You can stop the search, call off the hounds, take my picture off the milk carton, (do they still do that?) I have surfaced. I apologize for not staying in touch, but I have what I feel is a good reason.

Since retiring June 2nd, we have been busy little bees! I worked from January 1st to June 1st, and did not take a single vacation day, and it paid off. When I retired on the 2nd of June I cashed in 10 weeks of vacation pay. That was a nice lump. I was going to splurge and buy a nice airplane, take Pat on a Cruise, etc. but,, we were talking during my last six months of work, and decided to do something we should have done years ago. Buy a house!

For reasons I won't go into, Pat and I have not owned a house since the early 70's, and didn't really miss home ownership. We were both working, our daughter was growing up, and we lived in a nice place with the best landlords you could ask for.

But times have changed, and since moving to Florida, we have not found a single good thing to say about this little redneck town we live in. Well, except for our daughter meeting her husband, and the flying club I belong to. Now remember I am from outside of Chicago originally but down here, the traffic is crazy, the drivers are bad, and the crime? Well lets just call it the wild, wild, west. When there is a confrontation with the police at 3 in the morning, and the young child pulls a gun on the cops and the cops defend their self, and then are berated and criticized by the local press and population of the town, I figure its time to get out of dodge.

We have found a small town, south of where we live, and it is close enough to visit the kids whenever we want, only a hour drive. Also, as everyone knows, the economy is in the crapper, and house prices have been falling like a rock. That and the fact that we now qualify as first time home buyers, means's we qualify for Prez. Obama's $8,000 tax refund, and who can say no to free money?

So we got ourselves a Realtor, after checking out our credit, (funny how we just kept moving along without ever doing that) then started looking around the new town. So far we have two very good candidates, and here are pictures of the front of each.





The first one is our #1 contender, it is located on a cul-d-sac and is very nice. Large back yard for Jester, and four bedrooms, and a two car garage for me and my toys!

This town is about a 30 min drive from Historic St. Augustine, a town we enjoy very much, and about a 15 min. drive from the beach, and 30 min from Daytona.

So I will keep everyone updated on the progress, we think we should be moving by the end of next month. Lots of boxes are starting to fill up and the garage looks like a storage unit!

Stay tuned.