The New Year -Check It Out, Check It Off

Nothing much to say, of late. I haven't been hibernating, though.

Hired new staff member in IT... this could be a major improvement in my life.
Installed some Smartboards and scheduled the upcoming trainings...this could be fun.
Network upgrades - I can see the light at the end of the tunnel...this could be a great relief.
Grandbaby (girl) expected any day now...this could be lovely chaos.
Her parents are in contract on another house in Park Slope (though they have not yet completely unpacked into the house they moved into in December)...this could be exhausting.
I've gotten really good at mixing Cosmos...this could be oblivion.

Check these off the list for this month:

60th birthday party thrown for MacTech husband.
Grandest commission check deposited by MacTech husband.
Annual upper respiratory illness (short and thus already) recovered from.
Plane tickets purchased and villa and car reserved for March vacation in Anguilla.

Saw:
Dreamgirls, B-
Volver,B+
Notes On a Scandal,B-
The Good Shepherd B+

Don't Go There

This might have been my last ever trip to that snake-head of a peninsular chad-hanging state of Florida. Just flew back to NY about an hour ago. Though there were a number of mildly annoying things about this particular trip, none of them were so terrible, and the weather was hot, the ocean looked good (I say looked good because I could not bring myself to go into it. I could not take the chance that I might find it...fun.
So why could I not enjoy myself just one little bit?
The place is a model showroom of everything that's wrong with this country and how we attempt to live our lives in it. (I'm sure LA could be a contender but not the ENTIRE state of California, they do produce wine there, after all)
Conspicuous consumption, to the hilt – driving back and forth up and down Federal Highway from one hideous mall to another (the restaurants mostly reside in malls too) to buy useless crap to haul back to your place.
The state is populated by a most disconcerting collection of misfits and "ne'er do not well-enoughs" who swarm and grovel in minimum wage jobs below the styrofoam-trimmed and gated mansions of the rich. Those are the ones who work. The place is the Mecca of those trying to make it on Disability checks and or Social Security. Every foray into public space left me wincing in a sea of palsied slow-moving limbs, and worse, navigating motorized wheel-chair traffic (younger than me, people!)
I think the place just scares me – to death.