Cheryl Beckham

My passion for reading has been with me all of my life, although it take a back seat for several years after giving birth to my daughter, 12 years ago. Now that I am on my own once again, my ex has custody, for the time being, I have been excited about given more time on my hands in order to start some serious reading once again.

I have been a “Parrot Head” since way back and have always enjoyed the tropical type music that he is so well known for producing and I have heard that he has written some books lately, but have never seemed to be able to come upon any of his books until just recently.

So I was thrilled to find one of his books called “A Salty Piece of Land” at my favorite used book store, and for only $2 and I’ve really enjoyed the reading of it this past week. I’m glad that inside of the book it tells me the names of his other books that I will need to see if I can find at a good bargain also. I’m especially interesting in finding the one entitled “A Pirate Looks At Fifty”, if I can’t find it locally then I guess I could always look on-line and see if I can find it somewhere out there in cyber-world, for cheap.

A couple of friends and I stepped out last night for a bite to eat and afterwards we went to see the recently released movie WALL-E  at the mall. Since we went to the last showing of the evening, we all were pretty much still full from our late dinner, so no one went crazy with the popcorn and candies, or their $5 sodas, which helped keep the cost to a minimum. These days none of us can afford to splurge much on extras like that anyway.

The film turned out to be animated and mainly geared towards children. This film possessed a not so subtle theoretical prophecy of the future in hysterically exaggerated terms, with an underlying sub-plot of a sort of the “lone survivor”, “wrong side of the tracks working stiff”, falls for the “top-of-the-line” classy, highly advanced, come to save mankind and got no time for silliness, fembot! A kind of love affair between robots. That in itself is a hoot! None the less it was quite unlike any animated film I had ever seen before. You just have to chill out and laugh. So, in my book, ’twas well worth the time and money to be seen on the big screen. Pay attention to minor details all through the movie, and you’ll not only laugh your ass off, but may find yourself giving some thought to things you’d previously paid little attention to.

Why is it that when you think about someone you usually end up seeing them or hearing from them!?  I have been thinking about one of my girlfriends the past couple of weeks on and off.  Then today out of the blue I get a call from her.  That may not seem all that strange, but the thing is we haven’t talked in about 3 years.  She moved out of state, is married and has three kids so her free time is limited.  I usually work late at night so we are on totally different schedules, so emails are going to have to be the way to go these days, instead of long distance phone calls.

There’s a grocery store in Europe that makes our little ’self-checkout’ lines look obsolete already.  In Germany, there’s a grocery store that you take your cell phone, scan the items with it that you put in your shopping cart and then when you get to the check out, your cell phone will display a bar code for everything you scanned total, the check out person scans that and you pay and out you go. 

So it looks like we’re not only looking at advances in grocery shopping but also in cell phones.  At the check out, once you scan the payment bar code, you can pay by cash, credit card, debit card or fingerprint (after you have signed up for fingerprint shopping).  And the politicians wonder why we are falling behind the rest of the world where technology is concerned. 

Had the chance to try a new drink last night after work. New to me, anyways. I didn’t really feel like drinking a beer for my “free after the shift is over drink” so I asked the other bartender for a suggestion and she came up with the mojito. Let me tell you – this is a great drink!

I watched her make it. She took a tall glass and dropped a couple lime wedges in the bottom. Then she sprinkled a couple teaspoons or so of sugar into the glass. Then she sprinkled some mint leaves in the glass and took a little stick-type bar tool and smashed the stuff in the bottom of the glass to mix it up. (Found out later that the tool was a “muddler.” Who knew there was a tool for this?) The lime juice melted the sugar into a thick syrup and mashing the mint leaves spreads the mint flavor through the syrup.

Then she fills the glass with ice cubes and pours a couple shots of white rum over the ice. Fill the glass the rest of the way with club soda, and stir. I’ll have to start making these for some of my regulars that are always looking for something new to try that is nice and cool for the hot summer months!