Our kid will be graduating high school this spring and then will be off to college. Un-fucking-real, right? It feels that way to us, anyway. In anticipation of an empty nest, the mister and I are considering a move even further out in the boonies.
We’ll stay in the same general region so we’ll be near our families, but the mister would like more room for gardening, and I wouldn’t mind the opportunity to hone a reputation as a reclusive lefty crank with a new set of neighbors.
To get a feel for the market, I’ve been looking at Zillow (real estate app) a lot. If you’re willing to drive miles through dismal swamps on lonesome limestone roads and live among people who think it’s appropriate to use roadside signs as target practice from moving vehicles, you can buy riverfront property fairly cheaply in Florida. I grew up in just such a place, so it doesn’t frighten me.
Anyhoo, Zillow listings feature photos to entice looky-loos to come see a property that is for sale. Here’s one that may have the opposite of the intended effect:
I know there are alligators everywhere, of course. But if I were a realtor, I wouldn’t be reminding prospective buyers of that so vividly.
Hubby has been on a bread-baking kick lately because the crappy weather has been keeping him indoors. Works for me! Today, he’s making baguettes:
And since a homemade baguette deserves some rich, tasty gravy to sop up, I’m making Julia Child’s boeuf bourguignon to go with it. That’s in the oven now and filling the house with heavenly aromas. Nom-nom!
Open thread!
J C
I don’t know why people still want to buy in Florida with global warming. In a few years no one will insure the house and your investment will be worthless. I just don’t get it.
beltane
Does that baguette pan work well? I’ve thought of getting one but wasn’t sure if the crust would come out the right way.
Betty Cracker
@J C: Depends on where you are. We’ll be dead long before the interior gets inundated. Lucky us!
@beltane: Baguettes are out, and the pan worked beautifully.
MomSense
Looks delicious!
@J C:
After the winter we just had in New England, I can understand wanting warm weather.
beltane
@Betty Cracker: I’ll have to give it a try. It seems a lot easier than using the pizza stone, tossing in some ice cubes, and hoping for the best.
Davebo
Go with river view, not river front.
All the advantages, none of the disadvantages and a fraction of the cost. Besides, bulkheads are money pits!
Hal
Florida is just way too humid for me. I’m one of those people looking forward to winter. I think I have reverse seasonal affective disorder.
rikyrah
Florida is not for me, but I hope you find the place you want.
SiubhanDuinne
Every time I see or hear the term “dismal swamp,” I think of this song. My mother used to sing me long, multi-versed ballads as lullabies, and The Dismal Swamp was one of my favorites.
I was a weird little kid, but you have to admit I came by it honestly :-)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174046
Big ole hound
I too lived in the boonies but a 45 min round trip for milk got old fast. Just remember the older you get the more likely medical facilities will be needed so don’t make them an hour away or go to a place without EMTs. The boonies are great when you’re young but can be tough as you age.
PurpleGirl
When my friend sold the house in Boca Raton, he bought a house and land near Lake Okeechobee. He sold in Boca just as the market was going down and he still made a large profit over what he’d bought the Boca house for to begin with. And he does see alligators coming out of the lake at times.
ETA: When he lived in Boca I visited at least twice a year. I haven’t been to the ‘new’ house yet and he’s been there about five years.
MazeDancer
Riverfront, with the capacity for 12 month solar power, plus a husband who likes to garden and bake bread – sounds great. Food, water, fun – you got it all.
May you find a wonderful spot. And keep us posted so we may enjoy vicariously.
satby
@Hal: Right there with you! I’m trying to figure out when to go see my elderly mom in St. Pete, and my preferred time is January, when it’s reasonably cooler. But my mom then turns her heat up to 76-78. Which makes me almost suicidal.
burnspbesq
I have the weather for Bend, OR on my phone because i spent two days there last week. This morning at 7:00 a.m. Pacific time, it was 39 degrees there. I think it just jumped to the top of my list of possible retirement destinations. I think it’s far enough from Eugene/Springfield that I don’t have to worry about Villago wanting to park his tumbrel in my driveway.
Mack
I move my daughter back to Vandy in the morning, and then my son starts applying to colleges next month. I don’t approve of either situation. It ain’t about the money (okay, well, it’s a little about the money) but I get cranky when my children are not at home. I hope you don’t break down and cry like her mother did when we left campus without her last year. Best of luck Betty running the college application gauntlet.
Oh, are baguettes hard to make?
shell
Kinda heavy for a summertime meal?
Gimlet
And at dusk when that cloud of mosquitoes rises from the marsh, just picturesque in the setting sun.
