Clay and I survived the packing, the move of our remaining furniture to storage, and the long drive to Florida. The drive? What a pleasant experience. We both love audio books, and we found a good one – The Boys on the Boat!

The month of December was the first month living from vacation rental to vacation rental. To say that December 2015 was amazing is an understatement. We arrived at our “Green Castle” early December, and fell in love with this lovely old (1926) home with its original wood floors, and ideal location – walking distance to downtown Melbourne. It didn’t take but minutes to unpack, set up our new “home” and then lickety-split, we’re off to see Wade, Chris and their two children (Ava & Connor).

The time spent with family included not only the Melbourne family, but my sister, Peggy, and her husband, Milton, my daughter, Wendy, and lastly my brother, Paul, and my sister-in-law, Susan. What a perfect way to begin our new life on the road with family visiting us in our Green Castle.

On December 22 we closed on our condo in Austin. What should have been an easy task turned into a gut wrenching experience. As Clay mentioned, the “the rain came” to Austin. A few days before the closing, our upstairs neighbor’s balcony sprung a leak, which dripped water down the windows of our condo. Of course, the potential buyers were going nuts (understandably I might add). Workmen came out and took care of the leak, including water tests to prove our windows were sound, as we already knew. The problem was the upstairs balcony caulking needed repairing, and the HOA took care of it.

However, the potential buyers took this as an opportunity to extort some extra money. On the day of closing, while we are at the bank in Melbourne notarizing the paperwork for the sale, we got a call from our realtor saying that the buyers needed $3K from us as insurance against future problems. Future problems? Needless to say, they knew the association had agreed it was their issue to fix – not the condo owner. After thinking about what little $3K is compared to the total amount of money, we caved and gave them their money, which we regarded as extortion, and moved on with the sale. My only consolidation is that if they call us to ask any questions about the appliances, etc, I will happily answer for $3K. J By the way, our wonderful realtor took half the money out of her commission, so it turned out we were only out $1.5K the day of the closing. *%#@!.

Regrets:

Clay and I had an interesting conversation about regrets. None! We have lived in several homes/condos over the past 33 years, and to be honest, we have never looked back with any regrets for moving on. I have some of my friends and family to say to us “How could you have left they beautiful home in Travis Heights? We (I) loved that house!” Well, so did we, but we desired a different life style, and that is what this recent change really is all about. We want to travel!