Lost in the game -
Finally I can say I’m proud of me.
No hope at all -
A day that I believed would never come.
No one to blame -
The shadows of my past have been erased.
A Life that only God Himself could change.
I never dreamed that Life could feel this way.
Don’t wake me please.
I’ve finally found the place where I belong.
Only one regret -
All those years I lost for nothing at all.
Laughing in pain -
Searching for a reason to exist.
World torn apart -
Excuses left me breathless and ashamed.
Slipping away -
I found a purpose that’s worth fighting for.
The memories don’t haunt me anymore.
I never dreamed that Life could feel this way.
Don’t wake me please.
I’ve finally found the place where I belong.
Only one regret -
All those years I lost for nothing at all.
I never dreamed that Life could feel this way.
Don’t wake me please.
I’ve finally found the place where I belong.
Only one regret -
All those years I lost for nothing at all.
All those years I lost for nothing at all.
Saturday, May 31, 2008 at 9:58 AM
· Filed under Annoyances, Food
I went to the Atlanta Bread Company here in Homestead this morning, and for the 2ND time and 2ND Saturday morning visit in exactly 7 weeks I received NO customer service and NO food even though I was in the store for over 15 minutes !
That’s as far as I’ll discuss about this particular experience here on this blog. I have already written and submitted a comment online about the specific details of this morning’s experience to Corporate Headquarters in Smyrna Georgia. I do not plan to visit this store location again anytime soon.
Knowing full well that my overall experiences (about a half a dozen of them) at the Atlanta Bread Company have been far below average I already had a back-up plan in mind, and so after I stormed out of there this morning I enacted ‘Plan B’ by heading over to Publix (where shopping is a pleasure) to release my frustrations by buying food and groceries. (That always seems to do the trick.) I then slipped in to McDonald’s to buy a cheap breakfast (including their # 1 rated coffee). Good Stuff !
… And so those are my ‘Saturday Morning Shenanigans’ …
Greetings my friends. It’s the Friday night edition of the ‘Bedtime Stories’ - right here - right now.
I’m currently watching the 81ST Annual Scripps National Spelling Bee LIVE from Washington D.C. on ABC-TV. I totally dig this event. Most people I know use a spell-checker. I am a spell-checker ! Yeah I said it.
I’ll probably go to sleep tonight at around 11 PM. Friday nights are generally the only night of the week where I feel comfortable enough to stay up just a little bit later than the other 6 nights of the week. It’s because I can pretty much wake up whenever I feel like it on Saturday mornings. I can’t do that on any other morning during a typical week.
I may be taking my ‘Great American Saturday Morning MASSIVE Breakfast Tour’ to The Atlanta Bread Company for the first time ever tomorrow morning. 7 weeks ago I tried this, and I failed miserably because I got there at 7:30 AM. I thought I got there a full hour after they opened for business. As it turns out I actually got there 30 minutes before they opened at 8 AM. I may give them another shot of my business tomorrow morning. I want a Ham & Swiss Omelette !
Be sure to catch the ‘Saturday Morning Shenanigans’ tomorrow morning as I blog all about my MASSIVE breakfast. The unimpressive story on why I stopped making coffee in 1989 will not be blogged about tomorrow morning. It is so unremarkable that it may simply be a mere statement on a future edition of the ‘Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’.
Have a safe, peaceful, and relaxing evening with your loved ones everyone, and until I catch you on the flip side remember this:
Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 9:35 PM
· Filed under Blogging
It’s time for another ‘Blatant Promotion’ here on the blog. This is where I blatantly promote future entries on here so that you can plan your visits accordingly. I know that your Internet time is precious.
I’ll be here all weekend long my friends. Tomorrow I’ve got your most anticipated ‘Friday Night Blogroll Review’ where I give back to my closest friends in the blogosphere who are indeed bloggers with blogs. Even my little brother has gotten back in the blogging business (for now anyway - don’t hold your breath for too long), so we’ll see if one of his blog entries from this past week made it onto the coveted ’Blogroll’.
Be sure to also catch the 3RD installment of the ‘Saturday Morning Shenanigans’. I have absolutely no clue what I’m going to write about on there, so how about if you guys and gals grab your crew and just ask me questions during the course of the day tomorrow (leave your comments on here), and then I’ll pick the best questions to answer on the ‘Shenanigans’. Ask whatever you’d like - whatever you want to know about me. This is your big chance. If there are a lack of questions to answer then I’m simply going to blog about my MASSIVE breakfast on Saturday morning.