Mack
@burnspbesq: Oregon was a potential retirement destination for us, but it’s really hard to top New Mexico…so much sunshine, never too hot for too long (and no humidity) excellent food, friendly people, and pretty affordable. Plus, Lobos!
satby
@Big ole hound: This city girl had big plans for living in the country: more rescue animals, big garden, healthy long walks in the country…. 7 years later I’m very sick of 20 mile trips to the store, maintaining over an acre of land by myself, needing all the backup infrastructure for when the power inevitably goes down, very insular townies to whom I will always be that new lady, (who I do get along with fine, but they just can’t imagine why anyone would want to travel outside the U.S., etc). Had to try it to find out I’m a city girl through and through. And now I want a condo, in civilization.
Amir Khalid
In the movie The Hundred-Foot Journey, young Hassan Kadam shows his family what he’s learned from Madame Mallory by making them boeuf bourguignon. It has bacon and cognac and wine in it. Hassan and his family are Muslims. That confuses me.
Mary G
Remember, empty nests don’t always stay empty in these economic times. Of course, living in the middle of nowhere may be a good disincentive for your sprog when she can’t find a job out of college.
Just kidding – with a gardening, bread-baking dad and Betty C. for a mom, Crackerette will do fine in life.
WaterGirl
Betty, that photo makes me want to learn how to make homemade baguettes. Does he have a recipe that you can share? I see he uses King Arthur Flour, which is always a good start.
Can you take your tiki bar with you if you move?
Mack
Did y’all hear that Fox let Megyn Kelley go? Huffpo had it and then I think Salon.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid: I have Jewish friends who love bacon cheeseburgers.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mack: Well, Trump said she was a loser.
rikyrah
@Mack:
Thought she just went on a ‘vacation’.
Joel
We were on the market last year. Ended up getting a good deal; great deals are generally out of the question in a strong market like this one. We visited a lot of houses.
One such house was a stately old victorian in one of the most desirable parts of town. About three thousand square feet. No driveway, but enough space on the lot to pave one. The owner (a 92 year old woman) was looking for $525000. Not a bad starting point except for the fact that the interior was completely run down. I mean ramshackle. Plywood nailed up in weird places, just jury-rigged for an elderly person to live in. The upper floors had been abandoned completely. The realtor asked us point blank if we were interested, and if not, why.
Told her it would need a lot of work. Like $100-200K worth. The house ended up going, 9 months later, for $320K.
WaterGirl
@satby: Ah, yes, memories of visiting my dad in his apartment in Chicago at Christmas – we all brought shorts and tank tops because he kept the apartment so warm. The story now is that he kept it at 80 degrees, but I’m pretty sure that is an exaggeration!
BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m guessing they’re not orthodox. When I was in college my roommate and I went to a local mall and stopped by a kosher butcher shop close by. I was admiring the kosher beef bacon. He noted that we had the other kind.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mack:
I heard that she abruptly announced she was taking a two-week vacation but not that she and Fox had permanently parted company. Am off to look for a link.
Ruckus
@satby:
Have lived in a number of places, still like the city best. Walk to 3 different supermarkets, plenty of restaurants and such within walking distance. Now it isn’t a quiet as the country can be but last time I lived in what looked like the sticks, 7 miles to a store, all the coyotes howling at night, really the sirens and helicopters and neighbors AC units are about the same.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mack:
@SiubhanDuinne:
Okay, I tried to find this story but only found references to her two-week “vacation,” including at HuffPo and Salon. So, Mack, if you could provide a link reporting that Fox “let her go,” I’d appreciate it.
Jeffro
@satby: amen ( said the lifelong suburban boy). I just need to get my two kids off to college and then DC condo here I come !
Joel
I dream of retiring abroad. Probably some place relaxing, with surf, like Noosa or Crescent Head in Australia. Or I could go the complete other way and live somewhere crazy and urban, like Shanghai. If I had unlimited cash, Paris.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
How are you with lobster?
Amir Khalid
@Mack:
I hadn’t read that Megyn Kelly was fired, only that she went on vacation on short notice.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman:
Yum.
SiubhanDuinne
@Amir Khalid:
Well, of course it’s possible that the two-week vacation is merely the last two weeks of her employment at FNC, and once viewers have got used to not seeing her regularly her departure to “spend more time with her family/explore other professional opportunities” will come as less of a shock.
It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Ruckus
@Joel:
That it was great at one time is not a selling point for that which no longer is. Some seem to miss that something is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.
Roger Moore
@Mack:
Not particularly harder than any other bread, at least as long as you have a pan like that one. You make an ordinary french bread recipe and shape it into a long, skinny loaf instead of a shorter, fatter one. The long, skinny loaves are harder to manage if you’re baking free-form, but pretty easy with the special baguette pan.
My big culinary event of the day was to go to my local Ralphs and pick up 10 pounds of freshly roasted Hatch chiles. They have a few roasters, and they do roastings at a couple of stores each weekend day while the Hatches are in season. I finished wiping off the charred skins and removing the stems and seeds this afternoon, and then vacuum packed and froze them for later use. There’s chile verde in my near future.
