Florida

I fear my rapidly advancing age has manifested itself physically and mentally in the way that all men fear most. It seems that for the fist time, I am both unable and uninterested in playing Grand Theft Auto for more than an hour at a stretch, even though my wife is out of town all week. So confronted with this unexpected free time in the evening, I thought I'd jot down a few notes about our new home in Florida.

Firstly, the home itself is great. We rented it off Craig's List before we ever came down here, signing a two-year lease sight-unseen just because the pictures looked nice. We were pretty nervous driving up for the first time, wondering if it would look less like the riverside nature preserve we were hoping for and more like that shack the albino kid was playing the banjo in front of in Deliverance. But Craig's List was true to its word for a change, and the house was true to its photos. We didn't think we could get a smaller kitchen than the one we had in Greensboro, but this one makes up for it with a fabulous view out over the decks to the river, where alligators (the cute, little kind) swim and a flock of egrets regularly visits. Our landlady owns several undeveloped acres right across the river too (she's planning to build an eco-village there someday), so even though we're only three minutes from the freeway and a big shopping center, it feels a lot like being out in the middle of nowhere. We can hop in our kayaks right from our own deck, a place we intend to spend more time once it cools the heck down a little bit. It's hotter than hell here, maybe even hotter than Houston and Fresno.


We're a one-car family for now and with Leslie needing to study a lot for her upcoming board certification test we haven't gotten out to explore much. We've been to the beach, of course - even went twice in two weeks, which I don't think I've been able to do since leaving California. The beaches are nice too. The waves haven't been much at the ones we've been to so I haven't been able to recreate my award-winning body surfing days from UCSD ("Best Body Surfer Named Matt Evans", given by myself). But on the plus side, the water is great - whenever I'd find water than warm in San Diego, I always assumed I was swimming through pee.

We haven't gotten out and about too much yet but we like what we've seen. There's a good farmer's market in downtown Sarasota (not as good as Atlanta's, but it's outdoors and allows dogs) and there are a lot of good restaurants there. We're a couple of hours from Orlando but we're thinking we'll try to get back over there to hit the amusement parks while they're still desperate for visitors because of the recession. I haven't seen anything of Tampa yet, except the freeway to the airport at 5am earlier this week, and that was just as magical as I've always fantasized.

So Florida's good so far, except for the heat, the bugs, and the fact that our dogs are shedding like crazy. Soon they'll be bald, though, so that's something to look froward to.<