On Sunday I’ve got your ‘Life Pointe Church Sunday Morning Tossed Salad’. You won’t want to miss that pal, for much of Homestead and Florida City (where all of the food is) will be talking about it by the copy machine on Monday morning !
So that’s what’s comin’ up over the next 72 hours here on the blog. Don’t blink. You may miss something interesting, amusing, exciting, or downright revolutionary !
I received an E-Mail about an hour ago from a (fictional) lady over in Africa. She stated that if I want $2.5 million for my charitable organization then all I need to do is to contact her via a reply to her E-Mail and then she will in turn give me the essentials to contact the Bank in Abidjan Cote d’Ivoire in West Africa.
If you believe that then I’ve got the cool sum of 475 million East African Shillings that I’ll be awarding to the 108TH caller at 1-866-U-R-SHAMMED.
The sad part of it all is that the E-Mail will receive thousands of responses worldwide from unsuspecting people who just want to get rich quick, but they will end up losing whatever money they spend in an attempt to get the money that doesn’t exist.
Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 4:17 PM
· Filed under Life, Philosophy
‘The night life is for you.’
NO - Not even ! As if !
I’m a morning person, and I’ve always been a morning person ever since I was a little kid. No matter what day of the week it is - if it’s 6 AM and I’m still sleeping - then I’ve overslept. I’d be wasting daylight rather than chasing it. That’s not a good thing !
10 PM is typically bedtime for me; hence, no night life for me.
Greetings my friends. This is the Wednesday night edition of the ‘Bedtime Stories’.
I just realized that this will be my last free Wednesday night at home until sometime in August. For the next couple of months I’ll be hanging out with my Life Group on Wednesday nights. I’m looking forward to it, as we venture into this book by this guy.
It was one year ago yesterday (calendar date wise) that most of us at Life Pointe Church met Paul H. for the very first time ever. Pastor Paul was our special guest speaker on that Memorial Day Sunday in 2007, and he made an immediate impression on all of us - particularly Ela and I when he uttered our names in search of us (because he had read all about us on this cat’s blog). He packed quite the punch with his debut teaching on that holiday weekend Sunday morning entitled ‘Self-Contained - Self-Sufficient’ (as part of our ‘Losing My Religion’ message series at the time). 45 days later Paul officially began serving as our Executive Pastor. Happy Life Pointe Church 1ST Anniversary Paul !
Get ready for another frightening edition of the ‘Thursday Night Internet Hoax Hall-Of-Shame’ tomorrow that the entire free nation will be talking about by the watercooler on Friday morning. You totally won’t believe your eyes !
Well then until we hang out again LIVE and in-person, or virtually here in the blogosphere I invite each and everyone of you … to remember this !
It’s the start of a fresh new weekly feature here on this blog !
GEMINI: Even if you are one of those rare Geminis who prefers to avoid the limelight, this week you’ll be up there on the center stage where the whole world can see you. You won’t be short of romantic offers either. Fame has its plus side, it seems.
My 3 Takeaways:
1. Apparently it is rare for a Gemini to prefer anonymity. I’ve seen Geminis more often described (in other Horoscopes) as introverts and loving their privacy. I’m clearly an introvert; although, I’m much less so in this purpose-driven Life than I ever was in my previous directionless life.
2. I seriously doubt that I’ll be on any ‘center stage where the whole world can see’ me anytime soon. I didn’t make the cut for this season’s edition of “America’s Got Talent” (starts Tuesday June 17TH on NBC-TV).
3. I can’t handle romantic offers. I’m 41 and single and my life is littered with over 30 years of widely-scattered failed relationships.
1. I’m starting this week’s ‘Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’ at 6:21 PM. That’s the latest that I think I’ve ever started it. I just got home from a long 12-hour day of work here and here.
2. Jesse says that there’s one Mexican restaurant in particular that serves their food above all of the rest, and that’s really saying something for a place like Homestead where there’s a Mexican restaurant on practically every other block. Maybe one day Jesse will take his closest friends (including me) over to this place to experience the real deal.