Dinner tonight will be duck breast and orange sauce pizza. It’s one of my favorite oddball pizza recipes, though I’m really looking forward to making chile verde pizza next week.
Smiling Mortician
Where is the blue Creuset butter dish? I miss it. It just isn’t a visit to Betty’s kitchen without it.
BillinGlendaleCA
Last night I was looking a locations in the Hollywood Hills that were legally accessible with views of UCLA. I found three locations that didn’t have large palaces on them. The first(east to west) looked like an old garbage dump in the reclamation stage. I did a search on the location and it used to be owned by the Shah of Iran for his retirement palace. It pass on to his sister who sold it to Merv Griffen who sold it to the guy who founded Herbalife; and now a guy is trying to sell it for ONE BILLION DOLLARS, though he seems to have dubious claim to ownership and the property has leans out the kazoo.
The second Google Maps has an identifier calling it “The Enchanted Hill”. It used to be an estate of a silent film star(Fred Thompson) who passed away in 1929 after stepping on a rusty nail. It was bought in the late 90’s by Paul Allen who ended up bulldozing the entire estate.
Finally there’s this newly graded land(from Google Maps) were another hilltop has been removed. It’s 8 acres and is on the market for 22 Million. Apparently it’s been it that state for about 15 years.
Mack
@Roger Moore: Thanks! I’ve never made bread, which kind of surprises me, since I love bread in any form.
Not sure how to post a link for the MK story…but let me see if I can go back and find where I read it.
BillinGlendaleCA
@efgoldman:
I hear those fisherman are quite tasty if prepared right.
Mack
http://www.dailynewsbin.com/news/youre-fired-fox-news-dumps-megyn-kelly-from-the-airwaves/21611/
Sorry, this is why I’m not a reporter. Well, okay, that and the whole journalism degree. It’s speculation, and I saw a thread on FB that mentioned both HuffPo and Salon and ran with it. Apologies all around.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
You know, now that you mention it, I believe you did.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: I would take any of those. I have no religion based prohibitions, so I get no frisson from naughtiness while eating them.
Elizabelle
Pimping this story again: the NY Times commits journalism: expose of the Hunger Games workplace atmosphere at Amazon. Waiting to see a corporate response, because this story is devastating. Myself, I can live without Bezosland purchases. And will.
A few comments are from Seattlites sick of the entitled Amazon (primarily youngish male) employees. Several mention that area recruiters will NOT hire Amazon employees with more than 2 years there: they’re argumentative and not a good fit in a sane workplace. They bring the Bezos poison.
Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace
blurb: The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push
white-collar workers to get them to achieve its ever-expanding ambitions.
Describes 85 hour workweeks and an almost cultlike environment, toxic to life outside the corporation, among one’s family and friends.
I do not want this to be the new normal. I will not support this company. I think presidential candidates should be asked if this is the modern workplace they envision. It’s Dickensian, with wireless.
Roger Moore
@Mack:
People exaggerate the difficulty of making bread, making it sound as if it’s some impossibly esoteric feat, but it isn’t that hard. If you want to try it, I would strongly recommend starting with Jim Lahey’s no-knead bread recipe. It’s both easy and good, and shows how simple baking can be if you do it right. I think he even has a recipe for turning his no-knead dough into baguettes.
Elizabelle
The bread looks wonderful, and can imagine the scent of the beef bourg… Julia Child was a positive good.
Enjoy!
SiubhanDuinne
@Mack:
Well, uh … It actually sounds a lot like my comment to Amil at #39. And that was the most blatant conjecture imaginable.
Thanks for finding it.
VidaLoca
Shit, if you ever get tired of the heat/humidity/slowly sinking into the Gulf, come on up to northern Wisconsin. You’ll fit right in! You might have to pass on getting chewed up by a gator but running your car into a deer is just as much fun and can be as damaging.
Lamh36
Alrighty…It’s Sunday night, so u know what that means? time to get to cooking for my lunch this next 2 weeks. On the menu today…Seafood Lasagna, Turkey Metloaf and Garlic Potatoes, and for dessert…Chocolate Layer Cake and/or Cupcakes
today’s cooking playlist: Jeffrey Osborne’s Greatest Hits
L.T.D.-We Both Deserve each Other’s Love
http://youtu.be/Xy3FBYE9KDQ
Emma
Jeebus. Your husband bakes. Regularly. I am in awe at your good luck.
MazeDancer
@Roger Moore:
As a former New Mexican, my envy knows no bounds. Was just thinking, today, how the Santa Fe Farmer’s Market must be coming up on Green Chile season. Bushels of gorgeous organic green chiles. And roasters going non-stop.
Am seriously considering doing that air-lifting of a bushel of fresh ones that people do, even though they’re not organic.
JPL
@Mack: She’s on vacation. As a dozen said before me. I didn’t mean to pile on… just late to the comments.
