smile the while ...
Hello and good morning. The black & dark have not yet had their wakening effect, but it's still pitch black dark outside and already past six o'clock. Mug of black coffee and the last, lone dark chocolate truffle from TJ's.
Hating most stores and despising shopping in general, I love TAFB Commissary, Grocery Outlet, and our occasional visit to TJ's. Seeing as we're heading for Tallahassee later this morning, I'll (traveling mercies, knocking on wood, safe trip, wishing us a hundred twenty years, and I don't forget my charmed U S Navy Retired hat that gets me lots of "thank you for your service" greetings), have an opportunity to renew whatever I "need" from Trader Joe's. What? spreadable goat cheese, chicken liver pâté, chocolate truffles, and check out the red wines. We usually stop by TJ's between checking out of Hampton Inn and getting on I-10, so it may be Monday morning when we stop there.
We're going in my car, which, the next time Linda refers to it as "the old Cadillac" I'm stopping and letting her out on the side of the road and she can hitchhike home. Just fourteen years old, it's a 2006 SRX with only 68,000 original miles that I bought when it was ten years old with 55,000 miles, having been owned its first ten years by neighbors five levels down here at HV. Bubba's kind of car, this is the third one I've had exactly like it, all three silver. The first two were sixes but this one's a V8 and I can leave you at the stoplight. It's a keeper.
February the First is a magical day for me. Forty-two years ago this morning I retired from U S Navy as a Commander after twenty years service, joyfully though somewhat tentatively becoming a civilian. Had lots to do and Be. Lived in WashDC and worked with a Beltway Bandit for a year. Started my own consulting firm working with the Canadian and Australian governments and Australian and American defense industry contractors, traveling from Maine and Connecticut to San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angelos, Cleveland, Ohio, WashingtonDC, Toronto, Atlanta, Winnipeg with sidewalks shoveled through a maze of snow seven feet high, Canberra, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne and sailing on Port Phillip Bay, Harrisburg, and did I mention WashingtonDC? traveling fully eighty percent of each year. As adjunct professor, taught two graduate courses each year for the political science division of the University of West Florida. Studied as full time student at Lutheran Theological Seminary, Gettysburg.
Was ordained Episcopal deacon and priest, turned down a call to a lovely old parish in Pennsylvania Deutsch Country to move home to Florida, living in Apalachicola fourteen years before finally retiring altogether to settle here where I belonged all the Time.
Though I'd gladly have missed the Category 5 hurricane.
And 35 years ago today, son Joe called me from Killeen, Texas to congratulate me on the birth of my first grandchild, Nicholas Kevin Weller. After loving my own children to distraction, I never realized I could love a grandchild so much.
At any event here I am, again experiencing One February as the glorious first day of the rest of my life.
T
Hating most stores and despising shopping in general, I love TAFB Commissary, Grocery Outlet, and our occasional visit to TJ's. Seeing as we're heading for Tallahassee later this morning, I'll (traveling mercies, knocking on wood, safe trip, wishing us a hundred twenty years, and I don't forget my charmed U S Navy Retired hat that gets me lots of "thank you for your service" greetings), have an opportunity to renew whatever I "need" from Trader Joe's. What? spreadable goat cheese, chicken liver pâté, chocolate truffles, and check out the red wines. We usually stop by TJ's between checking out of Hampton Inn and getting on I-10, so it may be Monday morning when we stop there.
We're going in my car, which, the next time Linda refers to it as "the old Cadillac" I'm stopping and letting her out on the side of the road and she can hitchhike home. Just fourteen years old, it's a 2006 SRX with only 68,000 original miles that I bought when it was ten years old with 55,000 miles, having been owned its first ten years by neighbors five levels down here at HV. Bubba's kind of car, this is the third one I've had exactly like it, all three silver. The first two were sixes but this one's a V8 and I can leave you at the stoplight. It's a keeper.
February the First is a magical day for me. Forty-two years ago this morning I retired from U S Navy as a Commander after twenty years service, joyfully though somewhat tentatively becoming a civilian. Had lots to do and Be. Lived in WashDC and worked with a Beltway Bandit for a year. Started my own consulting firm working with the Canadian and Australian governments and Australian and American defense industry contractors, traveling from Maine and Connecticut to San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angelos, Cleveland, Ohio, WashingtonDC, Toronto, Atlanta, Winnipeg with sidewalks shoveled through a maze of snow seven feet high, Canberra, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne and sailing on Port Phillip Bay, Harrisburg, and did I mention WashingtonDC? traveling fully eighty percent of each year. As adjunct professor, taught two graduate courses each year for the political science division of the University of West Florida. Studied as full time student at Lutheran Theological Seminary, Gettysburg.
Was ordained Episcopal deacon and priest, turned down a call to a lovely old parish in Pennsylvania Deutsch Country to move home to Florida, living in Apalachicola fourteen years before finally retiring altogether to settle here where I belonged all the Time.
Though I'd gladly have missed the Category 5 hurricane.
And 35 years ago today, son Joe called me from Killeen, Texas to congratulate me on the birth of my first grandchild, Nicholas Kevin Weller. After loving my own children to distraction, I never realized I could love a grandchild so much.
At any event here I am, again experiencing One February as the glorious first day of the rest of my life.
T