Villages Community Watch

I just finished running errands in preparation for our next vacation.  There are always lot's of details to take care of before a trip.  One of the stops was to sign up for the Villages Community Watch service.  This is a wonderful service provided for residents.  This organization regularly performs random patrols of the Villages. For a small weekly fee, they will stop and make a special check of our house several times a week while we are away.  Our neighbors know we will be gone and they will also be watching the house, but they are elderly and you never know when one of them might get sick.  She has not been well and has been in the hospital several times over the past year. If something happens and they aren't around to watch, we at least know that someone is checking to make sure everything is all right.

Christmas Lights

Last night we drove around the Villages looking at how different people decorate for Christmas.  I would post pictures, but Ray convinced me just to look and enjoy without the camera,  So I will have to describe what we saw. 

Mostly it was like any other neighborhood, with some people going all out, some doing nothing, and everything in between.  Our local newspaper printed a map and addresses of houses that people wanted to show off, but we didn't really follow it.  We went looking for some of the ones near our house, then took a random drive through the various Villages.  The best ones we saw were on 3 cul de sacs in the Village of Santiago.  These 3 cul de sacs are right next to each other, so I think they are having a competition.  Each one had a theme.  In one, every house had the same lit angel, another had the same lit spiral tree.   At the end of each cul de sac there is a circle and they each decorated that as well, running the power out from their houses, across the road to the circle.  All 3 were done up beautifully.

We also drove through 2 of the town squares - Sumter Landing and Spanish Springs, to see what was going on for Christmas Eve.  Both have Christmas trees and had entertainment as usual, but they weren't singing Christmas Carols.  Sumter Landing was more crowded than Spanish Springs.  I attribute that to the face that the restaurants are close to the square and the square is in the center of the Villages, while Spanish Springs is further north and has fewer restaurants on the square. 

We were going to try a more methodical approach to seeing the lights tonight, but by this afternoon Ray had come down with a cold and wasn't feeling up to the drive.  We'll save the rest for another night.  I will note that we don't have much up this year.  Due to the construction of our new golf cart garage, the outlets in the front of the house are disconnected and anything else would be in the way of the workers.  We put out red and green light bulbs in our garage and front door entrance lights, hung some pine garland on either side of the garage, and put a few decorations in our front windows, but that's all for this year.  We will definitely make up for it next year.

Disney World from the Swan Hotel

We spent 3 nights at the Swan hotel, at the edge of Disney World.  I talked about our visit to the Hollywood Studios park the first night in my last post.  The next day we visited Epcot.  A boat from the Swan & Dolphin docks takes visitors to a back entrance near the Great Britain pavilion.  This is a very convenient, uncrowded entrance,  since it is only used by guests coming in on the boats from one of 4 hotel resorts. 

Epcot World Showcase Tree

Most of the pavilions in the World Showcase were decorated for Christmas and there were odd Christmas trees every so often around the park.  At the France site, a photo shoot was going on with the French version of Santa - Pere Noel.  At the U.S. pavilion, Santa and Mrs. Claus were having their photo taken with a line of children.   In the center of Italy's courtyard, an old woman was on a platform telling an Italian Christmas fable.  Germany and Norway were well decorated, but I didn't see anything else going on.    In the Future World section, a large Christmas tree was decorated in the center.  Throughout the park, poinsettias were the only other decoration.  Other than that, the park looked like it always does. 

Santa and Mrs Claus, U.S.A. Pavilion

Each night we went back to our hotel room and watched fireworks from there.  We were on the 10th floor, with a view of the Dolphin hotel and the lake.  At first we weren't sure which fireworks we were seeing.  We could hear the Epcot fireworks but were at the wrong angle to see them and the display we saw was in the opposite direction.  By the second night we figured out that we were seeing the display at the Magic Kingdom.  Although the park officially closed earlier, they were selling tickets to a special holiday party after hours, which included a special fireworks display at 9PM. 

The third day we visited Magic Kingdom.  There was a Christmas tree at the entrance and Main Street USA was decorated for the holiday, but the rest of the park appeared to be unaffected.  Although our phone app said this was a very low attendance day for Magic Kingdom,  it seemed that the most people were in the new Fantasyland section that just opened.  We went on a few rides in other areas with wait times of 15 minutes or less while to new rides had wait times of 45 minutes and up.

