Part of the problem with a place named paradise by those who only visit or who never do, is that those who inhabit same for awhile discover the pitfalls hidden around the palm trees.

And no, I don't refer to gators. But if you do come here and have a pet whose total dimensions are less than those of a horse, do not, I repeat, do not let them roam free. Gators love to snack on creatures smaller than they are. This is well documented by columnists in newspapers who love to make fun of their home state.

My problem with paradise is that it frequently gets pegged by the weather prognosticators as "hurricane bait". That is, if you stick your nose out too far, it might get hit. Last time I looked at a map, Florida looks like a cartoon version of Jimmy Durante and the schnozz is poking right out into a tropical body of water. So we have been labeled in the minds of those who make money on predicting stuff (including insurance actuarials), as the area most likely to. After the Katrina year we knew it would be coming. Hurricanes and Florida never were any big deal, but now that we can actually say hurricanes may hit anywhere along the Gulf/Atlantic coast because they actually have, Insurance companies can justify (somehow) doubling our home insurance and that is the state pool, because the original company followed every other Tom, Dick, and Harry Ins. Co. to the exit out of Florida. They dropped us quicker than the Physicist's jaw dropped who first discovered that sometimes a particle acts like a wave and sometimes like a, well, particle.
(Sorry for the extreme metaphor-just got finished watching what the Bleep happened!)

And the Bleep did happen to our insurance! Now for those of you thinking, "yeah, well you did move to Florida, didn't you!", I can only say this: paying the insurance beats getting your roof hauled off by a hurricane, or blown off by a volcano, or living too close to the Yellowstone super caldera, or a dozen other natural disasters that might happen in this great land of ours. May none of them happen to you or anyone close to you or to a wide enough group of citizens in the same class of people so that your insurance company never gets any bright ideas about how to make its stockholders happy! May you live in dull and boring localities.

Love to all,
Steve C.