Mack
@Roger Moore: I’ll give that a try…I like to bake stuff during the winter, and I imagine the smell of fresh bread wafting across the house on a brisk Autumn day would be wonderful. But yes, I have heard that bread is very hard to make.
Mack
@MazeDancer: We’ve has roasted chiles flown in and made pretty good green chile stew…it’s a household fave. Plus, you can freeze them.
MazeDancer
@Elizabelle:
The Amazon story is creating a moral dilemma. I haven’t read it yet. But your description, alone, is grim.
Already stopped buying books from them. But there are some things, living in a tiny village, I cannot get without driving 40 minutes each way, unless I order from them. And somethings I can only get from them. So, haven’t quite figured out what to do.
Mack
@JPL: Yeah I guess I should have known it would be here or TPM (I don’t do Drudge) and I got ahead of myself trying to imagine all manner of conspiracies. Pile on all ye like!
Roger Moore
@MazeDancer:
Fortunately, the Hatches are popular enough around here that the supermarkets do the airlifting for us. The LA Times food section even has an annual feature telling people where and when there will be roastings. BTW, how much does a bushel weigh?
JPL
@Mack: Wishful thinking.
Omnes Omnibus
@VidaLoca: @efgoldman: There are bear, wolves, and mountain lions too.
PurpleGirl
When I finally decided I had to leave the 3rd story walk-up apartment I had, my sister tried to talk my parents into buying me a house. My sister’s idea was that then my parents (one or both) could move in with me. I wanted a Co-Op. No house where I’d be responsible for winter snow cleanup and stuff like that or fixing the interior on my own. I wanted a place where basic maintenance would be covered by someone else who I could call to do things for me. Then my sister had the idea that I should by her brother-in-law’s Co-Op; but it wasn’t exactly what I wanted either. Not a super apartment and an iffy laundry room situation. A long walk to the subway, with no elevator — the reason I needed a new place was that I had problem climbing stairs.
I went on the waiting list for a non-profit Co-Op and was on the list for 3 years when a unit opened up. My apartment has a terrace, is on the 17th floor with open space all around it, has its own power plant and is close to subway and bus service. My configuration has a 40-foot wall in the entrance hall going into the living room. Just the thing for a person with books. It has a commercial building with a supermarket, a pizza/pasta restaurant, a Chinese place, and a kosher bagel/sandwich shop (owned by Yemenis).
I like the apartment fine. It fits my needs. And the complex has a social service program — a NORC. A Naturally Occurring Retirement Community.
trollhattan
@MazeDancer:
Local paper ran the Amazon story this morning and its a grim, grim read. Didn’t know whether it was describing a corporation or the SeaOrg. Bezos has the odor of Hubbard about him; no wonder WaPo still sucks.
NotMax
Wasn’t the kitchen entirely redone from joists to rafters just a little while ago?
And now you’re planning to leave it?
MazeDancer
@Mack:
From whom do your order your flown-in chiles?
@Roger Moore:
Not sure what is the weight of a farmer’s market bushel of chiles. You can buy as many as you want by the pound. It’s a regular looking bushel, like you see for apple displays, This place – which I have never used, not an endorsement – sells them in a box at choice of 5, 10 and 25 pounds: https://www.hatch-green-chile.com/shop/fresh-hatch-green-chile/mild/
People I know have done the 25, splitting them.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker
Well-seen, the gator. My untrained California eye would have missed it entirely. But hey, that rope float will keep him right out.
Realtor(tm, and don’t y’all forget it) will make some damn gator lemonade. “See that gator? He and his buddies are all no-extra cost amenities. Thrill your cityfolk visitors with some primordial fun!”
Also, too, tropical sun, soggy, sea air, limestone roads…are Florida car lives best measured in months?
Roger Moore
@Mack:
Well, my perspective may be skewed since I’ve been baking bread since I was in elementary school. OTOH, that an elementary school kid can bake bread successfully does suggest that it can’t be that hard. IMO, the part that makes it challenging for a lot of people is that it is time consuming. You have to plan well in advance, and you have to be around to do stuff as the bread is getting ready, and you have to have enough patience not to be poking at the bread all the time waiting for it to rise. Those things don’t necessarily require a lot of skill, but they can be very challenging to people who live hectic lives or who simply lack patience.
Amir Khalid
@Elizabelle:
Amazon sounds like my idea of hell.
bk
@burnspbesq: I’ve looked at Yachats.
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: The company or the river?
tybee
@PurpleGirl:
damn. that could almost make my deepest darkest suburbian island dwelling, high humidity, biting fly loving cracker self move north.
almost.
Mack
@MazeDancer: It’s been many years, I met a guy while I was visiting Albuquerque and he happened to be in that business. Sorry. I still have a few left in my freezer..I should probably toss them.
