Another One Bites the Dust - Goodbye 2011!

Well, in the words of Freddy Mercury and Queen, "Another One Bites the Dust", the year 2011 that is!

Here I sit in our Media Room in Dallas watching "The Big D" New Years Eve show on the big screen, waiting for another year to end. This is a yearly tradition to spend New Years Eve in the Media Room, eating papusas and tamales. There are 40 minutes left of 2011 here in Dallas. I have already said Happy New Year to my children in Maryland. I always wonder about the same thing at this time every year. . . if my future self could visit me right now, what would she have to say? Will everybody make it through 2012? Will it be a good year at work? Will I reach all of my goals this year? Only time will tell. . .

This is usually a very lonely time of the year for me, even with family around. I can feel the winds of change stirring in my life. People have come and gone and I am at a crossroads. I want to be a be a better person this year. I don't want to sweat the small stuff anymore. I want to improve my physical fitness and find some ways to give back to the community somehow for my good fortune and blessings. I want to continue to give love to and care about others, but I want to receive some more back this year. I don't think that this is asking too much.

For the past few months, I have really been enjoying one particular person for their mind. I love what they have to say and look forward to reading about it every day!  I want to continue to do this as it gives me something to look forward to every day.  It is so amazing that with all of the video games and advanced technical gadgets that we have today, the thing that makes me happy is reading somebody's blog!  This just underscores the fact that the simple things in life are the best.

We had a birthday party for Alex tonight.  He turned 22 years old today.  Here is a cute picture of Adeline and Daddy right before he blew out the candles on his cake.  I hope that he will become more involved in her life this year!  She is such a sweet child and needs her Daddy in her life. 

Adeline and Alex (Daddy) Getting Ready to Blow Out the Candles on His Cake

I would like dedicate this post tonight to to the memory of my cousin Patrick Reilly, who died on New Years Day, 2010.  Pat moved down to Florida to retire and had just purchased a Harley Davidson so that he could ride with his friends.  Unfortunately, he was a novice rider and lost control of his bike and crashed into a house.  He died at the scene of the accident  Rest in Peace, cousin Pat and God Bless your soul!

I pray that all of us have a safe, happy and healthy year.  For all who read this, Happy New Year and may you, your family and friends be safe, happy and healthy in 2012!

Home, Sweet Home

We arrived home this morning after flying all night, with layovers in LA and Houston.  Although Hawaii is a beautiful place, I have to say that I am truly glad to be back home and that I plan to stay put until my return to work on the Tuesday after New Years Day.

We drove to Waxahachie to pick up Adeline and got caught in some major traffic around Dallas. We stopped at Boston Market on the way home and picked up dinner, which was chicken, corn, mashed potatoes, vegetables, macaroni and cheese and baked apples, along with the little cornbread loaves that they provide with dinner.  It was delicious!

Nicole and Brandon sent some presents for Adeline,  along with a beautiful photo book from their wedding for us, which was very thoughtful and much appreciated!

Here are Adeline and I sitting by the tree when she opened her presents:

Mae and Adeline opening presents from Auntie Nicole and Uncle Brandon

Adeline loved her presents and colored in her new coloring books until she went to sleep!

So now that Christmas is over and 2012 is on the horizon, I have already started my soul searching and contemplation on what I need to do to improve myself in 2012.  I have already made arrangements to work with a personal trainer at 24 Hour Fitness where I work out. His name is Brad and he is going to help me with my workout and diet.  He told me that what you eat is 80% of your total fitness results.  Although I do eat healthily, I think that this is where I have been going wrong.  I am looking forward to mitigating the hate relationship that I have with my body by  loosing a few pounds and gaining some muscle.  I would also like to start on something more meditative like some Tai Chi classes.

I also need to work on my emotional and spiritual selves.  I have spent alot of time during the past year or more caring deeply about people who don't care about me.  Although I won't completely abandon caring about these people, I have determined that I need to divert a large part of this energy to care for myself and others who will give some love back to me.  I am not one for having alot of friends as I believe that quality is far better than quantity.  I would like to find a friend for mutual spiritual and emotional support.  I really need this badly!

Here's to building more physical, spiritual and emotional health in 2012!

Christmas Eve in Paradise

It's Christmas Eve in Paradise!

A Floating Christmas Tree at the Polynesian Cultural Center

We flew out to Hawaii on Monday of  this past week for a holiday in paradise.  Unfortunately, the holiday did not start out too well.  Continental/United Airlines lost our bags, I lost my favorite jacket, and an iPAD2 screen broke.  To top it all off, several days later I forgot to get my credit card back after I paid for dinner at Gordon Biersch.

However, not all is lost!  One of the bags showed up the day after we arrived and the other (containing my stuff) just showed up on on Thursday; I found my jacket at the Lost and Found at the Navy Lodge and we have an AppleCare policy on the iPAD2.  I also got the bank to shut off my card and nobody tried to charge anything to it.  What became so apparent from all of this is that material possessions are fleeting.  You can have everything one day and nothing the next.  When it comes right down to it, what really matters is your family and friends!

Still, all of this doesn't keep me from being pissed off at Continental/United Airlines for their incompetence and total and complete lack of giving a damn about our bags!  Not once did they apologize for the serious inconvenience that they caused us, but they also didn't even try to find our bags.  They never called us at all to say the bags had arrived at HNL.  We just showed up at the Baggage Claim and got them.  I only had the clothes on my back on Tuesday and had to go spend a good bit of money on clothes and toiletries to get by until I could get my bag back.  I am sure they will not reimburse me the full amount.  What makes it even worse is that we are One Pass Gold Members, which means we are really good customers. They will receive a formal complaint from me after we get back home..

All of that aside, Oahu is a very beautiful place!  We went to the Polynesian Cultural Center yesterday.  This is definitely a "don't miss" for anybody visiting Oahu.  The Mormon Church runs the Polynesian Cultural Center and provides young folks from the Polynesian Islands with scholarships to Brigham Young University in Oahu in exchange for them to share their culture with folks visiting the Center.

Visitors get to experience the cultures of Hawaii, Fiji, Tonga, New Zealand, Samoa and Tahiti and they are all very beautiful!

The day started out with a Canoe Pageant where people from each of the islands floated out on canoes dressed in their traditional costumes and doing their traditional dances.

The first canoe out was the "Royal Ali'i", which represented Hawaiian royalty of yesteryear:


The Royal Ali'i Canoe


Next came the New Zealand Canoe:

New Zealand (Aotearoa) Canoe

And after that was the Samoan Canoe:

The Samoan Canoe

Then the Fiji Canoe:

The Fiji Canoe

Followed by the Tongan Canoe:

The Tongan Canoe

And finally, the Hawaiian Canoe:

The Hawaiian Canoe

There are little "villages" throughout the Polynesian Cultural Center that represent each of the islands.  There are shows in these villages which teach visitors about the particular island's culture.  I particularly liked the Fiji and Tahiti Villages.

Here is a picture of some of the lovely young ladies from the Fiji village:

3 Lovely Fijiian Ladies

The Fiji show and dancing was quite tribal and lively.  I really enjoyed the Fiji Chietan's dancing:

The Tahiti Village also had a nice show and dancing.  Here are some of the Tahitian dancers:

There was a Luau after the village shows, which featured entertainment and a traditional Luau meal which consisted of Kahlua Pig, teriyaki chicken, poke, long noodle chicken, sweet potatoes, rice and poi.

The traditional Kahlua Pig is covered with banana leaves and roasted slowly in an "Emu" or pit all day.  Here is a picture of the Kahlua Pig:

Kahlua Pig

What a wonderful time!  I am so glad to be able to embrace diversity in such a beautiful manner!

All of this loveliness aside, I did have a few disappointments during the last week.  A Facebook friend went somewhat beserk and was posting all kinds of anti-Christmas comments, and then unfriended her daughter and a bunch of friends, including myself.  Also, a colleague at work sent out a "thank you" email to everybody that "helped" her team during the past year.  She listed a group of people and cited examples of how they helped her team.  Unfortunately, she seemed to forget about the fact that her team used my work in a recent major presesentation, as well as all of the time that I sat with her team to help with the presentation.

However, I must continue to realize that the only behavior that I can control is my own, which I plan to do this year and throughout 2012.

Merry Christmas!

Rotonda West on Dwellable

Farewell, My Friend

I have felt very sad all day long today.  A friend of mine will be driving out of Texas tomorrow and into the sunrise. I hope that there are some really good things on the horizon for her.  It kind of reminds me somewhat of the morning that I left Basic Training at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas.  The bus I was on drove off into the most beautiful sunrise I had ever seen, and I saw this as a sign that there were many good things in store for me, and there were!  If I had to do it all over again, I would have still joined the Air Force.

A group of us went to lunch today at Pappasitos to bid her and another person farewell. It was a very nice lunch. Before I left work today, I went over to her, told her goodbye and gave her a pocket Angel Stone to ensure that the angels would watch over and protect her in her new location.