We left Disney World in the afternoon and headed for Universal Studios.  They also offer discounted annual passes for Florida residents, and they are much less expensive than the Disney passes.  Even if you don't go into one of the 2 parks there, you get free parking for the City Walk section at the entrance.  This area has movies, restaurants, nightclubs, and the Blue Man Group theater.  We had tickets for the Blue Man Group show Friday night, so that's where we were headed.  This show was unique and excellent.  I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it, but will only say it was loads of fun and worth the price.  Just don't sit in the front center section the first time you see it.

Best of all, the drive home after the show was only about an hour and a half.  The Villages are located so that it is very easy to enjoy all the entertainment options of the Orlando area, and still make it home at a reasonable hour.

Walt Disney World -Hollywood Studios

Another perk of living in the Villages is the community's proximity to Orlando.  It only takes a little over an hour to get to Disney World.   The regular tickets are about $80 per day, depending on home many days' tickets you buy.  The annual pass for Florida residents is $452 the first year and $410 for subsequent renewals, so if you visit the parks 6 days over the year, you've made out.  By the end of this year we will have visited Disney World 8 days.  

In all the years we have been vacationing in Florida, we never got to visit at Christmas, so we thought we would spend a few days here this week.  We could have driven back and forth, but we had some Sheraton hotel points that allowed us a room at the Swan for 3 nights.

Tree at entrance to Hollywood Studios Park

We arrived late in the afternoon, so traffic was light.  With an annual pass, we never worry about getting to the parks early to get our money's worth.  What we don't see one day we can catch the next time.  There is always transportation provided from the Disney resort hotels to the parks.  From the Swan & Dolphin resorts, we took the Disney boat shuttle to Hollywood Studios. The Christmas tree in the photo on the left greeted us as we disembarked from the boat.

At first we thought this was the only Christmas decoration, but we soon realized that the best would have to wait until after dark.  We went on the Studio Back Lot Tour ride and stopped for pizza before heading for the Fantasmic! show.  The amphitheater fills up fast, so we tried to get there early.  45 minutes before the start, the seats were more than half full.  This is a wonderful show.  It takes the theme of Mickey's dream from Fantasia and modernizes it with characters good and bad from all of Disney history.  They use water fountains, music, fireworks, projectors, and live performers combined to create an enthralling show. I was glued to the action for the entire show. They warn that this may not be suitable for young children, since some of the scenes are very scary. 

Streets of America Christmas display

  The show is put on twice a night, at 6 and 8. I was glad we went to the early show, because it left time for the main Christmas event The Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights .    Disney has set up millions of lights along the "Streets of America" section and every 10 minutes the lights dim and then put on a show choreographed to Christmas music.  It is fantastic to see.  We videoed it, but you'll have to wait until I have time to edit the video and post it to my YouTube channel (Lois1Ann).

It was a wonderful day.  We took the boat back to the hotel and rested up for the next day's adventure.

Swimming in December

I really love living in Florida, even more than I ever expected.  When we first started looking for a house here, we were looking for a house that had a pleasant view in back, golf course, pond or meadow - anything not looking into another house's back yard.  A pool was not in our requirements because there are so many community pools in the Villages, we thought it would be easy enough to use one of them.   We had a pool at our first house and it was hard to maintain.  We were at a high elevation, backing up to a forest, and the pool was not heated.  As a result, the water was usually cold, frogs loved to jump in an die from the chlorine, and we spent more time cleaning it than swimming in it. 

