Road Trip Part Deux - The Interview

So we woke up, re-donned our socks, and I added a sweatshirt. It was in the low 70s and felt good, but a teeny bit nippy.  Michael hit the road, and I hit the beach.

There were only a handful of people out there (and it wasn't even that early, around 8:30am) - no bikes, no loud cars/trucks, no planes, no stinky seaweed, no airport. Just me, the sound of the surf, and ospreys flying overhead. I had forgotten my mp3 player but was happy to just listen to the waves.

Those horny bugs were out there in full force by 9:30am, with the orgy continuing until about 7:30pm. Impressive. Locals are saying they've never seen anything like it (apparently the infestation started the day before we got there).

Since my barely-used GPS watch went kapoot, I couldn't track my distance, so I decided to run 30 minutes in each direction. That, coincidentally, ended up taking me exactly in front of the building where we'd be checking out an apartment later. It was a bit sad looking (built in 1984) and very far from the main tourist area - which was bad in some ways (we couldn't walk there) and good in others (it would be quieter and cheaper).

Done with the hour run, I ended up walking to the pier and back for good measure, basically pacing until I thought Michael would be coming back. We both got to the hotel at the same time., so he rolled down the window as he passed me, told me he had a great interview, and.............drum roll please....

We won't know for another couple of weeks. %$#*@!  The interviewer has another two people to chat with. So we wait. Again. We had no idea if we should look at apartments, buy a car, nothing. This has been our life for a very long time.

We spent the next couple of hours online looking for wheels and came up empty. Discouraged and somewhat numb, we headed to the apartment building to take a look at the unit on the beach. Positives: It was on the beach and had garage parking. Negatives: It was like being in the movie The Shining, only shot in a dorm-like nursing home instead of a hotel. Lest you think I exaggerate, that was Michael's description, not mine (although I whole-heartedly agree). The garage, a sauna, an ancient gym, the pool table - were all down in a white, concrete-block basement. The hallways were long and dank. No one in there was under age 80. Yes, the place had shuffleboard. I would so have stories to tell if we moved in there, but our bed won't fit in the apartment's bedroom, so I think this one is out. We drove around for awhile looking at housing in-general and got further discouraged - there's a lot of bad mixed in with the good. We did find one possibility on the ICW, which would be much quieter than on the oceanfront, but probably hotter too (it's not near downtown either). The question is, will it still be available should the job be a yes?

We had nachos too. We didn't drink
$17.68 worth of beer.

Frustrated, we took our bleh selves to a nearby restaurant to mull things over and had a great conversation with the server and the owner (they couldn't believe we were sitting outside with all the bugs - shrug). Although they confirmed housing would be hard to find up there, our mood was lifted when we got the bill and realized our beers were only a buck fifty. Now that's a happy hour.

The drive back was great until we made a mistake we will never make again - taking I-95 to Route 1, which goes through Miami and its suburbs. We added over an hour to our trip going from light to light, around disabled vehicle to the next disabled vehicle. I'd felt like I'd been transplanted to Los Angeles for awhile there (Michael said hell). And then we were back.

Now we wait.