AxelFoley
For those wondering why black folks are pissed at white progressive “allies”, this is on point:
http://broadwaycarl2point0.blogspot.com/2015/08/everything-isnt-always-about-us.html?showComment=1439749432917#c5556085820208900263
jibeaux
@Big ole hound: my 75 year old FIL lives 45 minutes from anywhere, up a steep gravel driveway that ices and freezes in winter and that an ambulance,were there such a thing, might be hard pressed to get up, in a house heated by a wood stove, with three levels. He’s also super defensive about it and never has his cell phone on him! I’m really excited about tackling this issue with my conflict-avoidant husband in the nearish future.
Elizabelle
@MazeDancer: Several NYTimes readers suggested a group called fleethejungle.com. Linky: http://fleethejungle.com/
My guess is that you can find other suppliers; it will just be less convenient. Perhaps it would be best to do that, for a few weeks, while Bezosland surveys its Big Data and decides whether they took a hit or not from the negative stories.
@Amir Khalid: Does sound like a circle or two of hell.
JPL
@Elizabelle: Thank you, I bookmarked the site. It’s going to take more than a few weeks to notice the damage done by that article. I know that I’ll have to be weaned. Fortunately, I own a Nook, so it’s doable.
Joel
@Elizabelle: I’m a little skeptical on this one — now the plural of anecdote is not data, but I have a number of friends that work for Amazon. Several of these guys had previous experience with other companies. They seem generally happy there. Moreover, they seem to have a fair amount of time for family, parenting obligations, and other non-work-related activities. Now, it could be that Amazon is just a huge company and that certain divisions are run a certain way and others are run another, but…
Peale
If I were retiring today, I’d think about Dubai, just for a few years before returning to the states. Yes, it was hot as hell (119 when I was there), but since I don’t golf or bike (and oddly, Abu Dhabi appears to be a bike friendly city..lol?), I could see using it as a home base for cheap travel to all those places in Europe and Asia I’ve wanted to go. Emirates Air pretty much flies where I want to go. Of course by the time I retire in 20 years, it will probably be as stable as Syria is today, but I am thinking that there are advantages to giving up gardening and outdoors ways for high rise living.
Ruckus
@MazeDancer:
Anything I need and can get from Amazon I can get someplace else. They are nothing more that a modern general store and they are not the only one. I was never sure about buying from them but now I am. Don’t.
OzarkHillbilly
Betty, I do not know how river front land handles hard rain falls in Florida, but if it is anything like Ozark bottomland, do not live there. Buy it for the swimming holes when the weather is good, Build elsewhere so you can get out after a 7 inch rain.
Truth: I was looking at 2 different places when we bought this one. One had a beautiful 10 acres with a view but access was across Lick Creek on a gravel road that had 2 low water bridges, the other was the ridge top 13 acres we ended up with.
We have paved road. There is a high bridge over Indian Creek with elevated roadway on the low side. Hasn’t flooded yet. Lick Creek… I know it has flooded several times and we would have been trapped for anywhere from hours to days on dozens of occasions. Sounds OK until one remembers I am on blood thinners. In other words, when sh!t happens, I need to get to a hospital, and air evac costs mucho buckos. Also, my wife gets to go to work everyday on paved plowed roads all winter long. (not a worry for you obviously enuf) It was just luck that we ended up here, but I know we are better off.
In other words, imagine yourself at 80 years old living where ever you buy.
Betsy
Betty, lady, this is but one stellar example of why I love and look forward to your posts. I’m so glad you are a Frequent Front-pager.
(As a former Floridian, I will wait 40 minutes in the car with melting groceries for it to stop lightening, but happily swim in a lake full of gators)
ThresherK
@Roger Moore: Yeah, I never tried anything with yeast, without the bread machine, until the last winter. I picked up what I have learned, so far, pretty readily. A bit of painstaking effort at the beginning when you don’t know what you’re doing, but it’s only flour, yeast and water: If I muck it up it’s not like I’m destroying chocolate.
MomSense
Anyone need a personal chef? I would love to just be able to cook and bake all day and somehow earn a decent living.
CaseyL
@Elizabelle: Thanks for posting that link! I’ll try to recommend it to people who are with Amazon.
The revelations in the NYT article were no surprise. I live in Seattle, and Amazon has long had an appalling reputation as an employer. What I didn’t know was how they ruin their people to work anywhere else, though. How awful.
JCT
@Roger Moore: Hah – I did the same here in Tucson yesterday, a nice mix of mild and hot ones for freezing and eventual pork chile verde and sauce. Having everything roasted and skinned massively decreases the effort level.
