I love Grey’s Anatomy. It entered the scene at a time when I was losing hope in television altogether from the exes all the way down. I have always been a big fan of ER but since Noah Wyle left the regular cast, I feel like there was no one there for him to pass the torch to. At any rate, no one expected a little mid-season replacement with a cast as fresh as Grey’s to take off like it did, but here we are two season’s later and the world practically stops when the show airs.

I recently watched the entire second season again as ABC was kind enough to replay it leading up to the premiere. It is obvious that this cast gels together like very few that we have seen in recent years. Furthermore, the characters aren’t segregated into little cliques so it is truly an ensemble. Miranda Bailey’s interns started out as a little clique, but their interpersonal relationships have developed immensely with other characters very quickly. They also force characters to interact who would not necessarily do so willingly or regularly, like Preston Burke and Derek Shepherd who start out the show in contempt of each other but have cultivated a grudging respect and admiration for each other. All of this points to brilliant writing and the writer’s ability to get into the human psyche.

Somewhere along the way while re-watching the second season of Grey’s I got that warm fuzzy feeling that I haven’t had since Buffy ended. If you’re a BtVS fan you know what I’m talking about. It’s a mix of nostalgia for the crew you ran with in High School mixed with grown-up teen angst and a dab of super-hero worship. Somewhere along the way I came to the realization that the leading characters in Grey’s Anatomy were the Scooby Gang with scalpels. Let me break it down:

It’s time for me to get the hell out of Orlando. I knew that there was nothing here for me when I got here, but it took me about four years to come to grips with that. When I got here the job market was much worse but you could still afford a house. Now there are jobs (granted most of them are $12/hr or worse, even for degree holders) but on that kind of salary you can’t afford a house. Florida has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country right now:

In Florida, which had the highest rate of foreclosure in the previous two months — there was one property in foreclosure for every 719 households. Texas is close behind. Both states’ foreclosure rates were more than 2.5 times the national average.

A lot of people are quick to say that these growing foreclosure rates are the result of the real estate market starting to collapse. How about the fact that there is a severe lack of jobs in Florida that pay enough to sustain a mortgage payment? How about the fact that a two income family in Florida can barely afford an interest only ARM? If the average starter home in a questionable neighborhood goes for $250,000 (that is a conservative estimate), how are two people making a total of less than $50k annually going to comfortably finance a place to live? I’m no mathematician but these numbers don’t seem to work out well.

There is just not a lot of reason for me to stay here anymore. I can never be truly independent without pissing money away on overpriced rent for years before I save up enough for a modest down payment on a home. By the time I accumulate those funds, what will the average home price be? All of the real estate industry analysts are saying that the market cannot support itself at these heights, but have you seen any decreases in the prices of new homes? Of course not. The only notable difference is that people cannot sell their homes for the insane amounts of money they got this time last year. As you can see, on the home front, there is not a lot of reason to stay.

I could move to Tampa or to another city in Florida where there is a better IT market, but why? I’d still be hot and miserable and subjected to the same incredibly high home prices. Therefore common sense dictates that it’s time to move elsewhere.

All roads for IT people seem to lead to the Raleigh area of North Carolina. I haven’t read anything negative about it. From the population mix, to the average age, to the tech market and the cost of living — it seems that there is no where on the east coast that is more attractive. For a long while I toyed with the idea of moving to Seattle or to the San Francisco Bay Area, but the technology markets there are not what they used to be. Furthermore, I don’t know if I could deal with the big water being on the other side. I’ll stick with the evil I know.

So I’m back. Did you miss me? It’s been a couple of years since I really worked on my blog (or any blog at all). At this point if I don’t continue to use my skills I will start to lose them, thus I’m blogging again. Of course everything is in flux and this is most definitely a work in progress but you have to start somewhere.

Ideally I would like to go through my old archives and see if I can resurrect some of my classic rants and raves from any of my old blogs, but I don’t know how much of that material survived. Anyway tell me what you think. If you have any suggestions for additional content, feel free to share them.