3. Jesse also says that Hooters makes some of the best wings in the free nation. Since I don’t go to Hooters I encouraged Jesse to go out and get us a whole bunch of those amazing wings and then bring them back home to Homestead to share with his closest friends (including me).
4. Google may be the runaway # 1 smash Internet search engine in the universe, but I hardly ever use it. I prefer Yahoo. I’ve always been a fan of Yahoo - even before it became a household name.
5. Lysol disinfectant kills viruses, bacteria, mold, and mildew. It kills 99.9% of germs in 30 seconds. I know a whole bunch of public places in and around Homestead that could use a good soaking of Lysol daily ! I wonder what’s the deal with the remaining 0.1% of germs. Does Lysol kill them as well, but it just takes longer than 30 seconds ?
6. A lot of great pop music came out during the Summer of 1998. I just took a look at my # 1 hits from my once successful music web site during June, July, August, and September of exactly a decade ago, and it brought back a lot of good times and memories from that era. I think I hung out with my little brother a lot during that fun Summer.
7. I’ll be hanging out with my little brother in just about a month at the River Walk en San Antonio. I’m looking forward to it. It’ll never be as good as ‘the good old days’, but it’ll still be good enough. Any time with my little brother is precious time.
8. I hope that John McCain selects Mike Huckabee as his running mate, but the fact of the matter is that I will vote for John McCain no matter who he selects as his Vice Presidential running mate.
9. I prefer paper clips over staples. That reminds me. I need to get on over to Office Depot to buy some more paper clips of assorted shapes and sizes.
10. I’m ending this week’s ‘Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’ at 7:12 PM. It took me less than an hour to come up with everything that you just read within this blog entry. That’s how spontaneous this is. I had nothing before I started, and now I have this creation. I created this masterpiece, and I used the skills that were provided to be by my Creator - the Creator of all things that exist - God. He’s good like that. He’s amazing like that. There is no one and no thing that is greater than Him !
1. NO - Your eyes are not deceiving you. This is really an edition of ‘The Major’s Walk-A-Thon’. I just had to take advantage of this extremely unusual cool and dry air over Homestead this late in the winter season (which incidentally I forecasted with precision accuracy nearly a week ago). When dewpoints reach the lower-60s in late-May in Homestead you just know that you are living through a strange weather phenomenon. Of course if you have no clue what a dewpoint is then you probably just think that it’s really sunny outside !
2. Before I even ventured on this ‘Walk-A-Thon’ I went over to Florida City (where all of the food is), and I ate the mother of all MASSIVE breakfasts to end all MASSIVE breakfasts big and small - at Denny’s ! I walked in, I was treated with love, care, and respect, and I ate one of the biggest meals that I can remember in recent short-term memory. Everything was just oh-so-perfect with this breakfast experience - including the environment, the surrounding clientele, and the rockin’ music that was playing in the background. I think I found my new favourite breakfast hang-out joint on future Saturday (or holiday) mornings.
3. I ate so much food that I just had to walk it all off, and so I did via a basic ‘old-school’ standard-issue 1.3-mile walk around the circumference of my beautiful neighbourhood. I did the walk in a little more than 23½-minutes, and I walked to the fantastic beat of my glorious Christian rock, pop, and hip hop music on my green 2GB iPod Shuffle. Editorial Comment Alert - If I were the Music Director of the main lobby of Life Pointe Church on Sunday mornings then I would play my iPod Shuffle in lieu of the current music selection on the iPod that has been played endlessly for about a year now. But that’s just me.
4. One side of Lakeshore’s dumpsters were clean and empty. The other side were dirty, full, and overflowing onto the ground. Gee I wonder which side the City Of Homestead hasn’t gotten to yet ? ! The north side is anxiously awaiting with baited breath the emptying of our dumpsters.
5. I guarantee at least one more edition of ‘The Major’s Walk-A-Thon’ this Summer - on location from the River Walk in San Antonio Texas. Look for it during the week of the 4TH Of July.
Sunday, May 25, 2008 at 10:15 PM
· Filed under Holidays
This is the 50TH edition of the ‘Bedtime Stories’. It’s after 10 PM on a Sunday night, and normally I’d be getting ready to go to bed at this time so that I can get about 7 hours of sleep before I have to wake up and go to work bright and early on a Monday morning. But tomorrow is Memorial Day - the day that is set aside each year to honour our fallen military heroes during times of war.
