Life in Florida (true) - a 102 year old Sarasota woman is missing. She was last seen leaving work in her blue Hyundai.
Sarasota report - I have never seen so much rain. I'm trying to convince Ala we need to move to a desert. ASAP
OK, I know Florida is weird but, I have to tell you, taking down outside Christmas decorations when it's 75 and sunny is pretty good.
Another tidbit about life in Florida. It seems there are a lot of people who can now afford the big boy toys they wanted when they were young but are now afraid of actually using them. Such as the Ferrari going 20 on a 40mph street and taking a turn at about the same speed as a cabin cruiser entering a slip in a marina. I actually had to pass him with my 2006 Civic.
Watching the news talking about election recounts in several Florida races. Commentators and pundits are saying how incompetent Florida voting officials are. I have to disagree. Just spend a few months in this bizarro world of a state and you'd realize it's completely normal for Florida. We just move the scale for incompetent into the "unable to clasp velcro shoes" area of the graph.
So, I've been writing here and there about my impressions of retirement in Florida. I must tell you all is not roses. I had the trauma this week of having to wear long pants twice. Two times in one week!! This doubles the rest of the year. My ankles are screaming for freedom. But, all is not lost for I've discovered a delightful pattern in my closet. I have shorts separated into three areas - those for working around the house, those for normal day-to-day and "formal" shorts for going to dinner, theater, etc.. Yep. Formal shorts. Gotta love it.
It's been a bit over a half year since I retired and I thought it's time to share a few things that I really like about it:
• In the past 7 months I've only worn long pants 1 time.
• The only time I normally wear shoes other than sandals are when I go for a run.
• Weekends have no meaning.
• Holidays come up unexpectedly.
• Not having to fit work around the house into a weekend.
• Losing weight by not going out for lunch at work.
• Filling my gas tank up once every 2 months or so.
• Trying to remember "deadline stress" at work.
• Doing things on weeknights.
• Doing things on weekdays.
If I'm forgetting anything for this list there's no problem as there's always tomorrow.
Here's the logic in Florida. In the local pub, talking with another retiree I ask him about healthcare in America and he says he's staunchly against universal healthcare. He says he doesn't want or trust the government to be involved with healthcare. I ask him then if he's foregoing Medicare and instead paying for private insurance. "Oh no, I'm on Medicare, it's great!". AANNNNDDD there you have it!
We're having our master bath remodeled and I just found out the lead contractor was a helper with the hog farm at Woodstock when he was 18. How cool would that have been?
Life in Florida, take 3 or maybe 4, whatever, the bathroom remodeling saga. So, as you might have guessed, I’m remodeling our guest bathroom. Well naive me I go to take up the toilet only to find it’s cemented to the floor tiles. Upon further inspection I see that it appears that tiling the floor was the last thing done when this room was built. This means the toilet is sitting on the concrete slab and the tiles were cut to fit around it then cemented and grouted in. It also means, by the way, that the baseboard, instead of being on top of the tiling, is also sitting on the concrete slab and behind the tiles. WHO IN THE F’IN HELL WOULD DO THIS??? Well, in talking to neighbors, this is kind of rare but not unheard of as this is the land of “handymen” or as I say…construction ala Bubba. Anyway, being as cheap and lazy as I tend to be, I don’t want to retile the entire room instead I only want pull up the partial tiles that where placed around the toilet and replace them. The previous owner had some left overs in the garage so I thought I was hunky dory but as with many things…I was horribly wrong. I came up 2 tiles short. WTF, I’m on the ten yard line here people! 2 tiles! I’m f’in Michael Jordan, there’s three seconds left, we’re down by one and only one terrified defender between me and the hoop. 2 tiles short!! I look at the box the tiles were in and it states 12 x 12 white so at least I’ve got a good lead on getting ones that might blend in, I mean they’ll be kind of under the toilet so good enough for rock and roll should suffice. I check Home Depot online and they tell me a store in Bradenton (a neighboring town) has 4 boxes of 12 x 12 white tiles. Seems good.
