Things I Like and Dislike About Living in Gainesville

Here are 8 things I like about living in Gainesville:

1. Alligators on campus - my day on campus is always improved when I walk by a little pond by the hospital I work in and see a young alligator swimming or sunning itself. I never tire of looking at alligators in the wild.
2. Lots of rain - I grew up in Mesa, Arizona where we receive 7 inches of rain in a good year. Most of that rain typically comes in the summer monsoons - huge storms that sweep in and sometimes soak the ground, causing flash floods and power outages. Growing up rain-deprived gave me a strong appreciation for rain. I lived in the Seattle area for 2 years and experienced a lot of rain there as well. I never tire of gray skies and rain.
3. Green all around - It's nice to look around and see tall pine and oak trees lining every road here. Arizona (and Utah) is mostly colored in various browns and reds and what green there is tends to look faded as if the sun is bleaching out all color. Everything is green here in Gainesville and there is little undeveloped ground without tall trees or dense undergrowth.
4. Warm winters - I grew up with warm winters and have always appreciated being able to wear shorts and short-sleeved shirts during wintertime. I do love snow though and miss all those snowy winters in Utah but it's nice to be warm here on most winter days in jeans and a light jacket in the morning.
5. Humidity - The air here is often very thick. It sometimes feels like the air in the bathroom after a hot shower. The humidity is nice because it keeps skin from drying out; humid air here also reminds me of the feel of air on a beach - that heavy, dense feeling that can be so nice. The difference in humidity levels was striking on our trip to Utah in May - my skin felt so dry there and my lips cracked easily. The air in Utah felt like it was sucking all the moisture out of me. Near the end of the week I was getting used to it though.
6. Being near the ocean - I've always enjoyed going to the beach and watching the waves come in. I also enjoy swimming in the ocean and running and jumping through the water. I remember trips to San Diego beaches as a child and running along the edge of the water either trying not to let the waves touch me or running just in the shallowest part of the water. Water here in Florida is usually much warmer than California beach water. The beaches are also mostly much nicer. We haven't had a chance to go to any beaches near Tampa Bay or Miami though.
7. Frogs and lizards - There are hundreds of lizards around outside. I can't walk outside without seeing at least one lizard. There is one sidewalk on campus that I walk nearly every day. Whenever I'm walking on it I feel like a car in the game Frogger, with all these little lizards dashing across in front of me, playing Dodge the Human. Most are fence lizards but there are also many geckos too. We have a little gecko that likes to crawl up inside one of our window screens and sit on our window. It's been doing this for at least a year so far. Whenever there is rain that fills up the little drainage swamp outside our front door we can hear hundreds of frogs croaking at night. If it's raining hard enough quite a few frogs seek sanctuary under our condo's eaves and on our front door. This past week we had at least 10 little frogs (no more than 1/2 inch long) on the front of our house trying to stay out of the rain. Three of them managed to make it inside. I never mind frogs in our house. I'll just catch them and let them go outside.
8. Wildlife in the city - I love seeing the squirrels running around eating acorns and chasing each other. Squirrels are funny to watch, especially when they scream at you. We also have a lot of raccoons, armadillos, and opossums here in Gainesville. Quite a few end up as roadkill though. Gainesville has its own built-in clean-up crew with all the crows (I love crows - not too many people do), vultures, and ants though. We also have bald eagles and ospreys that fly around. I've also seen hawks and falcons flying around. We also have a lot of cardinals and mockingbirds. Mockingbirds are probably my favorite small wild bird. They sing such pretty songs and are great at mimicking other sounds. I've always wanted a pet mockingbird. I enjoy watching the wildlife here in Gainesville.

Now, here are 8 things I don't like about living in Gainesville:

