I've got to tell you, after all these years of searching I have finally found happiness.
It's an MP3 player or an IPOD with your own music downloaded.
I've got 154 songs on mine and climbing by the day. What's so great about it in my viewpoint is that if I choose I never have to listen to a bad song. No bad songs is made even better by the fact that I don't have to listen to any advertisements.
Hard to beat life with earphones blasting some of your favorite music right into the depths of your soul.
This has brought about a new hobby for me as well. Almost daily, I search Youtube or other sites for some new songs that I might want to download.
Life is good with an MP3 player, my friends. Very, very good.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Nashville
Nashville, Tennessee is now one of my new favorite cities in North America. I hadn't ever been there until a few days ago and we are already planning another trip there so we can spend a little more time exploring.
I'm not a huge country music fan, but the city has other things to offer even besides country. The AT & T building is one of the coolest buildings I have seen and the downtown skyline in Nashville is beautiful.
The football stadium that the Tennessee Titans call home is one of the nicer looking stadiums I have seen and even though I am not a huge NFL fan, I wouldn't mind taking in one of their games sometime in the near future.
The pedestrian bridge over the Cumberland River is one of the nicest I have seen.
We only got to spend a short time here on our way to Greenville, South Carolina but plan on coming back in the not too distant future.
More later.
I'm not a huge country music fan, but the city has other things to offer even besides country. The AT & T building is one of the coolest buildings I have seen and the downtown skyline in Nashville is beautiful.
The football stadium that the Tennessee Titans call home is one of the nicer looking stadiums I have seen and even though I am not a huge NFL fan, I wouldn't mind taking in one of their games sometime in the near future.
The pedestrian bridge over the Cumberland River is one of the nicest I have seen.
We only got to spend a short time here on our way to Greenville, South Carolina but plan on coming back in the not too distant future.
More later.
Memphis Rendezvous
When we first schemed up this big trip to South Carolina, my mouth quickly became lustful of getting some ribs in Memphis.
We had seen on both the Food Network and the Travel Channel this great restaurant in downtown Memphis with supposedly the best ribs in the world.
Not true at all. Charlie Vergos' Rendezvous was pretty overrated, overpriced and I felt gypped. When we left, we saw BB King's Blue's Cafe and we wished we had tried that instead.
However, Memphis was great and is worthy of a redo. Love to go back and spend some time doing some of the historical sights and walk around downtown and listen to some of the best music in the world in the Blues capital.
But, that will be another trip
We had seen on both the Food Network and the Travel Channel this great restaurant in downtown Memphis with supposedly the best ribs in the world.
Not true at all. Charlie Vergos' Rendezvous was pretty overrated, overpriced and I felt gypped. When we left, we saw BB King's Blue's Cafe and we wished we had tried that instead.
However, Memphis was great and is worthy of a redo. Love to go back and spend some time doing some of the historical sights and walk around downtown and listen to some of the best music in the world in the Blues capital.
But, that will be another trip
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Live for Today
As I blog and search for meaning in this life, I tend to find myself asking more questions about God. I've always had a lot of questions about the future and a lot of wonderment on how things will turn out not only for myself but for human kind.
Not that I am some kind of Nostradamus, but sometimes, it's hard for me to live for today when there is so much to do tomorrow. There is so much planning and thinking to get done, making it often hard to live life in the present.
A lot of my blogs are going to be about movies, songs or other things that are important to me on a daily basis and this one is getting to that as well.
The Grassroots were a popular rock and roll band from the late 60s and early 7os and one of my favorite songs of theirs was a hit called "Let's live for today". They weren't a band like Aerosmith or the Stones that were always together, but they went through a lot of different members and changes. But, they were pretty popular from about 1966 to 1975.
This song is kind of corny, but it's pretty obvious what the meaning is. Living for today and not worrying about the consequences or the future.
There's a couple of ways I can go about living for today. One thing that comes to mind is no cares about what happens to me tomorrow and to just do whatever I want. That pretty much goes against everything ingrained in me from who knows what or when.
But, somehow with that philosophy, you know deep down inside that everything is going to be all right so why not live a little.
Another way to think about living for today is that what you do today makes a difference in yours or somebody else's tomorrow. Today matters so much because you either have a chance to do something great or to set yourself up to do something great in the next few days, months or even years.
But, it's not all about me all the time as hard as that is to believe. By helping somebody in need today, I can enable them to get by another day or possibly make a difference later on in somebody else's life.
So, the song may be a little of a teeny bopper gig of yesteryear and may be corny, but I grew up loving this song and still love it to this day. I do like the thought of living for today when that can make a huge difference in the outcome of things. Instead of worrying about tomorrow, I can think about things I can do this day to help lives get better.
