November 16, 2006 Issue

For those who may be more than bored with prose about my move, I swear this is the last one. I’m having such a good time settling in and getting to know my new neighborhood I am overflowing with kindness and goodwill. The beer I had at lunch today at Slick Mick’s, one of my new neighborhood joints, has nothing to do with it.

It seems the very air is different over here in beach-less Fort Walton. My daily sneezes have almost completely stopped and furthermore, people have dents and dings in their cars, as opposed to the clean and shiny and new vehicles all about Destin. In two weeks, I haven’t seen one Hummer! There is also variance of hues among the people in this ‘hood too, which is a nice change. Even though I was living in the Destin ghetto/barrio, people were still pretty much singularly pale, unlike the expensively acquired tans on the beautiful people in the gated communities.

Thanks to the antics of my Houdini-like beagle, I have thus far met two of the neighbors. One is an elderly gentleman who lives down the street and who very kindly toted my dog home to me using his own leash and welcomed me to the neighborhood. Being no fool and knowing the tendencies of my little beast, she comes equipped with an ID tag bearing her address and my phone numbers.

The other neighbor who materialized in my yard is the very epitome of the type one wants to see shirtless, even early in the morning. Noting the dog had once more evaporated into thin air — I had yet to discover her escape hatch — I went out the front door to see if I could spot her. I called her name and she zoomed from around the side of the house and headed right across the street and around the corner. Yeah, I’m a great dog trainer, so she ignored me completely.

I was walking down the driveway in the direction she ran to when she reappeared from around the corner with hunky neighbor guy and a well-behaved, un-tethered chocolate Lab in her wake.

Hunky neighbor guy introduced himself, established that he lived alone on the corner, and welcomed me to the neighborhood. He proceeded to go into my backyard, thinking he could both lure my dog in and find out how she was getting out. He was able to identify Snazzy’s exit strategy, but the dog was too smart to follow, even with the added allure of the other dog. Given his dog is so well behaved and he was so friendly, I’m thinking I may have to visit and see if he’ll either give me some dog training tips or can be hired to provide the same. I think I’m going to like it here…

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It was refreshing to learn last week after the elections that people were able to let go of pertinacious tenets and send a message to the buffoons currently running this country. And Americans did so in record numbers, which no matter how you feel about the election, at least lets members of both parties know we are not completely asleep at the switch. We gave one party the opportunity and support to do what they said they would do. They not only didn’t do what they promised, they made things worse for future generations and instead of giving us less government, gave us more incompetent government to contend with.

So now the country is going to try something else. It is the American way to give everyone time to prove themselves, and meet the stated and promised goals. When the results prove absent or disappointing, we tell them not to let the door hit them in the ass on the way out and go on the next.

For all our sakes, I hope the next proves fruitful for all Americans.

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