Categories
Health

The Major’s Walk-A-Thon

THIS MORNING I did the unpredictable – I walked the entire perimeter of my neighbourhood – approximately a mile-and-a-half – close to 2½ kilometers for the rest of the world. (I’ll have to drive my car the entire trek to determine the actual distance.)

Sky: Mostly Cloudy
Temperature: 69°F
Relative Humidity: 95%
Winds: NW 8 MPH
Barometric Pressure: 30.04 RISING

My thoughts:

1.  My iPod Shuffle came along for the walk this morning. All of my smash hits on it provided a great beat to walk to.

2.  One of those smash hits that played as I walked alone was the Christian speed-metal-romp “Writing On The Walls” courtesy of Underoath. Its lyrics include the prominent (screaming) verse ‘We walk alone !’

3.  There were a bunch of other walkers out and about on this most glorious Christmas Day morning. Some of them were walking alone, and some of them were walking their dog(s). There was even a nice older yellowish cat walking alone. He / She looked at me with love rather than fear. This cat somehow knew that I was a lifelong friend to the feline populace.

4.  There’s a new ‘Key West style’ townhouse development going up just over the southern perimeter fence of my neighbourhood. I hadn’t seen it before.

5.  This was a 25-minute walk for me. There was only one thing that I wanted as soon as I walked back in to my home, and that my friends was a MASSIVE gulp of Zephyrhills Natural Spring Water.

Categories
Health

High Noon Walk

Inspired by fellow WordPress blogger Stephen Hollifield I decided to take my own leisurely walk around my neighbourhood today at High Noon – just a few minutes after I commented on his ‘Morning Walk’ for this Christmas Eve morning.

This is quite remarkable for me in that this is the very first time that I have ever done such a thing – and I’ve been living here in my neighbourhood for over 12½-years !

I walked around the northern circumference of my neighbourhood in just a little over 18 minutes. It was close to 0.75 miles in length.

Sky: Mostly Sunny
Temperature: 79°F
Relative Humidity: 57%
Winds: NE 13 MPH
Barometric Pressure: 30.09 FALLING

Here are a few thoughts as I walked the walk:

1.  There should never be a parking problem here in my neighbourhood. We have far more parking spaces than we actually need.

2.  I am blessed to live in a relatively litter-free neighbourhood. The City Of Homestead actually emptied out all of the dumpsters early this morning – on Christmas Eve !

3.  My neighbourhood smells good. There’s good cookin’ in the neighbourhood !

4.  My neighbourhood has sidewalks that I never knew existed. I’ll have to discover some more of them in my future walks.

5.  If this were May, June, July, August, September, or October then I would have probably been eaten alive by every bug known to mankind, but this is December and it is just so refreshingly delightful outside !

I’m doing another walk tomorrow !

Categories
God Holidays

The Christmas Card Of The Year Club

As of press time on this glorious Christmas Eve Morning I have received 19 Christmas cards in the mail and in-person. Each and every one of them is very special to me; however, two of them in particular stand out with important messages that symbolize the true meaning of Christmas. I’ll post one of them below, and the other one tomorrow morning on Christmas Day:

Because Jesus Came We Can …

… have peace with God,
be filled with all joy,
abound in hope,
be justified freely,
be alive toward God,
have the spirit of wisdom,
be under grace,
know the hope of His calling,
be conformed to His image,
be a child of God,
be His heir,
have victory,
know the riches of the glory of His inheritance.

Because of Jesus, we have so many reasons to rejoice !

Luke 1:49 (NLT 2ND Ed.):
For the Mighty One is holy, and he has done great things for me.

Categories
Animals

The Legend Of Fluffy The Manx Cat

It started out as a morning like any other, but just a few hours later it would become a morning that forever changed the lives of me, my little brother, our Mom, and our Dad.

Exactly 24 years ago this morning on December 23RD 1983 me (16½-years-old) and my little brother (8½-years-old) looked out our living room window at the snow and the ice on the ground of our backyard. It was a freezing-cold Friday morning – 2 days before Christmas – in McLean Virginia, and we were happy to be warm and comfortable inside.

But there was a creature stirring outside that was not warm and comfortable. It was a lonely young cat with no tail that was wandering around aimlessly outside on our elevated patio deck, and it was shivering. Me and my brother decided rather quickly that it did not belong in the harsh elements of outside at that moment, so we brought it in to our more sheltered screened-in ‘Florida Room’. We gave her some milk to drink. She loved us for it. We gave her some love. We heard a strange sound coming from her that we hadn’t heard before. It was the sound of her purring. We let her in to our warm and comfortable home. She never looked back. We pretty much named her ‘Fluffy’ that day, and she instantly became an important part of our family – the missing link if you will. She stayed with us for the next 17+ years until her (expected) death in April 2001.

There have been other cats and dogs within our family over the years since then. Fluffy eventually gained a feline roommate with Barney (also known as the cat that never liked me). After Fluffy’s death Barney eventually gained his own feline roommate with Pumpkin (our parents’ current cat that me and my brother picked out for them several years ago). Boots was my own loving cat and housemate for 12½ years here in Homestead until his (expected) death on May 17TH 2007. He was the coolest cat that ever lived.

But it all started with Fluffy The Manx Cat. She was the Queen of her castle. She was the stability of our family. She was our family’s common denominator. She was the center of attention. She was the most lovable cat that ever lived.

Fluffy The Manx Cat

Fluffy never met Boots, but I believe that the two loving cats in my Life for nearly 23½-years are hanging out together up in Heaven comparing notes about me. Barney is probably up there too – ignoring Fluffy and Boots.  

This blog is a spinoff of the (now on extended hiatus) massivesmash.com web site that I created in 1995. That web site grew out of a previous web site known as ‘MANx On The Net’. That first web site was a spinoff of ‘MANx Cat BBS’ (1993-1997) that was inspired by and named after Fluffy.