A year in the "North"

June 23rd marked the one year anniversary of my wife and I packing up our stuff and our animals and moving from Florida to upstate New York, Rochester to be specific. A year into it and I am still loving it in upstate!

Before I moved I had many people ask me why I was going to leave Florida and to this day I still have people ask me why I left "sunny Florida" to go Rochester NY where many people seem to believe it might as well be the arctic circle. The bottom line is that I lived in Florida for over 24 years and I honestly grew to dislike the state. It was a state in the south but I never knew what "southern hospitality" was until I met people from Georgia and Louisiana. I also am one who really loves cold weather and am not a big fan of the heat. I am all about the mantra "you can always put clothes on but you can only take so much off." Much of my wife's family lives in Rochester as well so that made moving away from my family easier to deal with. All in all, I like it up here.

The trip up was an adventure though. Since we had two cats and a dog to move up it made things a little more complicated. We rented a POD to load everything in and had it shipped out and put in storage. This made things easy because we didn't have to rent a moving truck just to load it up, drive it up and then unload it into storage. That was the easy part. The hard part was loading the rest of our stuff, the animals, the animal stuff and still fitting myself and my wife into a Mustang and an F-150. It was a lot harder than you might imagine. I got the dog, my wife got the two cats. The cats have always behaved better with her and the dog behaved better with me so it fit.

We lucked out and hit beautiful weather up the east coast the whole ride up. We didn't have the luxury to take a lot of time driving up. This was due to the animals so we drove the 22+ hour journey stopping every couple hours to let the animals stretch (it made a good excuse for bathroom breaks for me) and had one hotel stop. I have to thank Howard Johnson for letting our pets stay with us for a very small per night charge (Note: I do not personally know Howard Johnson or anyone named Howard or Johnson). For such a cheap rate it was a really nice hotel. Maybe it was just a bad part of town in Richmond Va. where we stopped? It looked good to me....

We loaded back up and 14 hours later we were in Rochester and we haven't looked back since!

Since I had lived in Florida primarily all of my life I never faced a real winter with real white stuff falling from the sky. They call that snow!!!! It took a lot to get used to, shoveling, driving almost sideways while your vehicle slides down the road. But all in all, it could have been a lot worse.

I have met some great people in the "North" and am fortunate to be able to call a few of them friends. They say the grass is always greener on the other side but I went from green to white on the ground and I love it!

Loneliness Complex

Ever have those days or even periods of the day that you would like to just be alone. You know, when you are using the bathroom or if you just had a fight with a loved one or if you received bad news. I am sure everyone has had these times (especially going to the bathroom, you will understand why I bring this up in a moment). I am also sure that during those periods of times you have encountered people who you would really prefer to stay away from at least for the short time. Let me explain.....

Example 1: I own a pretty good sized pick-up truck. There are a good amount of parking lots that haven't been updated for the larger vehicles on the road so I tend to park further away from whatever store I am going to in order to make it easy on me when I leave. Note, this is totally different than the kids who have "pimped out" cars who feel the need to take up multiple spaces so their 1992 Neon doesn't get a ding in the door. Over 100 other open parking spaces and never fails....someone parks right next to me. I'm 3 miles away from the front door, what real reason do you have for parking your Honda Civic or other small car next to me? The whole point of me parking far out is so I don't have the congestion so I can maneuver my truck easily. Does that person say "awwww...that truck looks lonely, I think I will park next to it!" Come on people!

Example 2: The other day I was in a public bathroom at work that has 10 stalls and 6 urinals. I was the only one in the bathroom at the time and decided to use a stall to take care of what I needed to take care of, let me repeat, I was the only person in the bathroom at this point. I hear another person enter the bathroom, and he has 15 fixtures to choose from and he decides to use the one directly next to me! Now, don't get me wrong it's not like there wasn't a stall wall between us but come on. Who goes to the bathroom thinking "I would love to go to the bathroom right next to some other guy right now." I have seen this happen at urinals as well where a guy has 4 to choose from but chooses the one right next to someone else using one. Sorry to guys who do this, you don't need someone to hold your hand while going to the bathroom!

Example 3: Annoying Office Guy at work. This is the guy who goes to your desk and talks and talks and talks when you really don't want to talk to anyone. This is the guy who when you are at lunch will sit right next to you and crowd you so much that you gobble down your food and leave the lunch room as soon as you get done with your food. Myself and friends of mine have all had the conversation with Annoying Office Guy. Basically Annoying Office Guy talks, I reply with "uh huh" or "oh ok" while continuing to type on my keyboard and never looking at him. The guy still doesn't get the point!

What I am getting at is there are certain people that don't get the point. These people have what I call "The Loneliness Complex" if they see someone or something that is alone they have to save the day and keep them company! I am not a person who is typically rude unless I am in a really bad mood so I am not one to day "dude, go away" or "do you really have to use the stall right next to me?" I do truely believe that this world needs people like Kramer from Seinfeld. The man just blurts out what he thinks. Too many of this type of person wouldn't be the greatest thing but a few more in this world may get the point across to some people!

So next time you are thinking that something or someone looks really lonely, fight the urge and think that there may be a reason for the "loneliness!"

This is my first of hopefully many blogs. Feel free to leave comments!