Now that I've got my computer back, I can finally get around to doing a few posts about my trip to Florida starting with the main reason I made the trip down there to begin with - Jamie's graduation from the Florida Youth ChalleNGe Academy on Saturday the 12th in Orange Park at the Thrasher-Horne Center for the Arts.
What can I say but thank goodness for air-conditioning?!? It was a tad warm with temperatures in the mid-90's and the heat index even higher but parents, grandparents, friends, and other family members were all nice and comfy as they waited for the big event to begin. I had met up with Jamie's father and her step-mom outside of the auditorium and also sat with them during the 2+ hour ceremony where I got to see that some things never change when the ex nodded off and snored a bit during the guest speaker's speech (which I thought was rather good myself). However, I'm getting ahead of myself!
The ceremony began with the Posting of the Platoon Guidons which was accompanied by a Drill & Ceremony performance by each of the three graduating platoons. The Platoon #1 Cougars - the girls - were the first to perform and marched in from the top of the auditorium.
1st Platoon Cougars get ready to make their entrance for their Drill & Ceremony manuevers
Jamie is the fifth cadet up on the right as they march into the auditorium (image credit)
I took a video with my iPhone but I was too far away to really be able to get much of anything though you can hear how well the cadets were all in step as they performed. Having done what we referred to as "monkey drills" when I was in the Air Force, I know the time and effort that goes into learning the proper marching needed to perform as well as these girls did and I really couldn't have been prouder of my own cadet. Truth be told, it's kind of hard to hold still enough to film anything when you're starting to snivel!
The 1st Platoon Cougars
A very blurry picture of my cadet!
Following the impressive drills by all three platoons, the ceremony continued with the Graduation March and the entry of the 114 cadets who now had caps and gowns covering their uniforms. I had to smile as it's the first time I've ever seen combat boots peaking out from beneath a graduation gown and that lump in my throat got just a little bit bigger. I was just glad I had remembered to grab some tissues before leaving my hotel room earlier!
The Acadmy Color Guard presents the flags
After the graduates had filed down to the front area of the stage, the Academy Color Guard presented the Colors and those boys did an absolutely fantastic job. Whoever trained these kids most definitely knew what they were doing as you couldn't have asked for more precision from seasoned vets.
The National Anthem was sung by one of the female cadets which was then followed by various speakers including the Guest Speaker that the ex dozed off to - Mr. Ben Wortham who is the Superintendent of the Clay County School District that the Academy is associated with. I thought that he had a very inspiring speech but I also hadn't made the four-hour drive up from Saint Petersburg like Jamie's father had so it was easier for me to be awake I guess.
After the presentation of class awards, it was on to the part that the cadets had waited 5-1/2 months for - the presentation of the diplomas!
Jamie waits her turn for her diploma
Next up!
Congratulations!
Jamie receives her diploma from the Adjutant General of Florida Major General Douglas Burnett
After the last cadet received his diploma, the colors were retired by the Academy Color Guard and then Class #18 of the Florida Youth ChalleNGe Academy waved good-bye and danced as the stage descended below the auditorium and everyone filed outside to await their graduates which were greeted with hugs, kisses, tears, and congratulations. I don't think you could have found a happier and prouder group in all of Florida at that point!
FLYCA Class #18 waves good-bye as the stage descends
After giving the daughter I hadn't seen in almost a year a big huge hug, I had her pose so that I could get a picture of her big smile with her brand-new high school diploma in hand ...
A proud cadet and her diploma
...and then I got the ex to take a picture of the two of us together and no, I'm not sneering at him - honest!
A proud Mom and her cadet
All in all it was a great ceremony and I really couldn't be prouder of Jamie for not just getting her diploma but for persevering and completing the demanding and highly regimented program at FLYCA. Not all of the kids who started the program completed it but Jamie did and for a kid who sometimes has trouble concentrating, that's no mean feat. No matter where she goes from here she can always be proud of the fact that she did it and she did it well. Congratulations again, kiddo, I love you!
Jamie's official graduation picture
Before I wrap this up, I want to say thank you to everyone who sent Jamie a card or letter or pictures of Hugh Jackman (!) while she was at the Academy; your thoughtfulness meant a lot to her and helped to make her time there that much easier. And it means a lot to me, too, that you'd take the time to brighten my daughter's life like you did. Thank you! Thank you!
