Daily Report: Providence, Florida

Mom and Paul took me shopping today at the Ellenton outlet mall up past Sarasota. They wanted to buy Epril and me some plates for our apartment (for when Epril arrives, when we get our own place; Mom already has a storage locker filled with utensils, appliances, and more).

We were walking through the Corning outlet store when this fellow comes up to me, and says, "Don't you write a blog about The Philippines?"

Now this happened to me a couple of times when I was living in Pattaya, writing about Pattaya. It didn't ever happen in CDO that I can recall. But to have it happen in a random store in a random outlet mall in a random city in Florida is borne of fantastic odds: I figure I have perhaps a couple thousand regular readers worldwide. To run into somebody who knows me — especially outside of the locales about which I normally write — is simply amazing.

Anyway, Albert (this fellow) and his wife Debbie introduced themselves to me and my mother (Paul was off shopping for new shoes) and we chatted for about 15 minutes. Debbie's brothers live in Cagayan De Oro. Albert told me all about the large Filipino Cultural Center up in Tampa, and how to stay in touch. Nice folks who are actually not from Florida and normally live up in New York State.

On the way home, Mom, Paul, and I stopped and did some window shopping at The Salvation Army. Frankly, I was amazed at the furniture they had. Up North, The Salvation Army store selection has always been exactly what you expect: Furniture that has gone almost past its functional and useful and aesthetic lifespan, seen 15 or 20 years of spilled drinks, rambunctious kids... to be succinct: visibly used.

Here in Florida, with a large portion of the community over the age of retirement, it's a different matter entirely. Here in Florida, many — if not most — people don't donate their furniture to the Salvation Army because it is being replaced with something new; instead, they are parting with often-almost-new furniture as they move off to a nursing home or, sadly, a cemetery. In addition, the number of donations here, by dint of these same demographic realities, are substantially higher than in any other place, so the selection here is much more substantial.

The Salvation Army isn't the only place to shop for furnishings either: There's a huge consignment place called King Solomon's Treasure right next door to The Salvation Army that is the size of a department store, and two more used furniture places down the road a little way. Don't forget estate sales and the classifieds either. Based on what I saw, you could easily kit out an entire 2-bedroom apartment in tasteful, almost-new furnishings worth many thousands of dollars for less than $1,500... and that includes the pots and pans and mattresses and curtains and bedsheets and artwork on the walls.