2010 Feb. 20 Saturday
Relaxing morning, reading and working on the computer. It’s nice to have WIFI in the room so I can spend as much computer time as I want. I did a lot of investigating time shares in FL, thinking about next year. With points, there is a lot of variance in how many are used - it depends on where you go and when you go. Also, it is not consistent. For example, in January, it takes fewer points to stay in Orlando, Daytona Beach, or Destin on the panhandle, than it does to stay in the Ft. Lauderdale area. The number of points also varies for resorts in the same area, depending how new the place is, how large the units are, and if they are on the beach or not. So I spend a lot of time trying to maximize the usage of our points.
Lunch here, then I went fishing for a couple of hours at one of the docks. Linda came along and watched and read. No luck, just a couple of small bass following a lure. I’m going to try to get some live bait, because I think the water is so cold that the fish are not very active. After we got back to our unit, I decided to go on a bike ride. This resort is large - about 65 acres - and there is only one entrance on a ¼ mile road. On the south side of the resort, there is a wall with a street on the other side, but no access to it. On the west side, there is a small stream, and I found a foot- bridge over it. I love to explore, so I took it! It went to the back of another resort, and I rode through to the front. It is on the next street west of us, so I do have another residential area to explore.
Supper here, early to bed.

WEATHER: High 72, (nearly perfect) low 49. Normal is 75 and 52, so still below average. Monday’s high is supposed to be 78, but it’s supposed to rain. The paper said this winter is the third coldest ever, up to now. Also, it has been wet - 3.17 inches above normal. Not what we snowbirds want when we come to FL for the winter!!

FL NEWS: (1) [Remember when the 2000 presidential election in FL was such a mess?] The fallout from Florida’s history of botched elections is still playing out in Tallahassee. Legislators are pushing to delay a requirement that county election supervisors buy $45 million in optical-scan voting equipment for the disabled. In 2002, Florida replaced punch-card ballots [remember the ‘hanging chad’ controversy?] with paperless electronic voting machines. But those machines were blamed for thousands of non-votes in a 2006 congressional race. So in 2007 the state switched to optical-scan equipment that uses verifiable paper ballots. But disabled voters continue to use touch-screen machines that leave no paper trail, and it appears the legislators are not going to allow the costly upgrade.
(2) “HOW OUR REGION GETS OVERBUILT” Guess which county has the highest foreclosure rate in Central Florida? Yes, it’s this county, and elected officials are making things worse. The County Commission last week approved a ‘new city’ of 17,000 acres that would have 30,000 new homes on top of all the foreclosures. It would also offer hundreds of acres for commercial and industrial use. The pitch is that this ‘new city’ would complete the nearby Lake Nona, which is now being developed. But Lake Nona already has thousands of empty acres. Thousands more acres in the county would simply be overbuilding.