1. Being far from family - this is my number one dislike about Gainesville. True, we are our own family, but it's nice being closer to parents and siblings and their families. Kristi and I grew up in the west (Kristi in Alberta and me in Arizona). We also both lived in Provo, Utah for a number of years and have quite a bit of family and friends there in Utah. We have friends here too but friends are usually not as good as family. We really want to end up back in the west, preferably Utah because we both have family there as well as close by in Arizona and Alberta.
2. No mountains - I didn't realize just quite how much I missed the mountains until our recent trip to Utah. All we can see is trees here. In Utah you have beautiful tall mountains right by the cities (at least in the greater Salt Lake area). I grew up in the Valley of the Sun in Arizona where we were surrounded by mountains. Most of them were not that close or that tall but they were there. Florida is the lowest state in the country (i.e., lowest high elevation in the country). Gainesville is actually one of the high points in Florida, with an elevation of about 180 feet above sea level. There are a couple little hills - OK, inclines - (and some sink holes you can hike down in) but that's it. No mountains. We really miss the mountains.
3. Everything is green - while I said that I like everything green, it's also a little monotonous. In Arizona and Utah there are all shades of brown and red. Here things just are green. Tree trunks can be green too because moss will grow on them. Also, many of the trees are tall so all you can see is trees - there is little real distance visibility. I always like seeing open meadows or prairies - rare though they are here in the Gainesville area - because I can actually see for more than 50 feet.
4. Hot summers - the summers are only bad because it is both hot and humid. I've learned though that summers here are nowhere close to being as hot as Phoenix summers, even including the humidity (also, July and August can be fairly humid too in Phoenix). 92 degrees plus 90% humidity still is not as hot as 115 degrees. The other thing that makes it feel cooler here is all the trees. When you walk in the shade here the heat feels bearable. Phoenix heat does not usually subside in shade. It's often also cloudy here in the summer with all the summer rains we receive. The clouds help block the sun and make the heat more bearable. It still gets quite hot here though. Sometimes it can feel worse than it is because when you sweat, the sweat doesn't evaporate as quickly as it does in Phoenix so your body doesn't cool down as quickly (as an aside: people do sweat more in Phoenix than they do here, sweat often just evaporates instantly in Phoenix because of the heat and dry air, so people don't usually appear as sweaty as they do here). My work is all in-doors so I don't have to experience a lot of outside physical labor (or much inside physical labor for that matter) so, thankfully, I don't have to try to work out in the muggy summer air. I remember when we were moving out here a couple years ago (my parents and brother helped us pull a trailer with all our stuff) my father's truck got a flat tire. We had to change the tire on the side of a highway during July around noon in Louisiana. We all had sweat just dripping off our bodies, it was so humid and hot. It does get hot here it's just not as hot as Phoenix.
5. Humidity - I explained this one in the heat section.
6. Not being closer to the ocean - Gainesville is smack-dab in the middle of the state of Florida (east-to-west). We are one hour away from a beach (50 feet of dirty sand leading to dirty water with signs posted saying, "Don't swim - the water is bad.") and 1.5 hours from a good beach. We'd love to go to the beach more but it's quite an excursion to get all the kids ready and drive for a total of 3 hours round-trip. Gas prices also don't help.
7. Cockroaches and other insects - don't even get me started about foul cockroaches. I grew up having them in our house (until scorpions moved in and killed them all) so I'm used to them but that doesn't mean I like them. Cockroaches and scorpions (yes, I know scorpions are arachnids) are the two animals I have no problem killing. I don't like squishing spiders or ants, usually, but I could kill cockroaches and scorpions until the Millennium and not feel sorry at all. They are both wretched creatures (at least scorpions don't carry disease like cockroaches do). I figure the world is a better place every time I kill a cockroach (and scorpion but we don't have them in our house here, thankfully. By the way, scorpions have been known to survive nuclear blasts near ground zero; they are tough little critters). Ants in the house can be obnoxious and I kill them usually but ants are often harmless and usually beneficial. I always try to catch and release spiders whenever I can. We are looking forward to moving back to Utah (hopefully) where there aren't that many bugs.
8. Bad grass - I grew up with the weed Bermuda grass passing as grass in Mesa but was spoiled with nice Utah (transplanted, of course) grass. We usually wore shoes running through grass in Arizona (mainly due to either the fact that the ground was really really hot in the summer or to all the burrs and prickles in the grass). Here in Gainesville it's not recommended that you walk barefoot at all in the grass because of ticks and chiggers. There are just too many bugs to make sitting in grass worthwhile. Some grass is better than other grass though. Grass also isn't soft here (unless it's planted, which isn't often done). I miss the lovely Utah grass where you don't usually worry about what is going to end up in your foot like you do here.

I've really enjoyed every place I've lived. Gainesville is great - most of my negatives don't bother me - I just had to have the same number of negatives as positives just for the sake of parallelism. The two big negatives for me are living far from family and the bugs. There are so many more wonderful things about Gainesville that I didn't write about; maybe in future posts. I meant to have a bunch of little photos to supplement this post but I'm studying for a big neuroanatomy test and ran out of time to add pictures. Maybe I'll go back and add them some day. :)