We found a new apartment, which means leaving our short term rental a little early, but the landlord agreed to give us a refund if she is able to rent it, so we are hopeful. Our new place is in the Riverside/Avondale district of Jacksonville, so we are on the other side of the river from the short term place, to the West of the St. John's river. This is cool primarily because the neighborhood has much more character, with tree lined streets and pretty old houses. On this side of the river it's a lot more like Jersey, with strip malls lining both sides of 4 lane undivided highways.
So I spent a lot of time this past week getting our address changed on all our accounts great and small, setting up internet, cable, utilities, etc, etc... I've been taking advantage of the pool and gym here to start training for a sprint triathlon and that's been very rewarding in the sense that I've never done anything like that before. By now it must be obvious that making a practice of regularly trying things we've never done before is a priority in our lives here at Team Toomey/Dunkinson. Hopefully I can keep it up once I start working, and maybe even drag LuAnn into it with me. We just joined the Y and went to the gym all week, in addition to my training, so that was a good start. There's some great street art around here too.
Searching for work has not been as rewarding, in as much as I haven't secured a position yet. I hope that will change soon. Despite my natural misgivings at starting a new job I have a bit more time on my hands than is strictly good for me, and have yet o really turn it to creative pursuits. I have managed to get some guitar playing in, but the weather is so nice I really want to go outside and enjoy it, especially since (in my view) it's rapidly getting so awful in the Northeast.
We went to the Saturday Art Market, met some nice people & watched the dog costume parade. That was fun. Seems like a lot of really great food and music events happen here all year round and we've already gotten tickets for several of them, including the bacon & beer fest which we are very excited about.
We ate at Southern Charm, an amazing all-you-can-eat shrimp buffet type of thing they call "cracker food". I thought any po' white trash person was a cracker, but apparently the term is of Irish extraction, a bastardized usage of "craic", meaning fun.
We had a very nice dinner with the family of one of LuAnn's former co-workers who coincidentally happens to live in Jacksonville. We also went to reggae night at Jacksonville Landing and saw the 319 band. I had to get a new phone because AT&T sucks and sold me a phone that, though it worked everywhere else in the world, staunchly refused to work properly on the T-Mobil network. Yet another reason to hate those monopolists. Humph.
Perhaps this all seems very boring and normal to everyone else, but to me it's still an amazing adventure. So many new things to do and places to see! We are loving Florida pretty hard, although so far the Jaguars and Buccaneers aren't really rocking my world. I bought a Gators T-shirt. Might have to root for Miami! :-)
The weather has been kinda funny. Most days it's nice in the morning, clouds up in the afternoon and rains in the evening. So far I am not really minding it though. Got me a new suit to go to interviews in. My pals say I look like a preacher. Brother Andy!
Well, that's it for now. Hopefully we will be having more far flung adventures soon in places like New Orleans, Tallahassee, Miami, Key West and of course Savannah! All the best you fantastic people!
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