Sandy

If you're serious about this why don't you consider living in California for 9 months and in Florida for the same. You don't need to reinvest for 24 months (for tax purposes) and I'd think you could see each pretty well.

Florida has some theatre, opera, and ballet areas and Sarasota is one of them. We enjoy it very much there and spend almost 6 months a year there and the other six months in Maryland.

I lived in Santa Monica for about 15 years, Ohio before that (where I'm from and have many relatives) and most retirees who move from Ohio seem to move to Florida -- California is just much farther away and considered more unusual or exotic, they know Florida and others who move there. I think California is far superior to Florida in every tangible way, I think the main reason people go to Florida is that it is cheaper, that's all. The weather is better in California as well as about everything else, to me. I personally can't stand Florida culturally or weather-wise. If you have a place picked out in California that you can afford, go for it. Even the people I know who live in Florida can't stand it there a lot of the year, whereas California's climate is good all the time, you just have to pick whether you want north or south. There is much more to California than Los Angeles, obviously, and many places that are not as expensive as the major cities and beach resort areas. Have you figured out where you want to live? How about Redlands, I know some people who like it there.

The earth quakes never bothered me that much as the odds seem much less than a lot of other places people live with hurricanes, tornadoes or flooding -- look at those folks in Texas who for some reason stay in the same place even though the same thing happened before. In California, very few people ever get hurt in an earthquake, although there can be property damage, of course. There are large parts of California that don't have earthquakes. I can't understand the remark about poor produce in grocery stores, I live in Wash DC now and I really miss the quality and amount of good produce from California, as well as seafood. The produce here is horrendous in the avg store.