Forty years, too many beers

I noticed I'd not written much during February, and that Valentine's Dance must have taken the wind out of me. So, searching for a picture to generate a topic ("Forty Years"), I looked around my office and saw this. Funny how ideas get started, so with a couple of somewhat appropriate images to "write around", it was off to the literary races once again.

Most of that stuff dates from 1968, and the Corvette represents my 2008 model in the garage today. In 1968, I was in Thailand, doing radio and headed toward time in Germany to do both TV work and finish up again in radio with AFN, the Armed Forces Network. I had absolutely no idea of what I wanted to be "when I grow up", and perhaps today I am still a work in progress. At the dinner dance two weeks ago, I was once again behind a microphone, introducing songs and offering some musical history notes to music played by a seventeen piece "Cigar City Big Band". That solved the problem of going to the dance without a date, since my wife made it very clear she doesn't enjoy dress up functions, nor dancing. It's not religious, mind you, just her desire to enjoy being cozy with a good book while I'm looking like a penguin and standing in whatever limelight might be available.

Well, if you cared to ask, the Valentine's Dinner Dance was a resounding success, and we made $14,000 to put into our scholarship Foundation of the local Kiwanis Club. This week, I'll be writing checks to pay for the 201 meals, but having paid for the florist, the valet parking company, the band (a bargain at $2,600), and a 3.6 caret Tanzanite jewel which was our raffle prize, to clear more than we expected was just great.

Better still, the Longboat Key Club agreed to give us the room next year for the 2nd Annual Valentine's dance. We might even squeeze in an extra "ten top" table, although space limitations will probably trump crowd eagerness to participate. It's very rewarding, however, to hear positive statements about something you work hard on, and our club President Bob Gault and his wife Shannon came up with an idea and a operational plan we all applauded.

So, what else is new? Well, my daughter will visit in the coming month, and I'll head out in April for another short cruise over to Cozumel where I can stock up on Kahlua at bargain prices. We refer to it as "Mexican cough syrup" - the only hard stuff in the house. This will be the first summer where there is no Missouri condo. It sold (right at the end of the Realtor's listing, naturally), and while we didn't get our price, we got out of a third set of electric bills, other utilities and condo fees. Oh, and taxes - there is always the 'joy' of paying taxes on property you use less than half the time. So, that means our home will be Florida for 12 months of the year. Summers on this island may prove to be interesting, but with four cruise ports in the state, there's always travel opportunities within driving range. And driving (even with $4.00 a gallon gasoline) gets me back to the start of this blog entry and the 1968 microphone and 2008 Corvette. See, you can travel forty years and get back on one visual stimuli. I therefore have proven the ability to not only talk in circles, but write in them as well.