And Betty, I have the same mat as your husband does, crucial for measuring pie dough rounds. But for the life of me, every time I see one of those I think of Woody Allen’s “Love and Death” and his mother measuring blintzes …..
beltane
@Peale: Dubai is completely off my radar, but I am in agreement with the rest of your comment. Now that the kids are growing up, the thought of living in my big house on a long driveway in the middle of nowhere makes me physically ill. I’m sick to death of gardening and would be quite content with nothing but a balcony on which I can grow some flowers, because flowers really do make me happy. Oddly enough, the older we get, the more my husband and I are looking forward to going out at night and doing the things we did before we had children. I grew up in an apartment, it’s not the end of the world. If anything, a small living space forces one to get out more.
beltane
@OzarkHillbilly: People who live near river banks in landlocked Vermont are usually OK unless they find their homes washed away by flash flooding. It happens, and it happens with some degree of regularity.
Mack
@beltane: Right there with you. I have over 80 acres to mow, and a huge house to keep up. I am really looking forward to a condo or small house (with a pool) and nights out with my wife. Hope we get there.
Gvg
Hmm. 10 years ago we moved a ways out in the country. 1 acre lake front, 2 sisters, active who had jobs in different directions. Lovely for a couple of years but it really really gets tiresome to not have a close store, the nearest is Walmart which is getting grub bier and less stocked and sisters job changed so it wasn’t actually a great location anymore. then we started fostering kids to adopt and it got really tiresome what with preschools and schools to add into our commutes, the kids spending in our opinion too much time strapped into car seats. next their friends parents couldn’t come play, we always had to go into town. the year I had cancer was even more trouble. I had never really been sick before so we hadn’t planned on that. I really recommend against moving out further when you get older. sorry to be a wet blanket.
gators are everywhere, just don’t feed them. we saw otters a few times, that was amazing. also those prehistoric looking gar which get huge right under our dock. Last month I found a snake nearly paryllized trying to swallow a fish was too big. every few minutes he would wiggle some more trying to get his jaw a little further down the fish he’d caught. couldn’t photograph because the glare from the sun was too strong and they blended into the weeds too well but we could see him about 3 feet away right by the dock.
MomSense
@beltane:
I really enjoyed UAE even though it was a brief stint. Dubai has a lot to offer for expats.
Anne
It’s too hot in the SF Bay Area for anything like bread-baking or boeuf bourguignon or, frankly, turning on any sort of heating element. At 6pm, it’s still nearly 100F outside, and our a/c is struggling to keep the house below 80F. Of course one of the cats still wants to cuddle.
I made a batch of delicious gazpacho this morning. That’ll be dinner, along with bread and cheese I picked up at the farmers market. (My love for Manresa Bread’s sourdough baguettes knows no bounds.) And then I have some homemade strawberry frozen yogurt stashed in the freezer.
Hope everyone affected by this west coast heat wave is staying cool in some fashion or another!
beltane
@Mack: We were actually looking at a small house with a pool. After 15 years of living in the boonies we have been struck by a longing for urban/suburban comforts and the ability to go out on the town all dressed up and wearing nice shoes (do not try wearing nice shoes on a badly rutted gravel driveway, you may never walk again).
Roger Moore
@Anne:
I won’t say I’m staying cool, but I’m avoiding catastrophic overheating. I’ve had the AC on full blast all day, and it is only enough to keep the inside tolerable. Fortunately, today is supposed to be the last day of the heat wave.
MomSense
@efgoldman:
Sigh. This has been the flaw in my plan.
beltane
@MomSense: I am a bit of perfume hoarder/collector. There are some for-sale-in-Dubai-only fragrances I can only dream of owning. Right now, I’d settle for having an emergency room that’s less than an hour away.
Stan of the Sawgrass
@PurpleGirl:
Lake Okeechobee; I grew up there on a sugar plantation. Moved around a little, but for some reason we were always close enough to see the levee. Gators have made quite a comeback; when I was a kid, if my Dad saw one living in one of the field ditches, he’d come get us kids so that we could see it before someone shot it. They’d almost been hunted to extinction.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: How much of a living do you need to make beyond room & board? :-)
MomSense
@beltane:
Oh yes, you have to check out the parfumeries and the lingerie boutiques.
Schlemazel
@Anne:
In the Bay area on business & was surprised it was 104 this afternoon. I used to be here regularly & never remember it that hot. Also too, the traffic is insane! I expected a Sunday afternoon it would be pretty calm but the 101 was backed up through town & across the Golden Gate. Met my niece & her family up north a bit for Dim Sum, had the best tea smoked duck I have ever eaten in my life.
BTW – bread has always been a bit tricky for me to get the kneading just right. But if you want the best french bread ever you can’t go wrong following Julia Child’s recipe. You’ll want to take a day and read the whole thing in advance of actually attacking it. She was obsessive about it and while that can be annoying if you go to all the trouble you will have the best results. If you are just looking for a crusty loaf then do the steam thing. Yu can also use the convection option (if your oven has that) for the last 5-10 minutes to really crust the bread up.