1. I arrived at the movie theatre at my normal time this morning, and Pastor Paul was already sweating up a storm upon my arrival. He totally dreams of setup on Sunday morning, and come to think of it - so do I. Transforming a place of Hollywood movie magic into a place of worship within a matter of a few hours late on Saturday night and early on Sunday morning can only be described as miraculous. We do it all for Him.
2. I was at the Kids’ Life Registration table when Kelly, Kourtney, McKenna, and Blake checked in. I said ‘Hi’ to everyone. Kourtney ran away from me, McKenna ignored me, and Blake looked straight at me and cracked a smile as if to say ‘Yeah, I know my name !’ Oh yeah - and Kelly told me to fix her up with a cup of coffee with lots of cream and sugar. Apparently Kelly thought that it was Mother’s Day rather than Memorial Day. It’s all good, but Kelly got her own coffee !
3. A rockin’ edition of ‘Praise & Worship’ was conducted by Jesse, Alex, another young skinny dude with long hair and tattoos, and Julie (of ‘Richard & Julie’ fame). If you weren’t up on your feet and singing and dancing and clapping your hands then you … were probably sitting down and enjoying the music of God in your own special way. That’s cool too.
4. Pastor Travis wrapped-up our month-long ’Fortune Cookie’ message series with a teaching that was subtitled ‘A Person Often Meets His Destiny On The Road He Took To Avoid It ?’. Our Life is the cookie. Our future is the fortune. Jesus is holding the cookie.
Romans 8:38-39 (NLT, 2ND Ed.): 38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow — not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. 39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below — indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
5. What happened over the course of the next 3½-hours (immediately following the conclusion of the 10:30 AM service) can only be described as mass chaos to an exponential degree. I won’t mention most of the specifics except for the highlight of it all which featured Richie N. and I as the only two people to show up for a picnic and baptism at Homestead Bayfront Park. Apparently we made it in to the crowded park just before it was closed (by Miami-Dade County Police) to new patrons, but we didn’t know it at the time. I later found out (while I was back at home eating dinner) that the picnic had been moved over to Keys Gate Park (just a couple of miles away). One of these months we are going to have a normal picnic and baptism. I’d like to be there for that one !
B U G S - The bugs are back in town here in Homestead due to all of the recent heavy rains. You may be thinking to yourself, ‘Hey - Wait a minute. I live in Homestead. It hasn’t rained since March !’ You may also be thinking to yourself, ‘No doubt. I thought the sky was caving in on us yesterday afternoon. My yard turned into a giant lake ! My new patio furniture was thrown by the funnel cloud into the canal !’ There is rain all around us. Some of us have received a lot of it this past week, and some of us are still living in a dust bowl. Pretty soon all of us will get a lot of rain, and the bugs will flock to Homestead on their Summer break. Get ready to be eaten alive by little itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny mouths with glow-in-the-dark green eyes.
G A S - I filled-up my car this morning with not quite 11 gallons of gas at Chevron on Useless-One at Campbell Drive at the remarkable price of $4.059 per gallon. That’s about 15 to 20 cents per gallon higher than every other gas station in the general vicinity of that Chevron, but I am kinda sorta semi-loyal to Chevron, and I really wanted to use my fresh new Chevron-Texaco credit card this morning for the first time. $4.059 may seem outrageous to a majority of whining and complaining Americans, but $4.059 for the equivalent of a gallon of gas anywhere in Europe is known as ‘the good old days of the 1990s’.
J A V A - Speaking of items that we Americans love to spend a lot of money on - Starbucks in Homestead - not to be confused with Starbucks in Florida City - is OPEN for BUSINESS ! OK calm down Travis. The drive-thru is open for business. The inside of the joint is apparently not quite ready for customer utilization, so you’ll just have to wait a little while longer to sit inside for hours on your wireless Apple Mac.
One final item of interest - Many of the mega-stores and restaurants at the first phase of the Homestead Pavilion shopping, dining, and entertainment complex at Campbell Drive and the Turnpike are expected to make their grand openings between the middle of October and the middle of November - just in time for the NASCAR Championship Series at the Homestead-Miami Speedway and of course the Christmas 2008 shopping season.