Sarah's Angel Stone

She and I hugged and said "goodbye".  I hope that this was not the last time that I will ever see her!  When it comes right down to it, she probably doesn't give a rat's ass about me, but I really do care about her, for some reason.  Now I have to walk past her empty desk when I return to work after New Years. This makes me feel very sad and empty.

My dear friend, I will say it again, I really care about you!  I hope that you find happiness and fulfillment in your new life. Just don't forget about the past two years here in Dallas.

So here is a song that I am dedicating here on my blog, just for you . . .

I wish you were still here and I hope we can meet again someday.

Until tomorrow's sunrise . . .

A Shot in the Bum

I have been sick for the past week or so with severe sinus congestion, a sore throat and the general malaise that accompanies ailments of this sort. I finally broke down today and went to the doctor. Well, the proverbial "shot in the arm" to cure one's ills morphed into a "shot in the bum" for me. A steroid shot that is, along with a Z-PAC prescription. It ended up being a sinus infection. I want this to be gone before I get on the plane to Hawaii next week!

Today turned out to be a pretty decent one. I went to lunch at Pappadeaux's today with several people from work to celebrate the birthday of a very lovely girl at work who I enjoy talking with on a daily basis. Well, the infamous "TW" joined us at lunch today and it was a very pleasant experience! I have mentioned TW in my blog before. I really like TW, but they shut me out at times for some unknown reason, which really hurts my feelings.

TW was out of the office at another location for several weeks and just arrived back this past week. I have noticed that things seem to have eased since their return. The veil appears to have lifted somewhat. Perhaps it is because this is TW's last week here. I hope that things stay this way until their departure. I would love to sit down and have a long discussion with TW to tell them how much I care. I don't know if this will happen now or ever, but I hope it will somehow, somewhere, sometime.

So, here's to you, TW. I truly care about you, so don't you forget about me after you leave! I am dedicating one of my favorite songs to you tonight and for ever more . . .

More to come . . .

The Blue Lady

I just got an iPAD 2 this past week and I have really been enjoying playing with it! I don't know why I waited so long to get one, as they are so much easier to use than a regular laptop. So after dinner tonight I was playing some more with the iPAD and came across an app called "Photo Booth", where you can take different kinds of distorted pictures, some of them like those funky mirrors at amusement parks. I was oddly drawn to the "Thermal Camera" selection and took my first "self portrait" on my iPAD 2. I have titled it "The Blue Lady", because it actually depicts how I have been feeling this week. Here is "The Blue Lady":

The "Blue Lady"

This reminds me somewhat of those aura reading photos you can have taken in places like Sedona or Pleasanton, CA.  If I were to do an aura reading on this photo, I would say that the subject is a blue lady surrounded by fire with serenity above,  Oddly enough, that is exactly where I am at right now in my life. It is cold and dark outside and the holidays are approaching.  I am feeling pretty blue as a result.  I am surrounded by a very stressful environment at work, and the only peace that I have is from the Lord above.

I need to be take great care to keep this under control.  I am going to Hawaii at the end of next week, which will help immensely.  I also need to stick to a strict exercise regimen, eat healthy food, and surround myself with positive and caring people.  Sticking to these principles, I hope to become Ms. Sunshine again:

Ms. Sunshine

Until tomorrow . . .

Pearl Harbor Day

I dedicate my post today to those who died in the attack on Pearl Harbor in Oahu, Hawaii on this day 70 years ago.  How tragic that something like this could happen on what was a beautiful, sunny day in paradise!  What is so sad is that there were strong indications that this was going to happen, but they went unheeded. This tragedy underscored the importance of how intelligence should be used to protect the United States of America from all enemies foreign and domestic.

Although I have been in Oahu many times, the USS Arizona Memorial never fails to have an effect on me.  It lies in shallow waters beneath the beautiful stark white memorial built in its memory and honor. You can actually see the ship in the water under the memorial:

The USS Arizona Lies Still Beneath its Memorial in Pearl Harbor

  
Visitors are taken to the memorial via a barge and once there, asked to enter the memorial in silence and respect.  It is a very somber place, as the bodies of 1,177 servicemen who died aboard the ship remain entombed there today.  When you look out of the windows of the memorial, you can see one of the gun turrets right outside:

Gun Turret Right Outside the Windows of the Arizona Memorial

Here is a picture of a large plaque of the list of names of those servicemen who died there:

Plaque of Names of Those Who Died on the USS Arizona

I will pray for the souls of these brave servicemen who died at Pearl Harbor 70 years ago.  I pray that both they and their families are at peace.

Until tomorrow . . .

It's Freezing in Dallas!

