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UGH, dude, you hit the nail on the head naming the feelings I'm having about Florida as grief. Like, the grief you feel for your parent who has joined a cult or started watching FOX News 24/7. It drives me absolutely up the wall when people tell us to just move away. What, and leave this weather to the bigoted a-holes? Eff that.

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Well, and like. I've been here for 30 years! I have family here, I have friends here, my entire life infrastructure is here. And what about people in even more vulnerable positions than we are, who can't leave? Just be like, well, sorry, but I'm out, good luck? Everyone has to make the decisions that are right for them but it's frustrating to me to have to grieve AND deal with outsiders' wrong-headed opinions all at the same time.

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Yeah, I've been here over half my life at this point and it would take a lot - A LOT - for me to uproot. I definitely don't knock anyone for leaving if they no longer feel safe here! But the contempt from outsiders is really unhelpful, especially when I see so much schadenfreude in it.

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When we were in college, my sister convinced me to go see Ambrosia with her. "You like Ambrosia!" Sure, I guess so. It was only as I sat there on a plastic lawn chair in the parking lot of the casino on the edge of town on Valentine's Day that I realized I only know two Ambrosia songs. Three, if you count their cover of a Beatles song. And it's not very fun to go to a show where you don't know the music!

That became kind of a core memory for me, because when my husband agreed to go to the Death Cab/Postal Service 20th anniversary tour later this year I was like "You HAVE TO listen to the albums first!!"

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I agree with you completely! And I also hate when you DO get into a band later and are like, "oh man this is my favorite song now, I wish I'd known it when I saw them last year." I've definitely had the experience of seeing a band live (when they were an opener for another band, etc.) and liking what I heard and then going home and getting into their music later. But if I know I'm about to see a band, I try to study up! And the Death Cab/Postal Service concert must have been AMAZING!!

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