When we found our perfect house with 2 bedrooms, office/computer room for each of us, and a view of the burrowing tortoise preserve in the back, we were a little hesitant about the fact that it had a pool.  It was a very nice one though, heated and screen enclosed, with no trees around to shed into it. We decided we could hire a pool company to keep it clean and chemically balanced.  As it turned out, the pool is one of the features I really love about our new home.  I don't think we would be swimming as much if we had to go to the community pools.   They are nice social spots and good if you want to spend a few hours poolside, but that's never been our style.   I love being able to put on my swimsuit, go out the back door, swim for a half hour, read on a lounge chair for the next half hour while I dry, and then go back inside  and continue with whatever else is planned for the day.  What's more important, is that we can get this type of exercise in almost every day, year round.   Unless it's rainy all day, the weather is usually good enough to fit in an hour for the pool sometime during the day.  Today the outside temperature was in the 70's but the pool is heated to the low 80's so it feels good.  Getting out, I just need a good towel and a light cover up.  That and a good book to read while I'm waiting for my suit to dry enough so I don't drip in the house, make it very pleasant.  I can relax more it that hour each day than I can anywhere else.  Now, when we are traveling, that daily swim is what I miss the most.

Movies

We rarely went to the movies in Maryland.  The local theater was old and not well kept.  The floors were always sticky.  Other more modern theaters were at least an hour away.  Having gotten out of the habit, we didn't try the theaters here until yesterday.

There are now three theaters in the Villages, one at each town square.  Each theater has 8 screens for a total of 24 screens within 20 minutes of our house.  The Rialto theater in Spanish Springs is the oldest and the one closest to us, only 5 minutes away, so we decided to try that one first. 

Our first pleasant surprise was the price.  Admission for Villages residents was $6.75 each. A large bucket of popcorn and 2 large soda combo was $11.75.  Even senior tickets at the theaters in MD are at least $8.50 each and I know the popcorn combo is at least $15. Upon entering, we found a nice, spacious lobby with a Christmas tree to one side and a small but fully adequate snack counter.  After getting our popcorn, we handed our tickets to a gentleman dressed in a regular usher uniform and he directed us to the correct theater.  There appeared to be about 150 seats in the theater.  They were comfortable, reclining seats.  The screen was up high so there is no concern about seeing through the person in front of you.   They use a digital projection system, so the movie was crisp and clear.  The digital sound system was also excellent.  All together, this was a very pleasant experience and I am sure we will go to the movies here more often than we did in Maryland.

The movie we saw was "Lincoln" with Daniel Day Lewis and Sally Fields, and I highly recommend it.  The acting was excellent, the story line moved well so that the 2.5 hours went by quickly, and the direction lived up to Steven Speilbergs' usual excellence.  In my opinion, this film deserves several academy awards.

After the movie, we walked on the square to see the Spanish Springs Christmas tree.  The square looks very festive and inviting.   All in all, this was a great afternoon in the Villages.

Retirement Projects

I am really enjoying retirement here in the Villages, even though we've barely scratched the surface of things to do.  First, we can wake up when we're ready, with no alarm jarring us our of sleep. I get up and go outside to find the daily newspaper on our driveway.  This is the local paper, the Daily Sun, which gives a little national news, but is mostly focused on things happening in our area.  Over breakfast I read the paper, then spend a little time exercising.  Then after a shower I get dressed and proceed with whatever I feel like doing with the rest of the day.

In an effort to reduce clutter, I have been working on 2 long-term projects.  One is to scan all the documents, recipes and photos we have collected over the years.  The photos I will eventually give to someone in the family, but the documents and recipes get recycled, slowly eliminating some of the clutter we brought with us.  This is easy to do while I am doing other things, because my scanner is in my office (formerly the breakfast nook) right off the kitchen.

The second project is to rip all the LP's we have collected to MP3 files and add them to my iTunes library.  From there they will be available to play in the house or on my iPod when we travel.  I now have 16, 905 songs in iTunes.  Most are from our CD collection, which I ripped a long time ago.  I'll probably be working the rest of the year on the LPs, since they have to be played through in real time in order to copy them.   I start the day by putting a record on the turntable while I'm making breakfast and continue playing as many as I can throughout the morning.  Then, later in the day, when I get a chance, I copy the resulting files to my computer and edit them to remove unwanted scratch noises, split the albums into individual songs, and add all the info such as artist, album name, composer, genre, etc.  It's time consuming, but fun.  Ray can never tell what kind of music he'll hear me playing each day.  This week it is a 21 record set of his called "The Swing Era", with music from the 1930's through the 1950's.  It's great wake-up music.