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
Room and board sounds pretty nice.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: If you like the midwest, we might just have a deal. :-)
Does your pup steal and eat tomatoes like mine do? They are incorrigible!
Zinsky
Betty – you sound like a wonderful cook!
Rob
@Elizabelle #51:
I just finished reading the NYT article about Amazon you linked to. Yeesh. I really don’t want to patronize them now, not that I have been recently.
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
She would make the best Behold the Power of Cheese commercial. She could be shredding the couch one minute or barking like a maniac and as soon as she hears the word cheese becomes an angelic girl sitting sweetly waiting for her treat.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: You should make a video of that and send it to the company that makes your favorite cheese. Maybe that’s your key to that extra income so you can just cook and bake. :-)
Friends used to tell me that I should video my cocker spaniel, who knew how to get into the refrigerator. That was during the time where you could get 10k if Letterman (or one of the other late night guys) showed your video on air. Why, oh why did I never do that???
I have no magic trick here for getting my guys to be angelic. Except sleeping, they are pretty angelic when they are sleeping.
dww44
@MazeDancer: I stopped buying from them a couple of years ago because I didn’t care for their monopolistic hold on internet retail. Plus I got tired of their following me everywhere with ads containing stuff I had last viewed at the site.
Currants
@Hal: :-) not for me either, and I too look forward to cooler months!
Betty–
Wondering what your offspring thinks of you pulling up stakes when she leaves. Mine was certain that after years of her asking me to adopt a sibling for her (single parent and only child), I would finally do it when she left. I didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth, which was ‘Are you KIDDING me? Start over? When I can not only see the light at the end of the tunnel, I’m STANDING in it?!?’
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl:
Mine figured out how to play fetch by himself. He would drop a tennis ball on the sloping driveway, let it start rolling, and then chase it.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Ruckus: Amazon used to be my nearly one-stop shop for stuff. They were cheaper than Newegg for computer parts, had a better selection than the local big-box stores, and almost always had the more obscure stuff I was looking for. (Though I still need to go to eBay for some things.)
The last year or so, I’ve taken to being more selective in my purchases there. E.g. we’ve recently become fond of Utz Pretzel Rods. $17.38 at Amazon with “free shipping” via a different vendor Vs. $40 delivered for a pack of 5 direct from Utz vs. $6.50 each at Target.
If one doesn’t have the time or inclination to do comparison shopping, Amazon can be a convenient, but increasingly expensive, habit. Bezos seems to think that he can start making money now that he’s made Amazon big enough…
I’d be suspicious of one-off stories in the NY Times about the company though. We know how easy it is for stories in the press to be distorted by writers and editors that have an agenda they wish to push. See: Clinton, H.R. Every big company has issues, and lots of smaller ones also too.
Cheers,
Scott.
Currants
@shell: Yeah–I keep thinking that with all the baking he’s doing. Then I remember air conditioning. We could use it up here this week.
Mack
@beltane: Interesting that you mention a gravel drive. For 15 years, we put up with a badly rutted drive because we could not keep gravel from washing down the sloping drive during a rain. This year, I did something called tar and chip, and so far so good. Basically, they grade, then apply an oil thinner than asphalt, then rock, then they roll over it and repeat the whole process. We did our 900 ft drive for around 5000 dollars. I know I’ve spent that already in gravel and grading. Fingers crossed.
Ruckus
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Every big company has issues, and lots of smaller ones also too.
Of course this is true. People work there. But this is not the first I’ve heard of problems and their search engine sucks. I used to be a prime member as I shopped there enough but if I tried to search for a specific model of some product, I’d get pages of stuff, half or more unrelated to what I was looking for. Some things are for sure cheap there, but there are only two ways to sell the same stuff as everyone else at a cheap price. 1. The Costco method. Pay well, make a decent profit and have upper management make OK money. 2. Most every other retailer, like wally world. Pay for shit, don’t worry about service, especially after the sale. Upper management takes everything.
The people that work for a company, they make the company work. Pay them shit, treat them the same way and the results show. Even if the amazon stories are fairy tales, the company still follows the second example. I’m tired of being screwed by companies that actively work to make my world worse. Same goes for politicians that actively do the same, you know, republicans. So I do my best not to be involved with them.
KS in MA
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
True. Amazon doesn’t sound too bad compared to the company I work for.
Cain
@Betty Crocker – I suspect that it will be your kid that is going to miss home more than you will with all that cooking you’re doing!! :)
PaulW
I’ve lived in various places in Florida.
1) South Florida/Broward – traffic is a mess, but everything’s withing driving distance and there is EVERYTHING. Plus, libraries all over the place.
2) Gainesville – the university is the center of the universe. Everything goes from 13th and University and radiates outward. Traffic around Oaks Mall is bad 24/7, and Archer Rd is bad early morning and late afternoon. High number of alternate cultural spots. Too far from Tampa, a little too far from Orlando, a little too close to Jacksonville. The Waldo Speed Trap is no more.
