I'd like to hear more about your expedition to Florida.
I've been to Fort Lauderdale, but with Jebba the Hutt in command I certainly wouldn't want to reside there. I turned down a trip in a Cessna and a Caddy from coast to coast because it started in Florida. The place seems just another authoritarian ethical slum.
What led you to want to live there? Sunshine? 
In a nutshell, we were priced out of California's outrageous housing market, where a crack house can easily fetch $330,000.00. We were attracted to Florida because of the climate and the things we read about the economy there "booming."
Disclaimer: We lived in Jacksonville, and never got an opportunity to visit any other part of the state. Therefore, the following description applies to Jax only, and may not apply to Miami, Tampa, etc.
Where do I start? First off, the place is overrun with religious extremists. When my husband cut the grass on Sundays, fundies would stop in their tracks and glare at him, and sometimes actually have the nerve to tell him that he was wrong to work on the Lord's Day. This happened on numerous occasions. Better him than me, because he has a lot more restraint than I do.
Philadelphia has a church on every corner. I never had anything like that happen to me when I grew up here, and nothing like that has happened since we fled here in January. And, most likely, nothing like that ever will.
I developed a deep hatred for the ubiquitous "W" stickers and "Choose Life" license plates. WRT the license plates, if the pro-lifers get one, why not the pro-choicers, as well as pro-marijuana groups, father's rights groups, animal rights groups, pro-animal testing groups, immigration reform groups, pro-open-borders groups, etc.? Why wasn't everyone getting a shot?
The only economic "boom" was in jobs at malls, car lots and call centers. Retirement is also a booming industry. Doctors, personal injury attorneys, and funeral directors also do well. My husband is a marketing copywriter. No one in Jacksonville even knew what that is. He did get a job offer to pitch carcasses into the furnace at a crematory, and along with the enraged fundies, a few people stopped while he was cutting grass to ask how much he charged. I managed to snag legal secretarial work--at rates nearly half of what I'm making here in Philly. In between temp jobs, I sold dog supplies at a mall kiosk.
$12.00/hour was considered an extraordinary amount of money. The locals justified this by claiming, "The cost of living isn't that high here." While that's true, it's not low enough for an adult to pay a mortgage on 12 bucks an hour. This attitude probably explains why half the city looked like Tijuana, not racially but WRT all the trailer-park shantytowns, one of which was right down the street from our house. There was a street less than a mile away called Gano Avenue that I fondly referred to as "Sex Offender Lane," because that's where they all go straight out of prison.
Socially and culturally, everyone lived like they were 98 years old. A BIG NIGHT OUT consisted of a trip to a strip mall. When a large strip mall opened up, it was FRONT-PAGE NEWS for a month. No one could get over the fact that Jacksonville finally had a Cheesecake Factory and a Sharper Image.
As I mentioned above, last month we moved just south of Philadelphia, to Delaware. Delaware isn't the most happening place on Earth, but it is light-years ahead of Jacksonville. People here wouldn't go bonkers over the opening of a new mall. Nobody thinks that $12.00/hour is an extraordinary wage; even the Section 8 people don't think that. There is a nice mix of conservatism and liberalism that works to mitigate the fringe elements on each side. The cost of living is the same as it is in Florida.
Within a month of arrival, I got a job in Philly where I earn more in three days than I did in Jacksonville in a week. I take a train into the city, therefore eliminating worries of car breakdowns that lead to missed time from work. My husband's freelance copywriting business is taking off, and I continue to develop my giftware web store. We hate the winter weather, the car inspections, and the Eastern Time Zone (Laker games don't come on until 10:30 p.m.). We like, or at least are content with, everything else. We no longer feel like we're unwelcome strangers in a foreign country.
