What were they thinking?

Our Lutz house has wall to wall carpet in the the bedrooms and the living room part of our greatroom. The rest is tile. We don't like wall to wall carpet and decided to have the carpet removed and laminate flooring out down. today our installer began his work, first removing the old carpet. To our surprise, the surface underneath the carpet was not concrete, but more of the tile. The photo below shows the dining room part of the great at the bottom and the living room at the top. Dividing the room is the carpet strip.


When I saw this, my first thought was "Why?". Why did someone glue and nail carpet tack strips and glue padding onto tile floor? What were they thinking? Rugs would have been cheaper, simpler and easier. Sometimes I just donb't understand.

Now we face a decision. Rip up the tile and replace that part of the room with laminate or leave it and fix the damage.

Hooper's Souless Suburbia

Ernest Hooper has an interesting column on Friday titled: "Souless Suburbia"

"Soulless.

Time and again, the word is used to characterize life in suburbia, and I can only ask one question: Why the hate?"

"My life and my community - and it is a community - isn't defined by old-fashioned houses, kitschy clothing shops or sidewalk cafes. Sure, most every house in my neighborhood is beige, and my home's design has been repeated at least 150 times in the area

"My advice: Judge me not by the color of my home, but by the colorful personalities of my neighbors."

"The appeal of suburbia is built on simple pleasures and a slower life"

It will be interesting to see if life in Lutz is the same as he describes Seffner. I suspect that it sometimes takes longer in suburbia to find the colorful personalities that it does in the City. In the City these personalities jump in your face. Partly I think it is the design of the houses in suburbia, with garages and backyard patios. You spend more time out front in the City and thus it is easier to meet people.

I have seen glimses of colorful possiblities as we have driven into Windemere for the past weeks. There is a neighbor who had a bar in his garage, that occasionally people group around. There are people eating a meal in their garage. There is a neighbor who always have his garage open and is doing something there everytime I drive by and who has waved at me many of the times.

Dryer Issues

Yesterday, we brought the washer and dryer over to the house from the storage unit. I go to plug in the dryer and discover that the outlet was a 3 prong outlet and the cord from the dryer had a 4 prong outlet.

When I first bought this dryer 7 years ago, it had a 3 prong cord. However, I had the electrical service in my 1922 Seminole Heights bungalow upgraded and our electrician had put in a new more modern outlet, which required 4 prongs. So off to Home Depot I went and bought the 4 prong cord, and I replaced the 3 prong cord. Not to difficult to do. I held onto the 3 prong cord for years before finally garage saleing it, maybe a few months ago as we prepared for the move to Lutz.

So now it turns out I should not have garage saled it.

Ooh well, this time I went to Lowes and got a 3 prong cord and rewired the darn thing.

So I have a 4 prong cord sitting in my workshop. Since we do not plan to move from our new Lutz house, this one will go in the first garage sale we hold.

We've Moved To Lutz

On March 1st, we moved to Lutz. We live in a nice house in Windemere Subdivision. Quiet neighborhood. We have been so busy moving in that we have not had a chance to meet many people except for our next door neighbor, E.

The first thing we had to figure out was where do we eat? Thursday night I ran up to the Sunset Shopping Center and got menus from the Subways, the Chinese Restaurant and Beff O'Brady's. The Pizza place was out of menus. We decided to try the Chicken Salad at Beef O' Brady's. Carry Out. Not bad. Love that melted cheese and mushrooms.

Today we ate breakfast at Richard's Cafe, just south of the Sunet PLaza. Nice little place. They have the largest cups of coffee I ever drank. This seems to be the place where everyone knows everyones name.

Dinner tonight was Beef O' Brady's carry out Chicken Salad and their Potato Soup. The soup is best eaten there when it is the hottest. This is a popular place, filled with families.