– Let’s get spontaneous.
– Let’s not hold nothin’ back.
– Can we talk here ?
– Be reasonable – do it my way.
– A couple of nights ago I posted my weekly ‘Grab Bag O’ Thoughts‘.
– It was all about my recent vacation on the high seas and on exotic lands.
– It served as the ceremonial grande finale of my vacation of a lifetime.
– It was a lot of fun and a great change of pace all last week.
– I threw out my normal daily routine and lived on ‘Vacation Standard Time’.
– But that was then and this is now, as The Monkees once sang.
– This is not reality – it’s actuality !
– It’s back to the old daily grind.
– But this is a great Life that I am now living.
– I always look forward to going on vacations.
– But I also look forward to returning back home again after those vacations.
– I’m slowing easing back in to a normal day-to-day routine.
– My 5-day-a-week blogging schedule is back on-track.
– Tonight I’m rejoining my Life Group after taking last week off.
– I hope to walk around my neighbourhood in the frigid air on Saturday morning.
– That’s right – I’m ready for another cold early-morning ‘Walk-A-Thon’.
– I return to Life Pointe Church bright and early this Sunday morning.
– Incidentally I’m hosting the 9 AM service, so come and see me.
– I can’t believe that the month of March is less than 79 hours away !
– Where did February go ?
– Where did normal South Florida weather go ?
– Our coldest and wettest winter season in about a century continues.
– We’ve had wind chills in the 50s all day long today – RIDICULOUS !
– Tomorrow morning actual air temperatures could be in the upper-30s.
– But wind chills could be as low as the upper-20s !
– Remember that you lived through all of this when you complain in July.
– Oh yeah you know that you’ll be whining about the heat and humidity.
– We all do it, and it’s only natural to do so as we live here in paradise.
– As I stated earlier my blogging is back on its regular schedule.
– This Saturday night on the ‘Retro’ I’m flashing back all the way to 2003.
– And of course there’s the ‘Disco Party’ tomorrow night.
– I don’t blog anymore on Sundays and Mondays, but I still tweet.
– My last 7 tweets are always available here on this blog.
– Check the right-hand side panel just below this month’s calendar.
– Those are my ‘Mini Thoughts’ for this final Thursday night in February.
– Have a safe and peaceful evening my friends, my brothers, and my sisters.
– Come back tomorrow night ready to dance at the discotech.
– You won’t regret it pal.
This week it’s the return of ‘My Fantastic Journey’, as I present to you a current (still climbing up the music charts) pop smash at both mainstream and Christian radio. That’s truly a rarity in this day and age of hit music.
It’s 2009 “American Idol” Champion Kris Allen, and it’s his very inspirational debut smash “Live Like We’re Dying”.
Yeah we gotta start lookin’ at the hands of the time we’ve been given
If this is all we got then we gotta start thinkin’
If every second counts on a clock that’s tickin’
Gotta live like we’re dyin’
We only got 86-400 seconds in a day
To turn it all around or to throw it all away
Gotta tell ’em we love ’em while we got the chance to say
Gotta live like we’re dyin’
It’s in the lyrics:
Make the most of every single second with God’s Great Creations. Live Life like it’s goin’ out of style. Make an impact. Change the world. Love. Don’t waste this golden opportunity. You may not get the chance to do it again.
From the 13TH through the 21ST of February of 2010 I sailed for 8 days and 8 nights aboard the luxurious Carnival Freedom. It was my 2ND cruise in 28 months on the 110,000 gross ton / 952 foot long ship. I had previously sailed from Rome Italy to Miami Florida on a 14-day Mediterranean / Transatlantic voyage during her maiden journey to the U.S. from Europe in October and November of 2007. The combined 22 days and 22 nights on the Carnival Freedom is the most for me on any single cruise ship in my 19-year sailing history. I’ve also visited more new countries for the first time ever via the Carnival Freedom than via any other cruise ship. In addition to Italy, Spain, and Madeira (Portugal) I can now add Costa Rica and Panama to the list of new countries visited.
