2013: The Villa

We made it to the house. This incredible four bedroom Floridian house. The place is beautiful. Screened pool. Palm tree out front. Spent fire extinguisher in the kitchen. Insect poison and traps everywhere. Bug carcasses in the nooks and crannies. It is really a beautiful home.

My wife is an incredible woman. Usually she breaks out the CSI kit for small hotel rooms, but this is a, I don't know, 2000 sqft house. True to herself, she gets to work. All the dishes get rewashed. All the linens are removed from the beds. We seal all the mattresses in mattress bags. Then remake the beds with our own linens. The place gets vacuumed and cleaned. She is working harder to clean this house than I have ever seen her work on our house in New York (she isn't reading this, is she?).

The house has four bedrooms and three bathrooms, a garage that has been converted into a game room, a screened in pool and patio area, beautiful kitchen, breakfast nook. Very nice. The neighborhood in Indian Village is just house after house, all in the same cookie cutter fashion with beautiful lawns, incredible trees, and did I mention the blue sky and sun shine? Or the playground that is connected to our back yard?

I know, your first thought: if Kevin screwed up all the hotel reservations, how did he luck out when reserving this house? The answer? Kevin didn't reserve the house. Linda did all the research and out of hundreds upon hundreds of house rental choices? Picked this one.

Somewhere in Orlando, someone has a webcam pointing at their front yard. In my office in New York, I have a computer screen on the wall that shows that webcam. That computer screen showing the Florida webcam serves as my office window. I often look at that screen and imagine I am in Florida looking out my front window.

You can imagine that one of my most anticipated activities for this trip was to convert the front bedroom into an office. The front window has a huge picture window overlooking the palm tree and the neighborhood. Since I am working three days per week while in Florida, I had packed my entire home office and brought it with me. With the aid of a card table and a stool, I set up my six feet of monitors and wired the front bedroom. I spent the first full day in Florida at work while enjoying the incredible view that I had previously only seen through a blurry webcam.

After work? We are going to DownTown Disney to get our year passes to Disney World and to eat at the Earl of Sandwich.