Music that immediately brings me back to my high school years :)

As I said in my very first blog post, I will be making all kinds of references to movies and music. I absolutely love how they get me sucked into the experience and set their place in my memories as year markers in my life. All it takes is a few seconds of a song that came out when I was in high school and I am immediately taken back there to very specific memories. So, here are some of the ones that hit home the biggest for me:

Music that makes me smile :)

I feel like posting a few of my favorite songs that have always made me feel better. Now, to understand me better, I think it is important to express that I rarely ever listen to the words of a song. Instead, I go for the sound. I don't think I've ever memorized more than one or two songs in their entirety! lol I may catch a phrase out of the song that I like but it tends to turn out that it was not what the artist was intending to get out as his or her message.  Oh well - it's my life and my happiness.  I'll take it when I can get it! :)  So, here are some of my songs:

 

I'm sure there are more, but they aren't coming to me right at the moment.  This is a good start. :)

Bucket List

I have been working on a bucket list lately. I never thought I would be making one. I think that, in my twenties, I felt that a bucket list was something that old people put together because they were regretting never taking the chance to do certain things in life. As I was talking with my cousin one day I mentioned that getting to see her again in person and meet her family for the first time was something I was putting on my bucket list. Funny thing is, that was the defining moment that I realized I even wanted one. I think it is a good thing to have a bucket list and to have one at a young age. It helps you realize what things you are passionate about and hopefully encourages you to try to reach out and accomplish some of them. Here's to really hoping I can scratch a few off the list! :)

Farewell, Blockbuster; Hello, Red Box!

I have been a devoted member of Blockbuster for YEARS now (since 1998, I believe) and even more so when they started their Blockbuster By Mail service back in 2006-ish. This program was the best, especially for people like me who could not return a movie on time to save their lives.

Here is how it worked: I would add movies to a queue and the top three on my list would get sent to me in the mail. I could keep them as long as I would like, then take them back to my local Blockbuster store and exchange them for three in-store movies which I could keep as long as I liked. I then would return them back to the store and three more mail-in movies would be sent to me. I could do this an unlimited amount of times for a fixed monthly payment of $20.99. NO LATE FEES!! If I watched the three mail-ins quickly and then ran out to the store to get three exchanges and watch those quickly and returned them, I could seriously watch a ton of movies! Of course, having a LOT of other things going on in my life, watching that many movies is just not possible. So, some months I'd lose out while other months I make a steal. To keep my queue list going, I would go to the coolest trailer website I've ever come across:

www.traileraddict.com

I could browse all kinds of trailers (old, current, and coming soon) and then search for those movies through Blockbuster.com. I believe, at one point, I had over 100 movies in my queue! lol Not that I ever intended on watching them all, it was just nice to have a variety of options. However, Blockbuster decided to close all of its brick-and-mortar stores and go strictly with streaming to compete with such companies as NETFLIX and HULU. The mail-in program shut down earlier this month. As silly as this may sound, I was incredibly sad about this! This has been my source for keeping up with the movies for so long now! :(

However, as the quote goes by Clint Eastwood in one of my old-time favorite movies "Heartbreak Ridge" - "improvise, adapt, overcome!" So, improvise, adapt, and overcome I have! I finally decided to check out Redbox, since I see them all over the place:

www.redbox.com

It works a lot like Blockbuster did as far as searching for movies and adding them to a queue (they call it "wish list"). The prices are great at only $1.27 per movie. This is a third of the price of an in-store rental from a Blockbuster store! And if I am having a slow movie watching month, I will save a lot of money in the long haul by not having a monthly fee! However, there are a couple of drawbacks to this - you only get it for one day, then you start incurring late fees (bad news for me!). Also, you have to search online for a Redbox location that is actually carrying the movie you are looking for. Sometimes you'll luck out when it's available at a box that is right around the corner from you, sometimes you'll find yourself driving across town, and sometimes you'll be just plum out of luck. Redbox's library of movies is based on new releases or very popular movies, which is another drawback. Sometimes I enjoy finding a movie that barely got advertised and went straight to DVD. Most of those movies tend to be transparent for a reason (they're TERRIBLE!), but every once and a while you find one that STUNS you the fact that it didn't get enough recognition! Blockbuster's movie database was quite extensive when it comes to finding movies like those!

Nevertheless, I am going to give Redbox a try for the first time today. My first movie selection will be "Parkland", a movie based on the JFK assassination.

http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/parkland/trailer

An introduction

This is my very first use of a blog site, so please bear with me! My intention for starting a blog is a purely selfish one, to be honest. Inside my body, mind, and soul I am a bit of a rat's nest these days. I find that I am having difficulties keeping my thoughts in order most of the time; so through seeing what my amazing cousin's blog has done for her I have decided that this could be just the approach I need in order to make sense of who I am and why. Only through the improvement of the self can one become a better person to serve others in their life, right?
About me: I am a father of two fantastic children; my son is going to be 5 soon and my daughter just turned 13. They are the center of my decision-making. I love them and I live for them. I am married (second time), but I'm not ready to go into all that yet. That is the touchy-subject stuff that I am a bit uneasy about airing on a public blog like this. Maybe in time when I get better at this and can find more constructive ways to write about it, but that's definitely not now. I love playing ice hockey. It is and always has been a very big passion of mine. I'm not all that great at it, but I love it nevertheless and I love my team! We have been playing together for about 8 years now and have seen each other through all kinds of life changes. I am a technology guy and I thoroughly love my job! I am a man of God, although I personally feel like I fail him more days than not. I am a romantic at heart, although my life experiences over the past few years make that hard to see in me. I love watching all kinds of movies and listening to all kinds of music (I'm sure I'll be blogging about that from time to time!). I am a bit more picky when it comes to what I like to read, but John Sandford and Stephen King are at the top of my list for sure.

I suppose this is a good start to an into. Onward and upward I shall go...