What Exactly is the Perfect Gift...

Over the years, I have been trying to figure this one out. Sometimes you buy things for loved ones because they simply want it...and sometimes you get the things because they need it. It's very hard to figure out the needs of the ones you love or like.

I've bought some pretty nice things over the years and every year, someone always tells me that I bought the perfect gift. But before I go on, let me just say "halt" for a second...I may have bought some pretty nice things for the people I love, but I did it out of my heart. If I could get that one person to smile, then it can be pretty contagious. Trust me, I don't try to show anyone up on Christmas Gifts...that's the last thing in the world I want to do because I know how it feels to be on the other side when someone else gives a gift that blows you away.

This year, I basically went for nice stocking stuffers. The reason being, because I simply fell behind this year and I'm going on a trip to a foreign country in a couple of weeks. The gifts that I bought were straight from the heart...something that wasn't too expensive but at the same time, something that was nice enough to make the people I love smile and possibly say... "wow"
...which brings me back to what I was saying at the beginning...What exactly is the perfect gift...

I hope I can still makes the ones I love smile...

Merry Christmas Everyone...
Juje

Pagers: The Caveman Days of Text Messaging

We all had pagers back in the day. They were an equal-opportunity technology, owned by drug dealers, whores, doctors and CEOs—and new college students whose parents couldn’t drop the leash. At least there was the code.

Saddled as I was with my beeper, I did what I could to avoid actually picking up the phone. I would carry around a few ROLLS of Quarters: a reminder that when someone paged me, I was supposed to call them back. Most of my paging, however, was sending numerical messages to my Golf Buddies (I was always there for a good TEE Time)

Our Pagers were all Black...it had that official look to it. We were so very cool. This number-to-word conversion we became addicted to will probably go down as only a very minor footnote in turn-of-this-century communication, but, for kids who’d never known from text messaging and hardly used email, the idea that I could send my friends any kind of message and they'd get it instantly—that was pretty darn huge.

Some of our codes were super private so I can’t share them, but others were standard: 411 for information, 911 for emergency, 143 to symbolized the number of letters in each word of the phrase “I love you.”

There was also an accepted system of sending numbers so that, when written together, looked vaguely like letters. We’d grown up getting adults to spell “BOOBLESS” on calculators by typing in the elements of a story about Dolly Parton and then holding the calculator upside down. (Her bra size was 69 and that was 2, 2, 2 big. So, she took 51 diet pills and went to see Dr. X eight times. Now she’s… 55378008.) From there, it was an easy jump to many other words. Hello was 07734. That was one of the easiest one. We said “Hello” a lot. There were so many, it became necessary to have beeper-code dictionaries, or at least, a basic decoder.

Today...we text with our cell phones. I go online with the darn thing and I call friends up whenever I just want to talk instead of messaging people....but I sure do miss the old days when the Pager was the "IN" thing. The simplicity of it all made things fun and adventurous.

Christmas Show

December 15, 2009
Chula Vista Middle School
7:00 PM

The show started off with the Beginning Choir singing quite a few Christmas Songs to the enjoyment of a lot of family and friends in the Audience. They started off with a very Traditional Song but then cranked it up with a little boogie woogie with Choir getting a little animated and the Piano Player/Teacher hammering it out on the Keys.

Next up to plate was the Boys Choir. The voices weren't strong but the boys were pretty animated by doing their best Elvis Impersonation Dance Routine as they sang....It got people off their seats and gave the boys choir a lot of confidence. I give the boys a lot of props, because it's really not easy to perform in front of a lot of people.

After the Boys Choir finished their show, there was a brief intermission.

Isabella stepped up to center stage and performed a solo. For a 13 year old, she has a strong and beautiful voice...
She's not afraid of the stage and just smiled throughout her performance. There were people in the audience screaming her name (...I think she has a fan club) but that didn't rattle her nor did it make her nervious...but I think she is use to it...she's been performing in front of the stage for years.
Bella probably had the best performance of the night.


Then came the Girls Advance Choir... The Girls sounded confident and even did little sole routines in between songs. It was nice to see Bella perform again as she did a small solo but it was nice to hear the other voices singing in the Christmas Song...it gave it quite a variety and in the end, they combined both beginning Choirs with the Advance one. The girls all had their Santa Hats on (Some of them even wore reindeer antlers)and were exchanging gifts as they sang....it was really beautiful.

This was a very entertaining show. Anytime a person can walk out of a show with a smile on their faces tells you something. I know there was a lot of parents in the audience, but there were a lot of folks just there to be entertained...and I saw a lot of smiles from a lot of people as they left the show.

Thank You Chula Vista Middle...Job Well Done.

Old School Party #2

Once more, we had another Old School Reunion. It was pretty cool to hang out with a lot of the old friends that we all grew up with...I know that this is a few weeks late in Posting this but I felt that it needed to be done. The Second Reunion was nice...extremely nice. There were more Blasts from the Past (So to Speak) that made it this time.

The Party was held at Patty's Place. We had a Bar-B-Que in the Back Yard with Lots of Food and Drinks. The Usual showed up from the last Party....Ed, Kandi, Aileen, Bill, Carlos, Patricia, Bob and their families...but we had some new folks that showed up too. People that we haven't seen in a very long time.

It was nice seeing Noel (he shaved his head bald), and David (I haven't seen him since 1979...YIKES) and ofcourse, Jarvis (still looks the same...just graying). I'm sure there's more and I'm sorry if I forgot who else was there...must be my age...Man I'm getting old.

What was so funny about our little get together was we were known as a Party School back in the day...a school that had a lot of fake I.D.'s and we got drunk alot. To make a story short...everyone of us brought in some Beer for this party. There were hardly any sodas so I sent my son out to Albertson's to get some Cokes, Diet Cokes, and some Sprite. I did however bring in some Captain Morgan's Long Island Ice Tea and Aileen brought in some Tequila.

I was asked to bring in some Old School Music because of the huge Library I have...but I do have a lot of Variety and I wanted to bring to jog a lot of memories. The Music I brought in had alot of surprises...From ABBA, to Bad Company, to the Floaters, to Led Zeppelin, to the Commodores, to the Brady Kids...It was all 70's Music...the stuff we all grew up with. They all loved the playlist, and it was good to have people stop for a second and say, "Hey...I remember that Song".

In the end, it was nice to hang out with everyone. We ofcourse exchanged phone numbers incase we all needed to get in touch with one another. We are planning another party for the Superbowl. Like the first 2, I hope this one gets even better.