2010 March 4 Thursday
Less wind, but another cool and sunny morning, spent relaxing, reading, and computer work. After lunch here, we went to The Mall at Millennia. It is a large covered mall, and we think it is the nicest by far. The stores are more up-scale, so it wouldn’t be a place to do major buying for us, but it’s a very nice place to look and hang out. Of course, it has a nice Starbucks and some good restaurants, like California Pizza Kitchen, and some fancier ones also. One thing it doesn’t have is a book store. At about 3:00, we left to go to another mall near there called Festival Bay Mall, because it has a multiplex cinema. We finally went to see Avatar, a movie I have wanted to see for a long time. It was my kind of movie, and I thought it was terrific. It’s not Linda’s kind of movie, but she liked it more than she thought she would. The paper today said it cost $300 million to make, but so far it has brought in $706 million with more coming in. I predict it will win a bunch of Oscars and maybe the best picture award. After the movie, we walked around the mall a little and had a light supper at an A&W-Long John Silver’s place in the mall. We both had shrimp scampi with rice, and it was surprisingly good. We stopped at a large book store, and I bought another book to read. Home to watch American Idol’s elimination show. We picked 3 of the 4 losers, but we both thought Michelle should not be leaving.

WEATHER: High 62, low 41. Last night, Orlando tied its record low with 38 degrees. We have noticed Kissimmee is always warmer, with a difference of usually 2 to 4 degrees between Orlando and Kissimmee (like last night’s difference of 3 degrees). The biggest difference we have seen is 7 degrees. The two town centers are 17 miles apart (even though it is all one big metropolitan area) but Kissimmee is always a little warmer. I don’t know why. One possibility is that even though Orlando has several lakes in and around it, they all are small. Downtown Kissimmee borders on Lake Tohopekaliga, which is 18,800 acres. It is connected to East Lake Toho by a 3 mile canal, and it is 11,968 acres. Possibly the large lakes hold the heat better?

FL NEWS: “FLORIDA BUDGET CRISIS”
With a need to cut up to $3.2 billion from government spending, Florida House budget writers want to reap the biggest savings by scuttling road projects, cutting benefits for state workers and scaling back regulation. House Speaker Larry Cretul, R-Ocala, sent a memo to lawmakers Thursday stressing that even though tax collections are increasing, the dollars haven't kept pace with inflation or the recession-driven growth in demand for social services. Cretul's directives won't take shape until state economists next week revise their estimates of how much tax revenue the state could bring in next year. But they offer some insight into the philosophical leanings of the Republican-led chamber, which seeks to shield classrooms and college campuses while forcing social services, road construction and state employees to shoulder cuts.
"Significant reductions … will be needed to achieve and maintain a balanced budget," Cretul said. "This will be more difficult than in previous years because the low-hanging budgetary fruit has already been picked."
This year's $66.5 billion budget includes $5.5 billion in stimulus dollars, which begin drying up next year. All told, Cretul's plan shows total general revenue spending growing from the $21.19 billion appropriated for 2009-10 to $23.25 billion — largely because Florida tax collections are going up after three years of declines. This week, House and Senate budget committees began going over a laundry list of programs that could be cut if Congress doesn't come up with the money, including deep cuts to Medicaid for the poor and elderly, substance-abuse treatment, aid to the disabled, welfare and other safety-net services. Most of those ideas are sure to draw fierce resistance from Democrats. Republican Gov. Charlie Crist has asked lawmakers to bank on Congress sending another $1 billion in stimulus dollars to bail out those safety-net programs.