It is freezing in Dallas, Texas!  It has been this way for the past few days and is supposed to be the same for the rest of the week.  I have woke up to cold dark mornings, donned my heavy winter coat, and then returned home in the cold dark evenings.  I don't want to do this anymore!  We are going to Hawaii in two weeks and I cannot wait!  Here is a picture that I took last year of the beautiful, private beach on Bellows Air Force Station in Oahu, HI:

Private Beach on Bellows Air Force Station in Oahu, Hawaii

Hawaii, here I come!  Anyway, once the sun came up today,  I had a decent day at work.  I ended up getting a really good year end performance review from my manager, and that made me feel good.  I have worked hard and truly cared all year long and it paid off!

Until tomorrow . . .

The Yule Tree and its Lesson in Diversity

We put up our Christmas tree and decorated it last night.  We don't put it up every year as we are often away during Christmas, but we will be home for part of the holidays this year, so we decided to decorate.  We bought some new ornaments for it this year.  Here is a picture of the tree after we decorated it last night:

The Yule Tree

I fully embrace diversity and have several friends who are Wiccan.  My Wiccan friends call this a Yule Tree.  The Yule Tree is decorated and consecrated for the Winter Solstice, which is at the latter part of December and is the shortest, and often the coldest and darkest day of the year.  The Celtic Druids venerated evergreen trees as manifestations of deity and as symbols of the universe. To the Celts, these trees were sacred because they did not die from year to year like deciduous trees. Therefore they represented the eternal aspect of the Goddess who also never dies. Their greenery was symbolic of the hope for the sun's return.

The Yule tree is consecrated by sprinkling it with salted water, passing the smoke of incense (bayberry, pine, spruce, pine, spice, cedar, or cinnamon) through the branches, and walking around the tree with a lighted candle saying:

By fire and water, air and earth,
I consecrate this tree of rebirth.

I have never been at a Winter Solstice ceremony, but I am sure that it is quite lovely! 

I am indeed privileged  to have some Wiccan friends who are kind enough to help me understand more about their religion.  I had a very strict Catholic upbringing and for a long time was scared to death of the pentagram as I thought it to be a symbol of evil. This is not the case in Wiccan beliefs, in which the pentagram represents the five classical elements, which are invoked during many magical rituals, notably when consecrating a magic circle. The five elements are Air, Fire, Water and Earth, plus Aether (or Spirit), which unites the other four.

The latter description of the pentagram is vastly different from I was brought up to believe. This just underscores the fact that there are many people in this world who are prejudiced against what they don't understand!

If we would all just take some time to talk with and understand people who are different than us, we would find that there is much more beauty in the world than what we can behold while wearing our blinders!  When we free our mind from prejudice, we become so much more enriched in life!

Update - 20 January 2012

Although I still fully embrace diversity and think that Wiccan beliefs are interesting, my Wiccan "friends" that I referenced in this post turned out to be intolerant biggots who hate Christianity and everything associated with it.  Needless to say, I am not friends with these people any more. This is sad, but my last word on the matter is "good riddance".

Ode to the "Ancient Mariner"

I am dedicating this post to my father John "Jackie" West, who died on this day 14 years ago.

"The Ancient Mariner"

John "Jackie" West grew up in Tobyhanna, PA during the Great Depression.  Although times were hard, this did not dampen his enthusiasm for mischief, which he is said to have participated in often. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy when he was 17 years old and went off to serve his country in World War II. His life was often in considerable danger as he served as a Navigator on Naval ships that sailed the hostile waters off of France and other parts of Europe. "Jackie" would not speak of many of the atrocities that he witnessed during the war, but it was obvious that they affected him deeply.

He survived WWII and was a Navigation Instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He served a total of 22 years in the Navy. When he retired in 1963, he and his family moved from Annapolis, MD to Tobyhanna, PA.  Although Jackie could navigate the ocean with precision, he often got lost on land while driving and would not stop to ask for directions, much to the chagrin of his wife, Nora!  As such, his children lovingly dubbed him as "The Ancient Mariner".  He lived in Tobyhanna with his family until his death on 1 December 1997.

"Jackie" will always be remembered as an imaginative storyteller. His rich tenor voice graced the masses at St. Ann's Roman Catholic Church in Tobyhanna, where he served as a lector and sang hymns. One of the songs that he loved to sing the most was "Danny Boy", which was sung by a vocalist at his funeral mass in December 1997. There wasn't a dry eye in the church during that song!  After mass, a military funeral detail arrived at St. Catherine's Cemetery in Moscow, PA to give him a most beautiful send-off with a 21 gun salute while a bagpiper played "Amazing Grace".  The funeral detail then played taps on a bugle and then presented a flag to his lovely widow Nora.

Rest in Peace, Jackie!