We’re having a really nice morning here today. A cold night turned into a cool bundled-up morning. We slept in. Kristi had coffee going before I got up, and then after a shower I got breakfast started – french toast with sliced banana and strawberry, orange juice. Now we’re watching TV while I putz around on the Internet and Kristi cross-stiches her latest project: an elaborate Christmas stocking for me. (Wow.) Later this afternoon we’re heading out for a family get-together celebrating her grandfather’s birthday.

As I write this, I’m drinking coffee from my Orlando Starbucks mug. That was one of the last things I did before leaving Florida – driving to the corner Starbucks in Winter Park and buying a big mug emblazoned with the skyline of downtown Orlando, Florida (“The City Beautiful” proudly proclaimed under it). We have two of those Starbucks city mugs here now: one from Orlando, the other from San Francisco. We bought the latter at a Starbucks in the city on Powell Street, near Union Square.

We’re planning to visit San Francisco again this December, as the holidays are coming in. You can really feel it here now – the nights are getting down into the 40’s, we’re starting to run the fireplace again, Christmas plans are coming together. Pretty soon the leaves will start falling. It’s quiet and peaceful and you can just feel winter coming in the air. We’re still hoping to get together with our friends Jen and Matias to see the city right at Christmastime. I’m looking forward to that a lot.

I love northern California. A year ago at this time, I first visited Modesto to spend a week with Kristi. It was my first exposure to northern California; it really is amazing how, over the last year, I’ve grown accustomed to so many wonderous things that back then weren’t even imagined possibilities. Great people. Beautiful places. Different ways of thinking and living. Just a much better life all around. I’m a pretty happy guy.

I still read the Orlando Sentinel online, keeping tabs on the happenings back where I came from. It helps to remind me of the life I left. And when an article shows up like today’s front page story, it just makes me appreciate northern California that much more:

Many of America’s best-armed criminals call Orlando and the rest of Florida home.

AK-47s, other military-style assault weapons and expensive handguns have become so common that cops across the state routinely encounter suspects equipped for urban warfare, complete with 75-shot magazines and bulletproof vests.

In Orange County alone, the number of crime guns seized last year — 3,333 — was only 500 weapons fewer than the total seized in all five boroughs of New York City, which has eight times the population.

…

The killers of two men slain in Pine Hills last week fired 58 rounds from two AK-47s during a furious gunbattle, detectives said. Investigators still are tracking a shotgun, a revolver and a stolen pistol found at the scene.

I went to elementary school in Pine Hills.

Last year at Universal Studios in Orlando, security guards found a 9 mm pistol, two 30-shot magazines, two 16-shot magazines and 69 bullets in a patron’s backpack outside the City Walk nightclub complex.

The patron, an electrician from South Florida, didn’t feel comfortable walking unarmed in the crowd of thousands. His choice cost him two days in the county jail, but a plea bargain let him go home without a criminal record for carrying a concealed weapon.

My parents work at Universal Studios.

In Orlando, officers seized seven AK-47s and similarly high-powered AR-15s in 2003. Orange County deputies seized eight that year. Four years later, those numbers jumped more than 400 percent — 31 in Orlando, 48 in the county. Total for the five years: 321.

…

The five-year total includes AK-47s, AR-15s and Tec-9 machine pistols but does not include 72 SKS carbines seized by the two agencies. Those weapons fire the same bullet as the AK-47 but were not included in the federal ban.

On New Year’s Eve in 2005, a bullet fired from an SKS killed an Orlando man more than a mile away.

The City Beautiful, indeed. And, apparently, one big free fire zone. Glad I’m out of it; wish my family and friends weren’t in it.