We’re officially Floridians. We now own a house and have Florida driver’s licenses and registered voters. Neither of us has had a non-Illinois license, so it was a big change to make.
Florida voter registration is quite different from in Illinois. In Illinois, you just register to vote. No official/declared party affiliation. To vote in a primary, you show up and pick a ballot for whichever party. In 2016, both of us voted in the Republican primary – but in 2020 we both got a Democrat ballot. Prior to 2016, we split our ballots. It’s how the system should be, in our minds.
But in Florida, you must declare a party affiliation. And that choice affects which ballot you get in primaries. In a general election, you can obviously vote for whichever party/candidates you want – but the difference in primaries is a big one and an annoying one. I don’t think we citizens should have to choose an official party in this way – and it’s publicly disclosed – but Florida is a different place than Illinois.
In other major life changes, we also sold our truck and RV and bought a minivan. Having the RV was weighing on us – and selling a used RV is not nearly as easy as selling a car. There is no Carmax equivalent to RVs. And dealers don’t outright purchase RVs older than a few years. So we got lucky in finding someone at our RV park who wanted to buy it. However, he also wanted to buy our truck as a package deal – and that put a wrench in our timeline. We got an offer from him for the RV and truck – headed to Carmax to see what a quick sale of the truck would bring – and wound up selling the bundle to the RV neighbor without having a replacement vehicle lined up right away. It was a fair offer we’ll unbundle and discuss in a future post.
We quickly found a used minivan for a reasonable price an borrowed a new neighbor’s car to check it out. It was about as-advertised and we bought it – a 2013 Honda Odyssey minivan – also something we’ll discuss in a future post.
Other than those major changes, we’re enjoying our new life. We attended the Halloween golf cart parade, a ‘spooky walk’ in the woods, and trick-or-treated with our new friends. We carved pumpkins, enjoy our pool & hot tub, and continue to have fun eating all sorts of tasty foods.