Sunday November 2nd 2025

It is hard to believe that November has arrived, but the return to standard time is trying hard to convince me. The early arrival of sunshine this morning coupled with the early return of darkness at the end of the day is having the expected disruption to circadian rhythms. It will probably be the end of the week before it feels like normal again. On top of all that, in the stores Christmas is giving the boot to Halloween in a big way. So much change.

As I have done most Sunday’s this fall I took a drive during the afternoon. My motive for this excursion is not travel, but audio entertainment. I enjoy listening to the NFL Sunday Drive on satellite radio. The program provides the radio play by play of the scoring drives in each of the NFL games. It is fast paced football without the boredom of three and outs.

On today’s drive I noted once again all the development going on in the area. Lots along the main roads that were filled with trees or even swamps a year or two ago were now cleared to flat sand filled areas or construction sites filled with concrete and steel. Most of the build up is dedicated to apartments or commercial strip malls to service the apartments or the housing developments that fill the area behind the main roads. This build up started about 5 years ago when people learned they could live in a Florida home and work for companies based almost anywhere. Now, that ability is becoming more difficult and the cost of housing (interest rates and insurance costs) has gone up resulting in slowed overall growth, but they are still building. Is the bottom going to fall out?

I stopped into Walmart today. That was a mistake. Not only was it crowded, but they were changing from Halloween to Christmas. Either this Walmart has no warehouse space or they don’t believe in using it. The aisles in all parts of the store were filled with pallets of stock that needed to be moved to shelves. There weren’t any staff around to complete that task, but they were bring more pallets out from the back. Narrow one way aisles filled with stopped shopping carts and shoppers almost standing on their heads to find stuff around the pallets was the norm this afternoon. I got my groceries and got out of there as fast as possible.