It ain't quite paradise...

...but it's pretty damn close.

Every once in a while, Ziggy and I will look at one another...usually while we're sittin on the deck, watchin the ole Illinois drift by, just...hangin...and one of us will say to the other, "We done a gooooood thing."

Noooo. We're not talkin about sex. We're talkin about our recent move to the beach house on the moon (Another hat-tip to Jimmy Buffett).

It'll be three weeks tomorrow that we made the move and, despite the longer drives to work for both of us, neither of us has anything even resembling a regret. In fact, it's just too damn bad that we couldn't have done it sooner.

It's kinda funny...when we lived in the city, I never thought the traffic was too awfully bad, even during rush hour. Compared to a lotta cities, it's not. But compared to here...well, let's just say when I finally hit that Route 6 ramp out at the end of Knoxville, I breathe a big sigh of relief and can feel myself relaxing. Until I hit 29, anyway.

I'm not kiddin...those people that drive 29 everyday are nuts. Yea, it's a four-lane highway. But it's not the interstate, so STOP DRIVING IT LIKE IT IS!

The speed limit is 55. 'Course, even I can't drive 55. It's physically impossible. But neither do I run 75-80 (or higher) like many do. I try to keep it between 60-65, but usually get my doors blown off. Even that can't dampen my enthusiasm for living out here, though.

I've been to the only grocery store in town five or six times, so far. And every time, I've found a close parking place. It's like crazy. There's no cruisin the 100-acre parkin lot for 15 minutes waiting for someone to pull out. The store is right there. And I can actually wander around the store without someone runnin their cart up the backs of my ankles or rammin it into some other tender body part. Aaaaand, they carry my favorite tea...Arizona Diet Green Tea. Bless their hearts!

Oh...OH! And I ran into the little hardware store the other day and someone actually came up to me and asked me if I needed help in finding anything! Can you believe it??

Aaaannnnd, while there's not a Starbuck's to be found, there is a little, drive-through coffee joint with a cute (but dorky) name...Chilli-COFFEE. Get it? Chillicothe? Chilli-coffee. Wonder how long it took 'em to come up with that little gem?

'Course, there are a few other things that we don't have.

We don't have any little terrorists-in-training, pointin toy guns at me.

We don't have any bangin and stompin from the upstairs neighbors.

We don't have any panicked, middle-of-the-night, pounding-on-our-door, oh-my-gawd-whatt'm-I-gonna-do-?-my-carbon-monoxide-detector=is-BEEPING! elderly neighbors.

Instead of lookin out our back patio door at the back of some old fart's house or havin to watch the aforementioned old fart wander around his backyard, white stork-legs shinin in the sun, we look out the front windows/door and see this...



We don't see a lotta police cars...we see hummingbirds.

We don't have burglers...we have barges and boats.

We don't have drive-bys...we have mallard duck fly-bys.

We don't hear many sirens...we hear the occasional, distant train whistle.

We don't hear any gunshots...we hear geese.

Yup. We done a goooood thing.