The Great Experiment

Sunday, July 9, 2000: Another down day so far, spent going through my photos from yesterday.

And it's time to answer a question I've gotten a lot lately: "Why are you in Florida? Why is this a 'great experiment?'"

The short of it is that I really want to have a house. I've decided that Silicon Valley is not the place to do this. Not only is land outrageously expensive out there, but another factor is that I have some AOL stock (from having worked for Netscape for four and a half years) and if I were to sell that stock while I am a California resident, I would owe six figures' worth of taxes to the California state government. I like California, but not THAT much.

Florida has no state income tax and much less expensive land, and there are also plenty of theme parks all around, which is good for two reasons: I'm a fan of Disney, and plenty of other people are as well, so I stand a better chance of meeting up with friends from faraway places out here than I did in California.

The 'great experiment' is to find out whether or not this is my kind of area. The jury's still out on that, but so far it seems very liveable -- no typhoons, plagues of locusts, tourists playing bumper cars, solar flares, alligators under the bed, that sort of thing.

I'm going to miss my friends in California, but they all have Silicon Valley jobs which eat up their time, so I don't get to see them very often anyway. I've considered looking for a home in California far enough away from Silicon Valley that it's not so expensive, and yet close enough that I could still visit people... but that wouldn't solve the state income tax problem, and besides, would it really help to live two or three hours away from everyone else?

Evening update

Today's adventure: Laundry.

Tide: Gets your Wookiees smelling springtime fresh!

I didn't do anything else today, so let's distract you with a chorus line

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