I really do have pictures of Jamie's graduation and I really do have pictures of my trip to Florida and I really do have pictures of Amanda's graduation and I really do have stories to tell! However, what I haven't had is access to a computer as someone else has been using it while she's visiting! Then add on the fact that I'm working some crazy hours this entire weekend and what I end up with is a lot of stories and a lot of pictures that are just going to have to wait a little longer.
Sigh. This has been one heck of a week. I'll try to tell you all about it sometime soon ... really!
As a rule, June 18th is always a rather important date in my household as it marks not only the occasion of Amanda's birth in 1992 but also my mother's birthday a good number of years earlier! This year it's made even more special as later this afternoon Amanda will be walking across the football field at Norwich Free Academy to climb the steps to the podium and receive her high school diploma - shake with your right, receive with your left. Personally I think it's pretty cool to be turning 18 and graduating on the same day though it makes for a rather discombobulated title to this post!
For this week's Five on Friday meme I decided to go with five songs from 1992 and one additional song that Amanda asked that I include that is currently one of her favorites by a group named Ludo. The song inspired one of her more recent art projects:
Amanda tells me that there's a story to the song but I'm not quite sure what it is and I can't ask her as she's out to breakfast with her father right now - a guy she hasn't seen in four-and-a-half years but to his credit gave her one heck of a bear hug when he came by to pick her up a few minutes ago. It almost brought tears to my eyes, sentimental sap that I am, as even though he and I have had our differences and I am none too thrilled with the fact that he hasn't had anything to do with her since October 2005, he's still her father and I hope that he'll appreciate the person that she's become rather than dwell on the things that he may not "approve of". I'm pretty sure he lost the right to be disapproving long ago but anyhow, enough of that ... today is a very happy day and I'm not going to abide by any negativity!
I hope you enjoy the rather mixed-bag of music and I also hope that everyone has as nice of a Friday, June the 18th, as I intend to have!
Yesterday's plan was to get a few things accomplished before heading back to work today but alas, the only things I got done were to mow the lawn - and may I just say that I was thrilled to come home to find that the grass seed I put out last week had started to come in nicely! - and get dinner made for myself and the girls before deciding that I was just too wiped out to do much of anything else.
I did, however, manage to edit three pictures out of the way-too-many that I took - one from each of the bloggers that I met on this trip who are lovely people all! For those of you who have never had the chance to meet anyone that you've gotten to know through blogging, what are you waiting for? I've yet to meet anyone who wasn't nicer off of the blog page than they are on it which is no mean feat!
This first picture is Barb who resides in Georgia with Gandalf, Grayson, Whitey, and Gracie. I'm afraid that none of the pictures that we took came out all that great but I'm going to chalk that up to the fact that I was IN the pictures and I do not photograph well for the most part. Could be because I'm actually pretty uncomfortable having my picture taken but I try to make the occasional exception!
This next picture is the very lovely Sandy who just happened to be visiting with family in Saint Augustine the same day that Jamie and I were there - talk about a fortuitous event! We didn't get the chance to visit anywhere near as long as I would have liked so we'll have to amend that at some point. Her equally nice husband Dick did the honors of taking this picture.
And of course this picture needs no introduction as I think everyone knows Bee and Charlie who are just two of the nicest folks ever and are most definitely blogging royalty! Naturally, the Flat Boys had to get into the picture also - little hams that they are! I've been trying to decide if Sarge looks like Telly Savalas or Yul Brynner or maybe a combination of the two - either way I think he looks real good especially considering all that he's been through lately!
Once I get my act together here at home I'll tell ya'll the stories of my visits with these folks - especially about the delicious lasagna Barb's mother made and the wonderful meal that Bee cooked complete with a cherry pie but for now it's back to work ... gee, I wonder if anyone missed me??
As much as I enjoyed my trip to Florida and meeting some of the nicest people south of the Mason-Dixon Line it was really nice to touch back down at Bradley Field in Hartford last night - especially after the pilot told us that it was a nice cool 63 degrees on the ground! Lordy Lordy, I don't know how ya'll live down there in that swelterin' heat! I do declare, it was way too hot for this ol' Yankee!
Anyhow, I've got lots of photos to go through and not a whole lot of energy to do so right at the moment after driving 703 miles since last Friday night! I do believe I am in need of a bit of a rest first but I promise to try to get some posts together as soon as I get the lawn mowed, do some laundry, figure out what I'm wearing to Amanda's graduation on Friday, go in to work a shift tomorrow, feed a couple of hungry teenagers, and ... well, you know!
Whereas the Marriott hotel where Jamie and I are spending the night in West Palm Beach is absolutely gorgeous, the one thing it doesn't have is a free wifi in the rooms - at the pool or in the lobby, yes, but not in the rooms. They do, however, have a business center located just down the hall from our room and even though blogging may not be the "business" that they had in mind - it's sort of business for me so what the heck, right?
Besides, this is going to be quick because I have to be up early in the morning to go to breakfast at the famous John G's which I have been assured by many people is more than worth getting up early for!
So, just to sum up today really quickly - Jamie and I had the chance to meet up with Dick and Sandy briefly in Saint Augustine Beach before making the 4-hour drive south to West Palm Beach. Sandy is even nicer in person than she is on her blog - if that's possible! - and I look forward to someday having the chance to spend more time with her in the future. Pictures will follow as soon as I can get home and get them downloaded. I liked Dick a lot, too, lest you think otherwise!
We arrived in West Palm Beach a little after 5:00 and after getting checked in drove over to Bee & Charlie's to deliver Georgia lasagna and have a delicious meal of steak, mashed potatoes, corn, broccoli, and some of THE best gravy I have had ever! No wonder gravy is a beverage for some folks! That was followed by cherry pie and vanilla ice cream of which I have pictures but again ... there's that whole "forgot the camera cable" thing again! My bad!
Anyhow, more details and more pictures will be posted but for now I'll leave you with this iPhone version of Charlie, myself, Bee, and the Flat Boyz standing amongst the latest additions to Bee's cookie scam contest!
In closing I have got to tell you, I have met some of the nicest people ever via blogging and it was a true pleasure to meet two of the people who were some of my very first commenters back when I started this whole blogging journey. And two nicer people you couldn't hope to find either!
More later ... I need to go to bed so I can be up for breakfast!!
I now remember what it was all those years ago as a kid living at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa that I never liked about Florida - it's too darned hot! I may not remember about much about 1967-1968 but I sure remember that and it really hasn't changed at all since all those years ago. In fact, I think it's gotten hotter but that's probably because I'm older and feel the heat more than I did as 9 or 10 year old. Anyhow, all complaining about the weather aside (and rumor has it's cold and rainy in New England!), it's been a very nice trip so far in spite of the three-hour delay sitting in Tampa the other night.
I survived seeing the ex after close to 6 years and even sat quite civilly with he and his wife during Jamie's 2+ hour graduation ceremony which was really quite impressive and more than worth the trip to come down here for. It's hard to believe that my youngest has graduated before her sister but she's got the diploma and the big smile to prove it:
At the end of this week I'll be attending yet another graduation ceremony and I'm willing to bet there's a diploma and another big smile at the end of that one, too!
After the ceremony, Jamie and I drove up to Valdosta, Georgia for some of the best lasagna I have ever sunk my teeth into at the home of Barb and her parents. I'll write more on that later and maybe even come up with a picture or two once I can get them off of my camera (I forgot the cable at home) but let me just say that it was a wonderful time and I kept Barb up WAY past her bedtime as we yakked well past midnight while sipping Chianti and solving the world's problems!
On Sunday Jamie and I drove down to Saint Augustine and I'll have lots to post about that later on. Today it's further south to meet Bee and Charlie but hopefully not before I've had a chance to meet Sandy. I'll keep ya posted!
Greetings from hot and humid (really, really hot and humid!) Florida! I'll be heading out for Jamie's graduation ceremony in a little bit but had some time to post a few pictures from yesterday's flights prior to leaving my air-conditioned hotel room and walking head-on into a wall of humidity. Thank goodness my rental car has a good a/c system! When I watched the weather last night the guy said that it was going to be 95 today with a heat index of 100 ... yep, it's June in Florida!
Anyhow, when I left Bradley Field in Hartford yesterday it was overcast and 61 degrees. My flight left right on time at 12:50. I didn't dig out the Nikon so all of the following pictures were taken with my iPhone; this was my view to the left:
And this was my view to the right:
There is nothing I like better when flying than to have all three seats to myself! I was able to stretch out and apparently fall asleep during most of the flight whilst listening to "Pride and Prejudice" on Audiobooks on my iPhone. Matter of fact, I need to go back and relisten to a couple of chapters! Before I drifted off though I took the time to enjoy the view.
A little ahead of schedule we began our descent into the Tampa Bay area where I was supposed to have a 55-minute layover:
That 55-minute layover turned into a 3-hour layover when the plane that I was supposed to get on for my connecting flight had "maintenance issues" that were originally supposed to take one hour to fix and then two hours to fix and then became a whole new plane that was coming in from Buffalo. Sigh ... Finally at 7:45 this was the few to my right ...
The few to my left was one empty seat and one other passenger in the aisle seat so it was almost as good as having the row to myself. This flight was decidedly more crowded though not quite packed.
The view taking off out of Tampa looked like the above shot while the view landing at Jacksonsville looked like this:
Yes, that would be rain on the windows! And not just a light rain but a pretty good downpour. From what I later heard on the news we had just missed some pretty severe storms with lightning that struck five houses in the area. Rumor has it there could be more of those around today but by then we should be safely eating lasagna in Valdosta!
After getting my rental car I made the 27-mile drive down to Orange Park and checked into my hotel around 10:00. It's nothing fancy but it's clean and comfortable and I had no problems falling right to sleep after watching the news.
So, it's about time to get ready to head over to the venue for Jamie's graduation and meet up with the ex-husband for the first time in over four years. That may explain why I'm not feeling so great at the moment but I'm sure it'll be fine, right? I'll let you know!
For this week's Five on Friday I decided to go with a theme based on something that I would be doing today - flying! Not that I really wanted to be flying, mind you - I wanted to be taking a train and then I could have gone with a railroad theme for Travis' meme this week but alas, Amtrak is not high on my list of favorites right now - maybe at a future date but not for this trip!
Anyhow, as I was driving home from work Wednesday night I was trying to think of songs about flying other than "Leaving on a Jet Plane" by Peter, Paul, & Mary which just wasn't doing it for me! Even the John Denver version wasn't appealing but luckily there are a decent number of songs out there about airplanes and flying and it ended up being easy to find five. It's probably a pretty odd mix when you stop and look at it but that's what so fun about this meme - it can be a mixed-up mess or all one genre or group or singer or whatever you'd like! Out of these five I'd have to say that Foo Fighters "Learn to Fly" stands out as my favorite simply because it took me forever to master it on Guitar Hero and then Michael Buble comes in a close second because he's Michael Buble and it's just such a great song!
Anyhow, as the song goes, it's time for me to fly so I'm off to Florida via a Southwest Airlines flight out of Hartford to see my baby graduate (woohoo!) and then Jamie and I will be hitting the highways and byways of Florida to meet up with an assortment of blogging friends - Barb in Valdosta just north of the Florida border whose Mom has made lasagna!; Sandy in Saint Augustine who is fortunately going to be there on the same day we are!; Charlie & Bee in West Palm Beach where I'm going to have loads of hugs and some lasagna to deliver provided the lasagna doesn't get sidetracked on its way from Georgia!; and finally Lyn who is a lovely lady and an avid bicyclist down in Fort Lauderdale where we'll be flying out of to return to Connecticut on Tuesday.
Amanda and Tesla are going to hold the fort down here at home with the aid of friends Jason & Amy if need be and I'm sure they'll do just fine in my absence. I promise to take lots of pictures (you wouldn't think otherwise, would you?) but posting may be sketchy if at all as I'm only taking the NetBook with me "just in case" and anything else will be done via iPhone.
Ya'll (see? I'm practicing for being down South!) try to behave yourselves while I'm gone but if you can't do that, at least have fun!