3) Pinellas County – beaches. Traffic is a mess. If you’re in North Pinellas you better know how to get to Countryside Mall, if you’re in South Pinellas you better know how to get to Tampa. You won’t have kids at those age levels, but you’ll still get mad at the school board for wrecking the schools.
4) Pasco County – if you’re west Pasco all the fun stuff is in North Pinellas, if you’re in east Pasco all the fun stuff is in Tampa.
5) Polk County – Lakeland is still small-town enough to make Tampa or Orlando look like Miami/Dade. Everything is out along I-4. Otherwise it’s quiet. A little toooo quiet, despite what the county sheriff keeps telling us…
PaulW
the only real thing you need to buy from Amazon are the ebooks for your Kindle devices.
J R in WV
@MazeDancer:
Folks, Amazon is NOT the only company on the internet that will mail stuff to you. Just use a search engine (I use DuckDuckGo.com now because they don’t track your searches like google does) tor look for what you want.
If you don’t want to see amazon results, just add -Amazon.com to your search string, or just ignore Amazon links. But nearly every major retailer in America is selling stuff on the Internet now, and shipping it either free or cheaply. I use Newegg.com for electronics, Powells.com for books, etc.
Williams-Sonoma is out there for cooking stuff. Just look around.
Amazon is the most unnecessary addiction there is. I have so far bought ONE item from them, because I was in a hurry to get one before we started a long trip. It was a charger cable for the Android tablet, and I wanted to be sure we could use it while traveling.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@J R in WV: Even if you don’t like Bezos, there may still be sensible reasons to shop at Amazon. Lots of companies sell stuff on Amazon even if they don’t use Amazon’s warehouse and distribution network. Given all the bad things said about eBay over the years, small shops having access to the millions of eyeballs that Amazon attracts is a good thing.
Newegg is a giant too – $2.7B in sales in 2013. I haven’t found them to be a compelling store in many, many years. But I’m glad they’re out there – competition is good. :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Tree With Water
@Schlemazel: The San Francisco Giants broadcasters have been moaning about construction in the city for a while now. No more short cuts that “only they & the players know about” to the Bay Bridge on their way to homes in the east bay. And yeah, it’s a heat wave, compounded by heavy smoke from all the fires. The Giants are headed to St. Louis, and the announcers were joking that it would be the first time they traveled there in the summer to cool off.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Amir Khalid:
Waaaay late with this, but I did find a boeuf bourguignon recipe with no alcohol (or bacon) for a friend of mine a while ago. The chef combined grape juice and vinegar instead:
http://chefindisguise.com/2012/05/14/alcohol-free-beef-bourguignon-daring-cooks-may-2012/
Steeplejack
@PurpleGirl:
Sounds like a great situation. Hope you have many happy years there (as many as you want).
Goblue72
@Elizabelle: I’m a former Seattleite. The “Am-hole” reputation of Amazon employees is fairly well deserved. The locals – while profiting off Amazon’s growth in the form of rising property values, stellar job growth and city budget swelled by all the Amazon driven office development – really really do not like the Am-bots.
Bezos is completely invisible amongst the big business corporate leaders in town and notoriously stingy when it comes to the kind of corporate philanthropy that is expected from any business leader in a company’s home town.
He’s an arsehole and everyone knows it.
NotMax
@Goblue72
Perfect Veep material for Trump, then.
Tree With Water
@J R in WV: I must drive Amazon crazy because I still only order books. And I’d even do that less often, except the digital age drove so many book stores out of business.
Tree With Water
@PaulW: Never been to Florida, but after a quick google search by satellite say that Liberty County looks inviting. A lot of green, state park…
Goblue72
@NotMax: I should also add that Bezos specifically chose Washington state to start Amazon due to Washington’s lack of an income tax. He would have chosen the Bay Area due to its larger tech talent base but didn’t want to pay taxes – he even investigated whether he could base Amazon on an Indian reservation near San Francisco as a tax dodge.
His purchase of WaPo is also quite likely a tax dodge – http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSL1N0G700Q20130806
Bezos is a typical Techno-Libertarian, a modern day robber baron. Only the tumbrels are fit for him.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s very sweet, wish I had seen your comment before I went to bed last night! What a smart boy.
My sister has a swimming pool, and her cocker spaniel, Tiffy was great. On a hot day, Tif would nudge the tennis ball closer and closer to the edge of the pool, and then – surprise!!! – the ball would fall into the pool. Then she would get this look like “what, me? who could have predicted that? but now that the ball is in the water I guess I’ll have to go in and get it”. So she would jump in after the ball, get the ball in her mouth, take one lap around the entire pool and finally swim to the pool steps where she could get out. And then do it all over again.
Sweet memories about our beloved cockers.
Kerry Reid
That photo is definitely a candidate for this site.