Time to light up your darkness!

Living in Florida means that you can do something different about holiday festivities than what you did when you lived...elsewhere!

We spent Christmas Eve at Seaworld, and two evenings later, were boating up canals in Port Charlotte. The idea is that the householders decorate their backyards to show off for boaters.
The downside was that it was too cold! This is supposed to be Florida, right! And the diesel fumes from the tour boat besmirched the clear Southwest Florida atmosphere.

Celebrating at the beach is also something we have pursued from time to time, picnicking as a substitute for more northern activities, like sledding or snowballing each other into Pneumonia.

For chilly nights our house still has that wonderful amenity, a fireplace. Unused for nearly eight months out of the year, it has it's parallel in the Central Airconditioning installed in the house I grew up in near Buffalo, NY. This also was only used for three or four months.

Well enough paradox and to you and yours, may the New Year bring blessings of Peace and Joy!

Steve Cornell
(Will post something other than my mug from now on! Aren't you relieved? )

Castle Obsession?

All right, let's ruin the suspense for you mystery buffs out there and get right down to it.

Castles: what's up with that? Well when I was, younger, shall we say, I saw every day a piece of wood with my last name on it with 5 castles on it. I was told this was our family's coat of arms.
We even had a geneology with that "ensign" emblazoned on one of the pages. You could tell it was a real geneology because it also had other coats of arms attached to our family.

See, back when a coat of arms was like your company logo, your family's logo identified you in the real rat race of life. It was your personal statement! Today most of us assume it identified all the succeeding generations down through time. Not true, unfortunately. Your coat of arms was truly personal. Each generation or person had to earn their own from the crown of (in my ancestor's case) England.

So, even though 5 castles were on the coat of arms of the ancestor of mine who came to America
way back in the 1600's, I cannot claim them. I can only dream! And wonder, which 5 castles were they?

A Promise to myself...

Well, you know it is December in Bradenton, FL, when you can smell the smell of Citrus peelings being prepared to be cattle feed. I can't even tell you if they boil them, chop them, slow smoke them, or mix straw with them to facilitate pyramid building. But, I can tell you this, they smell in the mornings and it's something like old ancient orange juice.

But with the smell comes the weather people leave Michigan or Buffalo or Maine for when the snow flies. And of course that means the "snowbirds" are amongst us again.

The fact that I am blogging can be totally laid at the feet of 2 situations. One is a desire to write and for an ADD'er who never finishes anything, an opportunity to write short compositions is golden. The other thing is the many fine bloggers I have been introduced to over the webcommunity of www.theooze.com which I recommend to all and sundry.

Peace and blessings on your journey,
Steve.