I've been kind of busy the past couple days trying to get things done before flying down to Florida on Friday but I took the time yesterday morning to park myself on the couch with a cup of coffee to watch the DVR'd season finale of Glee. Amanda likes to get on my case whenever she catches me watching an episode but what can I say? I like the show and it was probably a darned good thing she had gone to school while I was watching yesterday as I found myself getting choked up quite a few times. If she hassles me anyway can you imagine the harassment I'd get if she caught me crying? Oy!
The song that really stole the show for me was the Glee cast's version of "To Sir With Love" - a song that I've always liked anyway but their version - wow. Nothing against Lulu but just plain wow. For those of you who missed it or don't watch the show give the video below a listen, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. I was. And if you need a tissue, the box is just over there on the end table.
Considering that I'm leaving for Florida on Friday afternoon, you would think I might be spending my time at least looking at my sorry-excuse-for-hot-weather wardrobe and trying to figure out what I can wear while I'm in the Deep South but oh no, I'm puttering around the house doing other things and spending way too much time on the computer - again. And to think I used to be so organized!
The battle of the lawn continues but I'm not sure who's winning the war yet. I did put some insecticide out last Sunday in the hopes that I can run out anything that may be munching on the grasses but I can't really tell if it's working yet. The grass that hasn't been eaten is definitely growing nicely and is in need of mowing but I'm putting it off as long as possible being that I won't be able to mow it again until I get back from Florida next Wednesday.
So far I'm putting off both packing and mowing ... it's going to be a busy end of the week!
I did manage to get my reservations made for what I think is going to be a really cool ghost tour in Saint Augustine for Jamie and I to go on. I found a 90-minute tour at ghoST Augustine that not only goes out to the lighthouse that's reportedly haunted but conducts the tours via transport in a 1977 Cadillac hearse! I can't even begin to tell you how jealous Amanda is!
Thanks to my friend MightyMom, I added the Audiobooks application to my iPhone and I've got Pride and Prejudice all downloaded to listen to on my flight down to Jacksonville. The application has all sorts of books to download and listen to, a lot of really good classics included. Considering there's just enough movement on a plane for me to be subject to motion sickness should I try to do any actual reading, an audio book is the perfect solution! I'll be so caught up with Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy that I'll be in Florida before I know it!
Amanda is wrapping up her final full week at school and she couldn't be happier about it. I've never quite figured out why everyone is always in such an all-fired hurry to get out of high school but she sure is. My fingers are crossed for good weather for her graduation next Friday!
This week's weather is a far cry from last week's weather when it was hot and humid just about every single day. The storms that blew through on Sunday brought some nice cool weather behind them and it's been absolutely lovely the past two days - perfect sleeping weather but for some reason I woke up early again today. It could be all the noisy birds that happily singing away in the trees!
I received my Social Security Statement in the mail yesterday that tells me my estimated benefits for future retirement based on my current earnings rate and it looks like I'll be dispatching ambulances for another 18 years or so. Should I retire at 66 years, 8 months I would be getting $1,706 a month but if I hang onto until I'm 70 that bumps up to $2,256 a month. Sixty-two isn't even a consideration as I'd only be getting $1,113 a month and with my 401K doing nothing but plummeting with the current economy there's no help there. Kind of scary to think that I'll be just as old - if not older - than a lot of the people we transport now! I hope I'm still able to remember all the codes we have by then or that I can enunciate properly around my false teeth!
Speaking of work, I really need to get myself off of the computer and get a few things done before I have to go in later this afternoon; I've got laundry to finish, dishes to put away, chicken to cut up for salad, and a myriad of other things that I keep putting off. Besides, it appears that someone thinks I have been on the computer more than long enough ...
Okay, okay, I get the hint, Tesla! Everyone have a great Tuesday!
It's easy to tell that Amanda is an artist - there are probably more unfinished projects cluttering up various and assorted spots in the dining room then there are completed ones but I guess that's how artists roll ... with more projects swirling around in their heads than they have time to finish! Amanda's latest self-imposed project is to illustrate a poem by Curtis RX who, when not writing music and performing with his band Creature Feature, is writing a little book of death poems called 101 Ways To Die, Accidents, Murders, And Other Techniques To Lose A Life.