I head out there and this is when my day turns south. It seems like Sunday is “take your freaking entire family to Home Depot in Bradenton day” Every aisle clogged with kids, grandkids, Nanas, uncle Alberts and visiting cousins. I don’t see the tiles so I go to the person working in the flooring department to ask where they are. Well, he’s flummoxed (cool word) as he’s the only one in the department and it’s Sunday (family day) and they’re busy and the tiles I want are in a overhead bin. Yeah, sorry princess, but I didn’t put them in the overhead bin and I’ve driven all the way here and, even though I sympathize with the whole ”family day” thing, I’m not leaving without my 12 x 12 white tiles. After about a half an hour I get my tiles. They’re really bright white and the ones I’m matching are more of an off white but what the hell, like I said, close enough for rock and roll. I happily head home.
When I place one next to an old tile is when things went even southerer for me. They were too small. The old box says 12 x 12. The new box says 12 x 12. But they don’t match. Ala measures the new tiles and they’re actually 11.5 x 11.5 and the old ones measure 12.25 x 12.25. Makes sense doesn’t it? So…..I find a real tile store open on a Sunday, put a quick coat of sealer on the new travertine tiles on our entrance and head out again. The only white tiles the real tile store has are 13 x 13. Ala measures them and they’re really 12.25 x 12.25. Do you see a pattern here because I sure as hell don’t. Old 12 x 12 is really 12.25 x 12.25, new 12 x 12 is really 11.5 x 11.5 and new 13 x 13 is really 12.25 x 12.25. The person helping us says that tile companies always measure up, or maybe down, he’s not sure. I tell him “you’re killing me smalls so this is like a 2 x 4 is really 1.5 x 3.5 thing?” (a practice I can only assume was started by the Masons so that everyone had to go to them to get their pyramids built). I also hope to all things pure that no one from the tile industry makes a career change to aviation or medical equipment manufacturing as the population would seriously decline, but I digress. I get a shrug and a “maybe” from Skippy, Chip, Head O’Chowder or whatever his name is and a look that tells me he just wants me to buy something and leave so he can get high by the loading dock but, sorry chipper old boy, there’s another problem. These are a white that’s even further off than the Home Depot white tiles.
Now folks, here’s the deal - if you’re trying to match something and only come close then it looks like you were trying to match something but only came close. A swing and a miss. Instead, if you pick something really different then you can always say it was a creative choice. You wanted some visual tension. A color tangent. A break from the viewer’s expectations. I could go on but I already have nightmares of my past career and it wasn’t in tiles.
So I buy a few 13 x 13 black tiles and head home happy to have scored a victory, minor yes, but a victory all the same, in this sunshine state we're calling home.
A few more things about living in Florida: I've forgotten what long pants feel like and I think I might have also forgotten how to tie shoelaces. I really like not dreading Mondays on Sunday evenings. Sometimes I forget what day of the week it is. I never like to wear glasses when I run but I do now as there are a few large gators in the ponds I pass and being able to spot them is a
probably a good thing. I still don't know what channel is what on our tv now that we have some extended plan. I haven't gotten used to the news coming on at 11pm instead of 10. I really like the lack of any traffic congestion but I've been told to wait until January when the snowbirds double the local population (although I can't see how it can be nearly as bad as driving into and around Chicago). I'm still nervous about hurricane season but it seems like I'm the only one. I think once we get through this first one things will be ok for me. We are living two lives here - one as hostages to contractors that may or may not return causing us to stay home and another as permanent vacationers.
Well, that's about it for now.
I just thought I’d share a few more things I’m experiencing as a new citizen of sunny Sarasota, Florida.
It’s really sunny. At least so far. Lots of sun. A whole lot of sun…and heat…and humidity…..and bugs.
Ala likes the sun.
The bugs seem to like Ala’s ankles.
We’re now officially in hurricane season so we’ll see how this sunny thing progresses.
