Month: November 2023

I’ve got to run a couple of errands. Then it’s back to the house to try to get something done.

Last week I was pretty productive. Then the weekend hit and I haven’t felt like doing a damn thing. It’s getting cold, and for some reason the house feels colder than usual. 

On the plus side, Jesse has taken to sleeping cuddled up next to me. I think he’s worried about his dignity, so when we first go to bed, he’s at the foot of the bed looking out the sliding glass door. Then sometime during the night after I’m asleep he stretches out with his head tucked against my chest. I’ve promised him that I won’t tell other dogs that he sleeps cuddled up next to me.

God forbid that he’d tip his paw about actually liking me!

I’ll admit I like waking up with him next to me.

Both of us slept late today, and we’ve both been sleeping later in general. I’m pretty sure it has to do with the sun. This time of year, the sun doesn’t make it above the mountains to the east until late in the morning. In summer, the sun rises and starts blasting into the bedroom about 5:45 am. This time of year, all you get is an orange band resting on the eastern mountains. It’s very easy to turn off the alarm and just go back to sleep.

The master bedroom never gets direct sunlight from fall through spring.

You can tell time watching the sunlight move up the line made by the wash. The wash itself points almost due north. The shadows cast by the mountains onto the banks of the wash mark the passing of the day. It’s not actually an earthen works sundial but after having been here for so long, I can ballpark the time of day from how much of the wash is in shadow, and which bank, the light is falling on.

I was thinking about the issue of moving. When I had the apartment in San Diego, the bedroom didn’t get light until afternoon. This was a problem because I had to be in bed by 8pm to get up for work at 3am. The room, indeed the whole apartment got, and stayed hot in springtime and summer. The winter sunlight barely hit my apartment so the place was cold as heck. The upshot is that I had to run the heat or air almost all the dang time.

I was thinking about specifications for a new place I’d like to live. I thought perhaps having a master bedroom window facing east would be good. I could wake with the sun, and the room wouldn’t be baking all day so perhaps I wouldn’t have to run the air all the time just to be able to sleep.

I just realized something else. I prefer to have the windows open. I like breezes and the smell of grass, flowers, and rain. This house for example almost always has the windows open in spring and summer. (Unless crazy pants is screaming, or the flood control folks are driving dump trucks, bulldozers, or graders, up and down the street, or the jackass up the road is cutting and grinding metal or running a chain saw at 10PM.)

Still, even with all of those annoyances, we kept the windows open most of the time. The neighbors would open their windows when the other half was practicing harp or piano. Sound carries quite well here. The mountains form a natural amphitheater. It seems too big to be an amphitheater but you’d be impressed at how small sounds echo up and down the canyon.

That suggests that where I go to live should be in a more temperate zone. Northern Florida almost but not quite fits the bill. I think further north might be a better fit for me personally. I have been very surprised at certain friends reactions when I mention that I’m considering or have considered FL.

Almost universally they’re against FL. It’s very strange. When I remind people that I was born and raised in FL until I was 14, the response is, “well you’re different,”

Different from what, I wonder.

Then I remember the continuous hit jobs the media has done on Florida, from the COVID panic to DeSantis running for President. Absolutely nothing Florida does wins the approval of the media. Although, a whole lot of the people of Florida seem pretty damn happy. 

If the media would stop for a minute, get past their bias, and really look at Florida objectively… Well they’d be ashamed of themselves if they had any shame left.

In the media, Floridians are almost universally lambasted as ignorant redneck doofuses. Everyone in Florida drives monster trucks with confederate flags. Everyone is white and racist. (Most of the white people in Miami came from New York… so New Yorkers are racist by that measure…)

It’s gotten to the point that rather than fight it, Florida is having some kind of “Florida Man” festival where it looks like they’re going to lay claim to the caricature the media have created. Knowing Floridians, they’re going to blow the caricature way out of proportion as a huge middle finger to the rest of the country that loves to badmouth the state. I’d also say that many of the Floridians want everyone in the big cities thinking Florida is dangerous, because it keeps the real shitheads from visiting or God forbid moving to Florida.

Florida and Floridians are not what the media says they are. I personally think that Florida is badmouthed all the time simply because Trump lives there. And wherever Trump is ALLOWED to live, must by definition, be simply awful. There’s a whole lot of really weird shit regarding Trump. I’m still blown away by how much venom is spewed his way and how so many people are willing to look the other way when his rights as a person are taken away. There is a lot that is simply wrong on its face.

None of this is why I’m hesitant to move to Florida.

I want four seasons, and occasional snowfall. I want a little more property than most of the Florida homes for sale have around them. Well, at least in my price range… How is it, if Florida is such a shit hole that the home prices have shot through the roof and indeed the availability of homes in the state is constrained? 

Even northern Florida, might be a little too hot for me to be really comfortable with the windows open. As I said, I like having the windows open. That being said, I might still spend a month in Northern Florida before I make a final decision about where I want to live.

It’s got to pass the Jesse test too. He’s probably going to last about as long as I do. I know I don’t have another move in me. Once I get where I’m going, I’m probably going to be there until I die. Not to be all Egyptian about it, but he & I will likely kick off about the same time.

I was thinking about moving someplace based on the governor, or the state legislature but realized that was only temporary. Governors come and go, legislatures change too. I’ve decided that I’ll choose my next home based on the general population. 

It’s people that vote and make a state a good place or a bad place. The majority of California’s people are bordering on socialist / communists and the state reflects that. The majority of Florida’s people are conservative, constitutionalists, obey the law, ain’t nothing free, capitalists, and the state reflects that. I’m way more comfortable with the latter. Having decided that, it’s a matter of degree. 

Where on the scale between Blue (Communist Leaning) California, and say a super RED state like Florida, Wyoming, Montana, or South Dakota do I want to live?

Were It not for the winters in Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota, (and their house prices,) I’d consider them. Problem is, I just don’t want to do harsh winters. I’m too old to really enjoy them. The snowy winters where I live now are too much. Visiting Wyoming or Montana might be something I’ll plan to do in Spring or Fall.

I don’t know… I’d like to have a destination in mind before I put the house on the market. I think I’ll be spending this Winter, sorting and tossing stuff in preparation for getting out of California.

I’ve gotten to the point where getting rid of stuff doesn’t seem like I’m violating the memories of the other half and our life together. I guess that’s what grieving is about. You have to come to peace with the loss and let the wound heal in its own time. The healing can’t be rushed or forced. You’ll know you’re there when tossing junk your other half just had to have, no longer has an impact on you. When it’s just stuff, you’re nearly there…

I’ve wandered all over the map for a post I never intended to write.

I Promise, I’ll try to do better. But when we move to DST, expect some really wonky posts. 

Time Changes and I do not get along!