I. Cozumel México – This is my all-time favourite port-of-call for no other reason than the fact that I’ve been there more often (by far) than any other place in the world during my cruising history. It’s like my one-day home away from home once or twice a year. I know what to expect there, and I know where to go there for shopping opportunities galore if I wish. I’ve been there so often that sometimes I don’t even get off of the ship – but this time I did. I actually went on a rare shore excursion this time around to take advantage of some unusually chilly winter weather for the island (cloudy with scattered rain showers and stuck in the 70s). During the 4½-hour sightseeing and shopping tour one of the highlights was a tequila farm and factory. I didn’t partake in the extended taste test of a wide variety of random tequilas inside; however, it was fun to watch the others who did as well as listen to some of their outrageous feedback such as “This tastes like Windex … I LOVE IT !” Classic stuff – and a fun excursion all around ‘my’ island home of Cozumel.
II. Limón Costa Rica – Last Wednesday morning I set foot on Costa Rica for the first time ever – just below the 10°N latitude line (about 690 miles north of the equator). It was a rainy and coolish morning (by Costa Rica standards) with temperatures stuck in the 70s. Eventually the sun came out late in the afternoon and it got hot outside. But back in the cool light rain I took a combination bus, boat, and train tour of the eastern lowland countryside. The boat ride on a river was cool, as we eavesdropped on crocodiles napping, sloths just hangin’ around, and abundant monkeys high atop a tree. We actually saw one young monkey fall from the top of a tree and land much further down on some branches and leaves. He was OK, but now he may be alone for the rest of his life. Allegedly (according to our tour guide) once you’ve fallen from a tree you’ve cast disrespect and dishonour amongst your neighbourhood and nobody wants to be seen with you ever again. Harsh dude !
III. Panama – Early last Thursday morning shortly after sunrise the Carnival Freedom pulled in to the port in downtown Colón along the northern (Caribbean) coast of Panama. 13 busloads of my fellow cruise ship passengers (over 525 of us) were then loaded up and transported southeastward across the country to the Pacific coast. The drive took about 1 hour and 20 minutes along modern highways and tollways guarded by fully-armed Panamanian militia. Once on the Pacific side our 13 busloads got in to 2 ferries (comfortably), as we began our partial transit through the Panama Canal starting with a beautiful view of the downtown skyline of the bustling capital city of Panama. I never really understood how the Panama Canal actually worked until I got to experience it firsthand. It is definitely one of the greatest modern marvels ever made in the history of the world. Incidentally the Pacific side of Panama is nearing the end of a rather severe dry season. It hasn’t rained much on the south side of the country so far in 2010, and that was quite evident as all of the grass was brown and crunchy. It was very hot there – well into the 90s. The north (Caribbean) side of the country was milder, greener, and lusher. The three highlights of this mighty educational day in Panama were no doubt the one-third transit of the Panama Canal, seeing the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans within 90 minutes of each other, and driving by land and sailing by sea right through the great Continental Divide of the Americas.
This was a wonderful vacation at sea and on land way down south that truly exceeded my expectations, and I can’t wait to do it all over again in about 6½-months when I embark on my next great Carnival cruise vacation !
It’s a special Friday night edition of the ‘Saturday Night Retro’ !
Back in November and December of 1985 I spent my first two months overseas in The United Kingdom at my first active duty Air Force permanent duty station. As a newly-assigned Airman I lived in one of the old post World War 2 era dormitories on base – rambler style with centralized community bathrooms. In other words you had to leave your room and walk down the hallway to use the toilet, take a shower, shave, wash your hands, and brush your teeth. There was no plumbing within the actual dorm rooms.
In the military a ‘day room’ is essentially a community living room with assorted furniture and a television. Our ‘day room’ in our particular dorm was damaged / unusable / off-limits, so we ‘dorm rats’ gathered together and took over an adjacent dorm’s day room. We met nightly after work to hang out, eat junk food, smoke cigarettes, drink beer (not me), watch British television, play Uno, and pretty much party like it was 1985 (sometimes all night long). Those are some of the greatest memories of my entire military career – from nearly 25 years ago. One of the biggest mistakes that I made early on was to buy my own television set for my dorm room because once I did that I unintentionally removed myself from that day room camaraderie. A few months later I went back over there, and it was never the same as it once was during those first two months. All of my old buddies had moved on – just as I had done.
One of the great Thursday night traditions that began in that day room and continued on during the entire time that I lived in the U.K. (the next two years) was watching “Top Of The Pops” on BBC-1. It aired weekly for over 40 years, and it was essentially their version of our “American Bandstand”. Here’s how a mid-December 1985 episode started at 7 PM GMT. It was one of those episodes that I watched alongside my day room buddies. On that week’s show Amazulu (an all-female British pop band) were in the Top 20 with their vivacious hit at the time “Don’t You Just Know It”.