22 So Paul, standing before the council, addressed them as follows: “Men of Athens, I notice that you are very religious in every way,
23 for as I was walking along I saw your many shrines. And one of your altars had this inscription on it: ‘To an Unknown God.’ This God, whom you worship without knowing, is the one I’m telling you about.
24 “He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since He is Lord of Heaven and Earth, He doesn’t live in man-made temples,
25 and human hands can’t serve His needs — for He has no needs. He Himself gives life and breath to everything, and He satisfies every need.
26 From one man He created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall, and He determined their boundaries.
27 “His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward Him and find Him — though He is not far from any one of us.
28 For in Him we live and move and exist. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are His offspring.’
29 And since this is true, we shouldn’t think of God as an idol designed by craftsmen from gold or silver or stone.
GREAT words there, and I especially adore the 27TH verse above. It’s all about seeking Him, finding Him, and following Him. He is never unreachable.
In this world you may encounter those who just seem to be as far away as possible from God. That’s the devil at work, but God is so ultimate - so powerful - that He can reach them and pull them away from the throes of evil and darkness. Don’t ever think that you are better than any one of them. Don’t ever think that the light of the day is so far removed from any one of them. Don’t ever think of them as ‘them’, for they are us. We are God’s children. We are brothers and sisters and He is Our Father.
Friday, May 23, 2008 at 4:45 PM
· Filed under Blogging
The reviews are in, and the consensus states that you absolutely adore the ‘Friday Night Blogroll Review’. All of my blogging friends from Homestead to Weston are waiting with baited breath to see which one of their blog entries from this past week are being elevated to ‘elite’ status. Check it out:
Travis wrote a thought-provoking article on ‘Control Vs. Growth’. It’s all about organization and being in control. It made me feel self-conscious. I’m a self-admitted perfectionist - occasionally to the point of being anal-retentive about it. This personality defect of mine (that’s what it is) has been my downfall in life, but fortunately it is slowly fading away as I continue my venture on God’s fantastic journey for me. If you knew me 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 years ago and you compared me then with who I am today then you would totally concur with me. God is now in control of a whole bunch of stuff that I used to have a firm grip on.
Luci states that ‘God Is All We Need’. Father - God bless all of my friends and loved ones in whatever it is that You know they may be needing on this day. May their life be full of your peace, prosperity, and power as they seek to have a closer relationship with you. I pray for this in the loving and caring name of my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
Here’s another picture. It’s a picture of a guy holding up his adorable cat - his adorable cat that is 5 feet 9 inches in length and weighs a MASSIVE 87 pounds ! Is this feline for real, or could it possibly be - an INTERNET HOAX !
It’s 8:44 PM on a Wednesday night as I begin tonight’s edition of the ‘Bedtime Stories’, and I’m gearing up for a MASSIVE day at work - a MASSIVE day of meetings ! I’m actually looking forward to it, as my career renaissance continues. The past 10 months has been the best 10 months (by far) of my entire 23-year Air Force / Department Of Defense career. It goes hand-in-hand with the best 21 months of my entire Life. I look back at August 2006 as the official month of my ‘Awakening’. It’s been ready-set-GO ! ever since being reborn on God’s fantastic journey for me.
Friday kicks-off the long Memorial Day holiday weekend, and I’m not going anywhere special. I’ll be right here blogging up a storm, so hang out with me if you have no special plans that will whisk you away to some exotic land far far away with no Internet access.
Tomorrow on the blog it’s our top-rated weekly feature - the ‘Thursday Night Internet Hoax Hall-Of-Shame’. Tomorrow I promise you no long horrific chain letter E-Mail that most of us already know is bogus. Instead I bring you a picture - a picture of an adorable cat - an adorable cat that measures 5 feet 9 inches in length and weighs in at 87 pounds ! Is it for real ? Gather up your crew and surf on over to the blog tomorrow afternoon to see for yourself !
Don’t forget about the ‘Friday Night Blogroll Review’ where I go public with my favourite blog entries of the week from my favourite bloggers that are near and dear to me. I’m pretty sure that this dude and this dude and this dude will be on there, and I’ve also reserved a spot for this girl and this girl.
So that’s what’s comin’ up over the next 48 hours here on the blog. Have a wonderful Wednesday night everyone, and until we blog again remember this:
