February 20, 2004 Well, we've got our Florida driver licenses now, we're all registered to vote (that may be interesting ;-) ...and in general we're settling in to life in the Sunshine State. Some aspects of the area, however, will take a little longer to accept:
Florida February 12, 2004 We had little luck finding anything to our liking in the house market here. More correctly, there was nothing in the existing home market in our price range that was up to our impossibly high standards. So we've decided to build. The permit process here takes a while, which means the house should be ready for move-in sometime in the October/November timeframe. So that means that an apartment lease was warranted.
I've signed a 9-month lease on the Tampa apartment where we'll live while the house is being built. It's small (1050 square feet), but has 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, so it should serve us well - even in the summer when Ben is home from college. Here, then, are a couple of pictures looking out from the screened balcony. The little things that you see on the railing in one photo are not cockroaches! They are just little leaves :-)
Florida January 29, 2004 
My boss and coworkers where I used to work in Portland, Oregon (until Friday, 22-Jan-2004) were kind enough to give me a series of books from author Tim Dorsey to help get me educated on the finer points of Florida. OK, well first off, the title of this first book denotes how I feel about now. Man, am I looking forward to getting some rest this weekend!
But the main topic of this brief post is the book, Florida Roadkill. What a hoot! ...quite irreverent (which I appreciate). Although, I must admit that this one even stretches the bounds for me ...and that takes a lot! OK, just as a teaser for anyone who might be considering Dorsey's writing, here are 2 rather priceless quotes:
...I need some more coke to handle this, she thought, and stuck a doctored spansule up her nose, snorting like a feral hog.
C'mon, this stuff is enough to make ya toss out the classics and get downright trashy :-)
...and my favorite quote so far:
...Obsessive-compulsive, manic-depressive, anal-retentive, paranoid-schizophrenic. He was believed to be the only self-inflicted case of shaken-baby syndrome.
I don't know why, but I'm suddenly feeling the urge to plant plastic pink flamingos in the yard.
Florida January 18, 2004 
OK, I guess this is a little pathetic that I'm excited and blogging about a freakin' vacuum cleaner! But man, in addition to the rather cool color scheme that definitely will wake you up, this baby is a seriously awesome tool.
We just bought a new Dyson DC07 Full Gear vacuum cleaner. Some friends had recently purchased a Dyson and were raving about it when we were at their house for dinner a little while back. Well, it's not too often that folks in our crowd get jazzed about vacuums, so this got our attention. We'd had a vacuum for about 20 years and had been limping it along for the past 5 or so years, so it was time for a replacement. Shirley researched a bit, found a great buy on this one, and ordered it. The day it arrived, she vacuumed one area of the house with our old vacuum, then went over the same area with th Dyson. Man, we wanted to puke when we saw all the junk that the Dyson pulled up from the "clean" floor!
OK, enough ranting on about this device. The bottom line is that it's a totally cool piece of engineering, and very much worth checking out if you are in the market.
Misc January 14, 2004 We're gearing up to move to Tampa. I start my new job there on 26-Jan-2004. So when we actually had enough cloud break on Tuesday for there to be an actual sunrise, it was an especially wonderful treat. I love the scenery in the Pacific Northwest, and literally every single day for decades I have taken joy in seeing the awesome fir trees, the hills, and the mountains (when the clouds are willing to share the view). With so much rain, we develop a very keen appreciation for the times when we are blessed with a dawn like this one:
Misc