buckle-up

It’s raining! How hard can it rain? Walkways are awash and the pool is full to the brim. More than once have we resorted to stretching out the blue tube, the “blue snake” as we call it, and switching to backwash. There is a drain separating the pool area from the covered and, as best as we have seen to date, protected, lanai. Winter has descended and reminded us that we live well above the line separating tropical Southern Florida from the subtropical Florida Panhandle. Yes, it just gets colder when you drive north. We did not realize, or put much thought into, any of this when we built our house, the lanai and the pool and spa (under a “birdcage”) in the Panhandle. For comparisons sake, and for the benefit of my Australian family, the latitude of Panama City Beach is 30.22 North whereas Sydney is 33.8 South (and Brisbane, 27.47 S placing Panama City Beach and Coffs Harbor, NSW, Australia at 30.29 S equidistant from the equator. And we know how much it rains at Coffs, let alone further...

It comes as a bit of a surprise when we tell our friends about the temperatures we encounter primarily living, as we now do, along the Florida panhandle. Having decided on taking up residence in an over-55 managed facility, Latitude Margaritaville Water Sound (LMWS), paralleling the magical Emerald Coast, we are often held to ransom by cold fronts descending from wintery Canada.  To be honest, we didn’t do our research, thinking all of Florida enjoyed the same weather conditions as we have enjoyed in the past whenever we visited the Florida Keys. However, leaving our former home on Sanctuary Drive in Windsor, Colorado, we were apprehensive about how easily we would adapt to the potential of less warmer days. Just as we were initially confused over Florida spanning two time zones – yes, we live within Central Standard Time and not the Eastern Standard Time – the state is split into two geographical zones what else might we would find that would be different:  “Florida has two...

Settling into our new home we were just reminded that it was one year ago when we first walked the lot, talked to our assigned builder and watched the concrete pad being framed. It has happened all so quickly – but doesn’t every new home build seem to flash by more quickly than anticipated. Put it down to inexperience building in Florida, although through the years, we had become fans of the show, 100 days. Then again, this is our house and we inspected every inch of progress almost every day. We rented a cottage for a year after we had taken the decision to build. That was probably among the smartest things we have ever done. It allowed us to drive to the site each day, sometimes more than once. It also justified us purchasing our first golf cart just for the purpose of traversing the two and a half miles that separated our rental from our new home. There is always an air of excitement surrounding any new home build and in our case, this proved to be no exception. Once we had made t...

Before Margo and I married, we had already contracted with an architect, bought a block of land, and began designing our first house. This would fulfil a shared, lifelong, dream of building our fantasy home. A fresh start. A bold design and a place that we would transform from an empty piece of land into a home that would provide both. the escape from business and become a space to entertain employees, business associates and most of all, family. The overriding element in the design featured two separate guest suites, each with en-suite and a separate room to relax and to look out on the fabulous ever-changing Colorado   landscape. It was an ambitious project that began in March 1999 and where we first took occupancy on July 4, 2000 but had to wait another year for the house to be fully built-out – our master bedroom suite being the last room to be finished. As for the two suites, these were included as we wanted to provide my parents an away-from-Sydney home – they would visi...

  An early morning rise, repeated several times this past month, saw us standing outside the local Starbucks as it opened its doors. There’s something weird about an empty Starbucks, even more so these days as they provide table service. Serving coffee in cups and breakfast sandwiches on plates. We had returned to Colorado with a firm agenda to be followed. Our grandson Evan was scheduled for an operation, our storage area had to be emptied and yes, we had to get new plates for our latest vehicle purchased back at the end of June – the Beast, otherwise known as the Land Rover Defender 110 V8. Sipping that first cup of coffee, constantly checking my watch, awaiting a call from the folks at 1-800-GOT-JUNK to turn up for that final clean-out of the remaining goods and chattels we felt were way past their use-by-date, no longer holding any emotional attachment. Yes, gone is my thirty-year plus collection of Road and Track magazines with almost 400 issues filling numerous cartons I co...