I love flying to Tampa! There’s nothing like stepping onto a plane in the dead of winter and stepping off in the heat of summer. Every time I come down here I wonder why I ever left. I could have gone to the University of South Florida and ended up no further academically than where I am now, but I wouldn’t be married to my wonderful wife. All things have a way of working themselves out in the end; I just wish it could have worked out here.

Don’t get me wrong I love New York. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else right now (well perhaps Seattle…someday). It’s just that there’s something about the sun that makes everything seem easier. Right now, if I wanted to sit outside at a café table in New York, I would most likely need more than two layers of clothing. Here in Tampa I am broiling in my long sleeved T-shirt. It’s 7pm and the sun just went down here, in New York we would have been cloaked in darkness an hour ago – all right, in the middle of all those skyscrapers we really only see the mid-day sun anyway.

But for all the wonderful weather, I just can’t seem to fall in love with Tampa. Perhaps it’s the lack of a true pedestrian city center, perhaps it’s just that there are too many gated communities; whatever it is I just can’t wrap my heart completely around the place. It’s a nice place to visit, but a terrible place to call home.

Maybe it’s the fact that Jeb Bush is the governor and the infamous hanging chad put his brother in the oval office.