Wow, sounds idyllic…
I Live at the Beach, with a few stops inland, I can’t leave the beach. The smell,taste and sound of the surf, it has become my comfort zone. Most of my activities are beach related, Surfing, fishing, clamdigging, metal detecting and Bikini watching. Don’t like Bears and I’m not afraid of Sharks. Surfers have a saying, “if you dont eat shark, they wont eat you”. I’m sorry to say that the beaches have become filthy and the ocean is dying from pollution, I know I won’t be around to witness that.
I’m happy to be hearing all the nice things about Florida. Hubby wants to retire there, but I’d heard uncomplimentary things from others. Now I figure they just didn’t try the right parts of Florida. 
We’re here because we like the house we bought. We’re at the edge of town and our back yard stretches all the way to Illinois . It’s the next best thing to an acreage. We could keep chickens if we wanted to.
There’s nothing to recommend about the town though. We have a post office, bar, a gas station, a cafe that’s open about 4 hours a day, and a John Deere dealership.
But it’s quiet, the taxes are low, and people are friendly.
Lexington-Texas, that is.
Or actually 6 miles outside of Lexington.
Land is extremely affordable here-what I paid for 20 acres with a small house and barn would get me a cracker box house in Austin.
I’m only 45 minutes from Austin so I have all the resources of a big city without the hassle of city life.
I don’t know where my front door keys are because I never feel the need to lock anything out here.
I can grow most of my own food and keep my horses at home.
I can actually hear the wind in the trees and see the stars at night.
Lexington is the sort of small town where the folks at the feed store will leave a bag of dog food or grain outside if they’re closing and you just slip your check under a brick.
The winters are relatively mild, spring and fall are glorious and the 2 months of hotter than hell weather in the summer help keep land prices down.
Plus I can handle heat-it’s the cold that kills me.
Everyone I pass on the road smiles and waves.
Meh, I live in eastern CT … a state roughly 75 miles x 150 miles [sort of a random rectanular state shape] 50 miles from Hartford, our state Capitol. I have worked on the other side of Hartford, a distance of 75 miles one way driving. I have been told by more HR departments that they will not hire someone who has to drive that distance. I have made it to work in storms when people living 5 miles from work called out. That doensnt seem to matter for much. I have also been told that I am overqualified for jobs. I should think that willingness to work should count for something.
I simply have been out of work for 2.5 years, and at the age of 44, I cant get hired for shit. You pretty much have to HAVE a job to GET a job. I really really wish that they would stop outsourcing CS jobs, and bring the jobs back into the states.
I’ve only ever lived where I live now. Can’t see me changing in the medium term. I’m known here, I have easy access to public transport and places where I work, I’m relatively close to friends and places to relax. Surrounded by the familiar, but always amazed by the new.
Gives me a good base from which to make forays.
Trenton, NJ has the best ratio of real estate prices to job market I’ve ever run across. I have a five bedroom (admittedly, two are very small) house with a garage, and I paid less than $100K in Oct, 2003 - well after the real estate prices had started to rise due to the low interest rates. It is, of course, in the city itself, which would be objectionable to some folks, but I don’t mind at all. I have good neighbors.
I am smack between NYC and Philly, and can take a fairly cheap train to either. I commuted to Philly for a year. I’m less than 20 miles from Princeton, which has a lot of neat cultural things, and there are several other less prestigious colleges even closer. The radio and TV selections, even without cable, are vast. Bruce Springsteen played in Trenton fairly recently; ever since we got an arena, we’ve been on the map for various concert tours, and that arena is less than a mile from my house.
Best and most important of all - my mom lives two blocks away, my dad and his wonderful wife live about a mile away, and I have two aunts within twenty miles, in Bucks County in PA. As all except my stepmom are over 80 (one aunt is over 90), this is a very big deal to me. But if they all died tomorrow (which heaven forbid!), I still would be highly unlikely to move.
Also, twickster lives within 20 miles!
One word: BROADWAY! I’m too much of a musical theatre person to live any where else in the USA.
I’m in an area with very high rentals, but working in real estate has its perks: Twice I’ve gotten very cheap apartments. My last move was to a one bedroom for $640, including heat and hot water!
Columbia, South Carolina. Don’t snicker, I love this place.
It’s my home, it’s where I grew up. I thought when I went away to college in Atlanta that the bright lights and big city were for me. You know what? I like Columbia better. It’s small enough to be homey and big enough for most of the shopping and culture you want. It also has the university and the state government to make it more cultural, more diverse, and more interesting.
I love the weather here. This morning to me it was absolutely miserably freezing, about as cold as it gets for most of the year. It was 30. I’m so glad I can complain and bitch and moan about 30 degrees. I’d much rather be hot than cold.
We have a wonderful public library. We were Library of the Year in 2001, and we continue to get better.
I have a job I enjoy here, and the cost of living is cheap enough that I bought a house close in to town on what I make. My commute is about 15 minutes. I go home for lunch.
I love the in-town neighborhoods. Some of them are a little ghetto, but a lot of them are just beautiful and older. Mostly the big ones are full of little bungalows, built somewhere between 1925 and 1950. Mine is 77 years old. I love it. People take pride in the homes and their gardens.
There is always something blooming. Now it’s camellias and pansies. There are always green trees.
I was almost late to work today because I was standing at the window with my breakfast watching a little army of house finches argue over the perches at my feeder. Are there drawbacks to this place? Sure. Maurice Bessenger is still in business. But I still love it, and I still think there’s a lot more good than bad in it.