I'm not going to stop thinking about God or the future any time soon, but I can stop and take a breath and think about things I can do today and really live for the day. Put enough of those difference making days back to back and you have that future you always wanted.
Monday, December 15, 2008
It''s a good day to die
There's not another human being in the history books that I admire more than Crazy Horse. There are some others that are close, but Crazy Horse is definitely my favorite.
I suppose I'm not the only one that admires him because there is a memorial built to honor him and his people in South Dakota.
He was credited with saying 'it's a good day to die' to motivate his warriors to fight. Seemed to work pretty well for him.
TaĊĦunka Witko was his Lakota name. He was a member of the Oglala band of the Lakotas otherwise known by you white eyes as the Sioux.
Crazy Horse never wanted leadership. It just fell on him and a leader he was, one of the best ever.
He was a bit of a mystic and he never lost a battle. Against other native American peoples or against the great US Calvary he went undefeated which is quite an accomplishment.
He only lived to be about 30 to 35 years old, depending on who you talk to, and there is controversy over who killed him. Some say it was a US soldier, others say it was one of his own people. Either way, he was stabbed in the back while in captivity.
As I wrote in another blog, I have always been obsessed with the Vietnam War and I always believed I would have gone. One thing I do know about war is that you never how you will react to battle until you are actually in one. Bullets start flying and you pretty quickly know just how brave you really are.
Audie Murphy was one of the bravest soldiers of all time. Highly decorated in WWII and one of the more decorated soldiers of all time. He was rejected by the Marines and the paratroopers because he was too slight of build. In his prime, he stood all of five foot five.
But, like Crazy Horse, he displayed bravery that was rare in a man.
They say we are all afraid and that the only difference between a brave man and a coward is how they react to that fear.
What I don't know and may never know about myself is how I would react when the bullets start flying. Guess I will never know whether I am a warrior like a Crazy Horse or an Audie Murphy.
All I do know for sure is that Crazy Horse was a hero and in spite of what he said to excite his people to fight, today is not a good day to die.
I suppose I'm not the only one that admires him because there is a memorial built to honor him and his people in South Dakota.
He was credited with saying 'it's a good day to die' to motivate his warriors to fight. Seemed to work pretty well for him.
TaĊĦunka Witko was his Lakota name. He was a member of the Oglala band of the Lakotas otherwise known by you white eyes as the Sioux.
Crazy Horse never wanted leadership. It just fell on him and a leader he was, one of the best ever.
He was a bit of a mystic and he never lost a battle. Against other native American peoples or against the great US Calvary he went undefeated which is quite an accomplishment.
He only lived to be about 30 to 35 years old, depending on who you talk to, and there is controversy over who killed him. Some say it was a US soldier, others say it was one of his own people. Either way, he was stabbed in the back while in captivity.
As I wrote in another blog, I have always been obsessed with the Vietnam War and I always believed I would have gone. One thing I do know about war is that you never how you will react to battle until you are actually in one. Bullets start flying and you pretty quickly know just how brave you really are.
Audie Murphy was one of the bravest soldiers of all time. Highly decorated in WWII and one of the more decorated soldiers of all time. He was rejected by the Marines and the paratroopers because he was too slight of build. In his prime, he stood all of five foot five.
But, like Crazy Horse, he displayed bravery that was rare in a man.
They say we are all afraid and that the only difference between a brave man and a coward is how they react to that fear.
What I don't know and may never know about myself is how I would react when the bullets start flying. Guess I will never know whether I am a warrior like a Crazy Horse or an Audie Murphy.
All I do know for sure is that Crazy Horse was a hero and in spite of what he said to excite his people to fight, today is not a good day to die.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Man on Fire
Do you think God can forgive us for what we've done?
How hard core is that? Must have been one bad hombre to ask twice in the same movie if God can forgive him for what he's done.
Denzel Washington is one of the better actors out there. A guy like that can pick and choose his roles and I believe he has done well with his movie selections. I can't think of many bad movies he's been in.
Man on fire is pretty incredible to me. Sure, it's pretty violent and you don't see a lot of films where the good guy sticks a bomb up the butt of one of the bad guys but this one has a scene like that.
Lots of bad guys met their end in this flick.
The main character played by Denzel had turned to booze to help himself deal with the pain he felt in his heart for doing so many deeds that he even questioned whether God could forgive him. He was hired by a very shady father to be a bodyguard for his little girl.
The best thing about this movie, to me, is the relationship he developed with the little girl he was there to protect.
The little girl loved him almost instantly and he was not so open to that, but she won him over and changed his life.