Yes, yes, I know what you're thinking but just remember, it's Amanda we're talking about here - the kid who loves a good zombie crawl, counts Edgar Allan Poe as one of her favorite authors, and thinks Vincent Price was one of THE best actors ever - and wasn't he just?? For her, this is pretty typical stuff and as someone who eventually wants to make her living as an illustrator, this is darned good practice for that future career that she's going to need to pay back all of her student loans!
The poem in question is titled "I've Got a Sinking Feeling in My Gut" and involves a Victorian serial killer who has a penchant for organ removal but Amanda has based her illustrations in a modern day setting rather than in a Victorian one. There are two reasons for that: the first is that she says the modern day setting is easier to draw and the second is that it didn't dawn on her until this morning that the poem is based on Jack the Ripper and she'd already drawn the first page. Oops!
The finished project will be six pages and so far she's got the first three pages done - not counting the verses which go into those white boxes that you see. I'm sure that when the whole thing is complete, Amanda won't mind if I post the entire project as she's always open to kudos or critiques of her work. In the meantime, here are the first three pages of "I've Got a Sinking Feeling In My Gut" - poem by Curtis RX and illustrations by Amanda aka Miss Delirium!
"In the hours past midnight
Taking a shortcut home
Down a damp, dark alley
Chilled to the bone"
"A hard day on the job
Not the profession you think
A harlot, a whore
A woman of the streets"
"As the fog rolls in
Not a human in sight
The sound of footsteps
Fills your body with fright."
Hopefully Mr. RX won't mind that Amanda took a little poetic license with his poem and can appreciate the fact that his artistic writings have inspired another artist to pull out paint and paper to work on her craft a little while adding just a touch more clutter to the dining room! Should you be at all interested in reading more of 101 Ways to Die, then click here and head on over to Villains & Vaudevillians, The Official Website of Curtis RX
This past Wednesday I made the hour-and-a-half round-trip trek to West Hartford so that I could retrieve my picture of the Brooklyn Bridge from the CT+5 Art Show gallery; it was either that or have it tossed and I figured that the frame and matting were more than worth the drive!
Following that, I met up with my friend Rhonda and we made our way south so that we could check out the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts 99th Annual Juried Exhibition that is being held at the Mystic Arts Center.
The show doesn't have its opening reception until this coming Thursday evening when they give out awards to those pieces that garnered them and at that time the place will most likely be packed with local patrons of the arts. I wanted to see the showing but the opening reception up in West Hartford had left a rather bad taste in my mouth so I figured that if I wanted to see my picture on display along with the other entries without all of the surrounding hubbub then we needed to go at a time other than the opening. Fortunately, the show actually opened on the 28th of May so Rhonda and I were able to pop in late Wednesday morning and have the gallery almost entirely to ourselves.
Now, I'm not sure how well you can see it in this picture (hopefully it biggifies if you click on it) but the big painting in the middle on the far wall was crowned "Best of Show". It's an oil painting of three ballerinas at rest and it carries a pricetag of something like $20,000. Rhonda read the price, I just admired the painting! The other big one over to the left (the blue one) was awarded Second Place and it was listed at $13,800 - or something like that.
Even though they were both nice paintings and obviously a lot of work had gone into them, they weren't my favorites in the show. Instead I really liked the following paintings that tend to lose something as photographs because you can't see the play of light that both paintings had. I found them both to be quite captivating and beautiful and was rather surprised that neither had garnered any sort of award at all. Ah well, as they say "art is subjective", right?
What you can't see very well in this picture is that this painting gave one a definite sense of texture; I could have sworn that the stucco effect on the wall was something that you could tangibly feel as it looked so "there" but nope, it was strictly an effect of the paint itself. I thought this was one of the most beautifully done still lifes that I have ever seen.
The picture above was actually my very favorite as it was almost like standing outside and watching the sun set and lighting the sky a golden hue, again the picture just doesn't do the painting justice. Truth be told, I'm a sucker for well-done landscapes and I thought this was one was very well done.
As for my photographic entry into the show, it was located in a rather nice corner of the gallery near a lovely french door that gave one a beautiful view of the Mystic River outside. Mine is on the top on the left; it was hard to get a picture of it without reflections on the glass so this is the best I could get ...