People are very friendly and laid back. This is good unless you actually need something from anyone working in a store, restaurant or a contractor (see below)
Since there’s a lot of growth here (I’ve heard that Texas and Florida are the top two states for moving too, with Sarasota county being the top locale in Florida) it’s very hard to get a contractor to: show up, give an estimate, do the work or finish the work. We’ve contacted four different companies to remodel our kitchen and have gotten an actual estimate from…….one. At least the other three showed up to talk about the project. I hear that getting this far is a success. Yay!
Speaking of contractors and laid back Florida, I now know that if you do get a chance to hire one they start the day at the crack of 10am and work until the whee hours of 2pm. Cramming 4 hours into an 8 hour day.
Everyone knows everything until you talk to someone else and the new person now knows everything and it’s all different from the previous person. This goes on and on. I still don’t know if the street that goes by our house is overseen by the county, the city or our association. Depending on who you speak with it could be any or all of them. I may lay claim to it and add a toll gate. In which case someone will likely tell someone else that it’s always been like that and the guy that runs the toll gate is making so much money he’s hiring Aerosmith for his birthday party until someone else says that Steve Tyler actually owns the toll gate. Don’t believe anyone.
Drivers are a special source of amusement. Going straight they tend to do well, cornering, the real test of a race car driver, not so much. I think they’re triangulating the arc of the curve as they navigate their way around it. Come on people, this is where it’s won or lost!!!
Another interesting thing about drivers here is to watch them try to drive while, I suspect, looking at their GPS. I've seen people stop in the middle of the road and stare at the GPS. I think they might be technically not too up to date and have realized they've just called a grandchild, ordered a pizza or are wondering why GPS is telling them they have arrived at the golden gate bridge.
A few interesting things I’ve heard:
At a store: “Larry, you’ve got a call on line three…it’s long distance”. Does anyone remember when a call being long distance mattered?
At the beach: “Don’t swim out too far, I just saw an eight foot bull shark out there” This from a parachute windsurfer as she was walking by us. This caused me to immediately google “bull shark". Not good. Territorial as hell and responsible for many attacks on people. This also caused me to struggle with my innate sense of curiosity to go out and see for myself. I think it was a matter of fight, flight or just get back to my book. I went with number three.
Just Sayin'
Ok, so i’m going to focus on one difference between Illinois, especially Chicagoland, and Sarasota.
We allocated a day to change our drivers licenses from Illinois to Florida. A few other tasks we had but didn’t know when we’d get to them were to register to vote in Sarasota county and go to the county tax office to sign up for a “homestead” exemption on our property taxes (this lowers our taxes as we will now be residents instead of rental property owners).
So, we go to the DMV and after taking a number and waiting an ungodly 5 minutes we get called in and sit with our assigned rep. at her desk (e.i. not at a counter). After a total of about 10 minutes we have our new licenses. Easy as pie.
Then, since we had a lot more time on our hands, we asked if she knew where we had to go to get the information we would need to sign up for the “homestead” exemption on our property taxes. She explained that we would have to go all the way back the way we came in and, once exiting the office but staying in the lobby, turn left and go into the tax assessors office. They share the same lobby.
We went and signed in but before we had to chance to sit down we were called to sit with Gabriel Bidot (he explained that he was of French descent but was raised in NYC). He took us through the process, explaining everything clearly, being a great help and even showing us how to estimate our future property tax. It got bogged down though when he asked if we had registered to vote in Sarasota county. We told him we had not. This drew everything to a close until we could, again, walk out into the lobby, turn left and enter the voter registration office. A few minutes later we were back in the tax assessors office with the receipts from our voters registration forms. All done.
New drivers licenses, voter registration and signing up for a property tax exemption - about 40 mins. and no driving as they all share the same building.
I think talking to everyone - “how nice that you’ve moved here, you’re going to love it. I’ve been here XX years and have never regretted it. Have you tried restaurant such and such? I think you’d like it”. Etc..
took longer than filling out all the forms.
Then we went back to the DMV today to change the registrations on our cars (putting them into a trust) and getting Florida plates. It took about as long to physically change the plates on the cars than it did to do all the paperwork to put the titles into a trust and get Florida plates at the DMV (again sitting with a very well informed rep. at her desk).
Just Saying.