That part of this movie reminds me of my own life. Even though I have never killed anybody or committed the deeds that the character in this movie had done I have been a bad one in my own right, but I am not going to talk about that.
Like the movie character, I was changed by little girls, my own little girls.
This movie does not have a traditional happy ending but it does end well in the lessons that it teaches.
Caring for another person whether that person is lovable or not can often change their lives.
I blogged about changing the world a few days ago and was told by one of those little girls that I had indeed changed the world because I had changed her life.
If we can help one person on their way we can change the world a little at a time and make this planet a better place to live.
And, that is my goal, to make this world a better place for being here than it would have been if I had never been born.
If that happens, then maybe God can forgive a hard case like me for the things that I have done, just as I am sure he could forgive the guy in this movie.
How hard core is that? Must have been one bad hombre to ask twice in the same movie if God can forgive him for what he's done.
Denzel Washington is one of the better actors out there. A guy like that can pick and choose his roles and I believe he has done well with his movie selections. I can't think of many bad movies he's been in.
Man on fire is pretty incredible to me. Sure, it's pretty violent and you don't see a lot of films where the good guy sticks a bomb up the butt of one of the bad guys but this one has a scene like that.
Lots of bad guys met their end in this flick.
The main character played by Denzel had turned to booze to help himself deal with the pain he felt in his heart for doing so many deeds that he even questioned whether God could forgive him. He was hired by a very shady father to be a bodyguard for his little girl.
The best thing about this movie, to me, is the relationship he developed with the little girl he was there to protect.
The little girl loved him almost instantly and he was not so open to that, but she won him over and changed his life.
That part of this movie reminds me of my own life. Even though I have never killed anybody or committed the deeds that the character in this movie had done I have been a bad one in my own right, but I am not going to talk about that.
Like the movie character, I was changed by little girls, my own little girls.
This movie does not have a traditional happy ending but it does end well in the lessons that it teaches.
Caring for another person whether that person is lovable or not can often change their lives.
I blogged about changing the world a few days ago and was told by one of those little girls that I had indeed changed the world because I had changed her life.
If we can help one person on their way we can change the world a little at a time and make this planet a better place to live.
And, that is my goal, to make this world a better place for being here than it would have been if I had never been born.
If that happens, then maybe God can forgive a hard case like me for the things that I have done, just as I am sure he could forgive the guy in this movie.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Kiko and the Cali Girl
Today was the California Girl's birthday and we had a few plans in the works mostly wrapped around the best restaraunt in the area.
All our plans were changed early this morning when I got a phone call from a guy saying he thought he had found our cat, Kiko. Cali Girl made up some flyers when he turned up missing on November 17th and we posted them all over the neighborhood.
I actually didn't have that great a feeling about the call. There are a lot of loose cats running around and a lot of them look pretty much alike. I had already received several false alarms and thought this might be another.
I called the Cali Girl and told her about the call. She said to call if it was him.
It was him and I didn't call. I just showed up and surprised her.
I'm telling you that the Cali Girl has had a few birthdays. But, this one had to be the best ever.
Cali loves her some cats and Kiko is an outstanding one.
Poor little fella probably has had a rough time of it because he's been sleeping since he got back pretty much.
Almost lost in all of this is another important life lesson.
I had been driving around looking for him since he turned up missing. I walked the neighborhoods, checked the pound, helped Cali with the flyers and everything else I could think of.
But, recently, I had given up.
Never give up.
No matter how hard life turns or what your obstacles are and no matter what kind of suckage life becomes, never give up.
Welcome back Kiko and thanks for another lesson.
You never get too old to learn.
All our plans were changed early this morning when I got a phone call from a guy saying he thought he had found our cat, Kiko. Cali Girl made up some flyers when he turned up missing on November 17th and we posted them all over the neighborhood.
I actually didn't have that great a feeling about the call. There are a lot of loose cats running around and a lot of them look pretty much alike. I had already received several false alarms and thought this might be another.
I called the Cali Girl and told her about the call. She said to call if it was him.
It was him and I didn't call. I just showed up and surprised her.
I'm telling you that the Cali Girl has had a few birthdays. But, this one had to be the best ever.
Cali loves her some cats and Kiko is an outstanding one.
Poor little fella probably has had a rough time of it because he's been sleeping since he got back pretty much.
Almost lost in all of this is another important life lesson.
I had been driving around looking for him since he turned up missing. I walked the neighborhoods, checked the pound, helped Cali with the flyers and everything else I could think of.
But, recently, I had given up.
Never give up.
No matter how hard life turns or what your obstacles are and no matter what kind of suckage life becomes, never give up.
Welcome back Kiko and thanks for another lesson.
You never get too old to learn.
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