Oh, and I appear to have changed my name in spite of having corrected it on the entry form before dropping off my picture prior to the show's opening. I guess I've somehow managed to become Swedish! I really do need to work on my penmanship if that's what my name looks like these days!
Following our tour of the gallery, Rhonda and I took ourselves off to The Olive Garden and had a lovely luncheon of unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks followed by dessert that we probably should have skipped but decided to have anyway! Hey, sometimes you just gotta have dessert and what better time than after having viewed some nice artwork? After all, dessert is cultured, right??
For this week's edition of Travis' Five on Friday meme, I thought I'd step back into the past 34 years and pull out a few of my favorites from 1976. In addition to yesterday being the 7th anniversary of my time at American Ambulance, it was also the 34th anniversary of my graduation from high school. Wow. Where on earth did the time go?
Thirty-four years ago on a beautiful June evening in Willimantic, Connecticut I sat on the football field next to the other officers of the Windham High School Class of 1976 (I was the Class Secretary) and listened to a very young and very new United States Senator Christopher J. Dodd deliver our commencement address. I don't remember a thing the man said either during the graduation ceremony or at the reception following but I'm pretty sure I liked him a lot better back then than I do all these years later but I guess that's neither here nor there being that he has wisely chosen not to run for re-election and this post isn't about him anyway - it's about the music of the time.
Music has that amazing and magical quality of taking you right back to where you were when you first listened to it and these songs are no exception to that. On June 3rd, 1976 I was 17 years old, leaving high school behind, and holding orders to ship out for basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas just four days later on June 7th. Certainly makes me wish I knew then what I know now but in spite of the unexpected twists, turns, and bumps along the way it's been a pretty good journey so far with just a few exceptions along the way.
Anyhow, enough of my babbling, enjoy the music and if you get a chance please swing by Trav's Thoughts and play along with us. Who knows? Your favorite music could also become my favorite music!
... to me! Today marks the 7th year of my employment with American Ambulance. Seven years of working some crazy shifts, taking a few interesting 911 calls in amongst the standard stuff, and oftentimes wanting to pull my hair out as I try to figure out where on earth I am going to possibly fit another call on the spreadsheet without pushing my road crews totally over the edge. A former co-worker once compared this job to a game of Tetris and he was pretty spot-on!
Obviously American wasn't my first job and working EMS has certainly been an eye-opener at times but in spite of the craziness and the stress I can honestly say that I like my job; the reason for that being I have met some truly wonderful people during the course of my career and they are what make the job what it is.
I never set out in life to be an Emergency Medical Dispatcher but I am and I can't think of another place I'd rather be doing it than where I am in spite of the occasional grumbling! So let's see what the next seven years brings, shall we??
I was so tired yesterday that I forgot to mention that Amanda thoroughly enjoyed her trip to New York City over the weekend where she had a marvelous time not just looking for brains but also offering them up on a tray along with some innards and a swig of blood should one find themself down a pint or two!
I'd be willing to bet that when my old Gram B made that apron that Amanda's wearing with her costume that she never in a million years would have thought that her great-granddaughter who would wear it in a zombie walk! Not that she would have known what a zombie walk was either!
As you can see, Amanda did her usual great job with her make-up and even has that "flesh sliding off her face" look down perfectly! Her friend Sami prefers not to have to spend an hour washing the stuff off so goes for the slightly less-zombified look - though still horrific in it's own right!
No matter how ghoulish and ghastly they look, though, the girls had a wonderful time hanging out together while scaring people on the subway ride back to Sami's place and just being kids. Someday they'll be able to look back and fondly remember the times they lurched down the streets of Brooklyn in full zombie regalia - something that not a lot of us could ever say!
I was hoping to get an actual blog post up for today but alas my schedule has changed a tiny bit at work again and I find myself working a double shift on Mondays for at least a little while. Even though that in and of itself is not normally enough to make me too tired to write, I didn't sleep all that well on Sunday night so I find myself definitely lacking in the energy department at this particular time and I'm just too wiped out to write!
Hopefully I'll have recharged by tomorrow but in the meantime, I hope that everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend here in the States and that for those who don't live in this country, I hope it was a great weekend regardless!
