It’s been a long time since Domino’s delivered to me. Once upon a time I used to have pizza delivered to me once – perhaps even twice per week. Nowadays it’s more like 6 times a year !  I still enjoy pizza today as much as I did back in the day. I just don’t eat it as much anymore. I’ve got 30 minutes. Where’s my Lipitor ?

Have a great Tuesday everyone !  ENJOY the rest of it.