Travelin Shoes

I have a trip planned for this weekend. I am supposed to depart Houston on Saturday at six in the morning for Montserrat. I may be leaving earlier, because of Hurricane Ike. It is heading for the Texas coast, seemingly a bit south of us, but the county next to the one in which I reside is under evacuation warning, some parts of the county it is mandatory. I may have to leave town tomorrow. I just hope my Monteserrat visit is not completely blown away by the storm.

I grew up in a time when baseball was dominated by pitching and defense. I still love to watch a 1-0, 2-1, or 3-2 game more than a 10-7 home run hitting contest. I got to see one last night at Minute Maid Park. Ian Snell of the Pirates and Alberto Arias were the starters. Snell had command of his slider and was throwing his fastball as high as 96 miles per hour. He really handcuffed the Astros for most of the night. Alberto Arias was making his first Major League appearance for Houston and was really hot for the first few innnings. He struck out five of the first six hitters and had another K in the third. He seemed be on the verge of running out of gas in the fifth, so he was pinch hit for by another September call-up from the the minor leagues. Mark Saccamanno was the pinch hitter, his first big league at bat, for Arias in the bottom of the fifth with one out. He drove the ball over the fence into the Astros bullpen in right center field. The ‘Stros added two more runs in the inning and made them stand up for a 3-2 victory for Arias.

Arias and Saccamanno had memorable nights and I got to see a terrific pitchers’ duel!

My daughter has put together a small consortium of blog sites that will allow advertisers to deal directly with the bloggers to place ads at reasonable prices and cut out the middle men expenses of dealing with a broker.

The blogs are carefully targeted and present the advertiser the opportunity to select the blog or blogs that match their advertising interests. Each of the blogs is maintained with a high level of writing and creative content.

My mother was from New Jersey, so we often left our Texas home to visit my grandparents in the Garden State. We were able to visit a lot of historical sites, but some of our favorite experiences were to go to the shore at Seaside Heights or Asbury Park. We loved the boardwalks and the salt water taffy! I have not been back in many years.

But many memories flooded back as I came across the web site for a realtor that specializes in commercial, retail and high-end residential real estate in Monmouth County. Bruce Germinsky also offers properties such as professional & medical class A office space, retail, shopping centers. But the section of his site that drew my attention was the pages featuring oceanfront luxury condos, waterfront homes, and the posts about Asbury.

Summer time is upon us and that meas a bit of traveling for me and some of the members of the congregation. My boys are now in Singapore, spending the summer with their aunt that lives there. I have already been to camp with 400 teens, 64 from our congregation! I taught 43 tenth graders in Bible Class. Next up is a trip to Dominica, for a mission campaign. We will spend two weeks in the village of Salisbury, on the Caribbean side of the island. It is a new place for our group and it should be exciting.

After hearing that the price of gold is at an all time high, and hearing all the commercials on television and radio about outfits that want to buy gold jewelry, I even dug out my old college class ring to see if it might bring in as much as I paid for it thirty years ago!

I also read a web release concerning Monex, a leading company in the precious metals market. They have built a very positive reputation over the past thirty or so years for providing high quality gold bullion in the form of ingots, cold coins and other precious metal investments. Maybe it is time for me to purchase a few nice gold coins to solidify my portfolio!

A good friend of mine has decided to put together a Book Club gathering of bloggers each month. She will post a book for any one who is interested in participating to read by the 25th of the month. Then each participant will post his or her report on the book on their own blog, with a link to the book club site. My friend will include links back to the various posts so that the participants can peruse the other posted reports. The book to be read for the month of April is To Kill A Mockingbird. I have not read it since high school, so I will pick up a copy at the library and give it a reread. The whole idea sounds like fun to me, and of course, the more the merrier!

The day of dominance by the gas guzzling Sport Utility Vehicles is over. At least for those who can afford to make a trade and get a more fuel efficient car. For those wondering if they can find the right deal. Car Loans can be compared at Car Boulevard, arming you to take the step to move away from the dinosaur in your garage.

On our cruise to the Caribbean, one of our stops was St. Thomas, USVI. We have friends there who picked us up at the dock and took around the island seeing the sights that locals enjoy. We saw Coral World and the Sky Tram. But the most fun was when we drove out to Megan’s Point and walked out to the end of the pennisula. We climbed some big rocks then stood and threw stones into the sea. It was the best stop on the whole cruise.

My wife and I have reached the point that we don’t need to impress one another with gifts that don’t really suit. We like to give gift certificates to favorite stores like Target or Blue Nile. And in the past few holidays we have focused our shopping on the Internet, so we also love to take advantage of promo codes like those offered at Coupon Chief!