Gotta look at the positives - great food, nice people, more laid back lifestyle, and certainly a much lower cost of living.

But a lot tougher and more lonely being a non-believer, that's for sure. Clearly god has a plan for you, onager!!

You could always move to Miami and find fellow heretics and apostates. In addition, exposure to Santeria would make your crazy family look a lot more sane, if only because they're closer to the prevailing notions of orthodoxy. Then there would also be Cuban cuisine to look forward to.

You could also take your California sized profit and head for the Keys.

However, you wouldn't have the crazy family stories that only a state like SC can produce.

(Note that I don't suggest anything north of Miami. You'd be bored to death)

So if Charleston is the head of the state...well, you know.

I'll be settling near the Great Smoky Mountains, in the foothills. The area Kentucky poet Frank X. Walker dubbed "Afrilachia." (e.g., James Brown picked up some of his musical ideas while doing time at the reformatory in Toccoa, GA. Not too far away.)

The area is solid red and uber-religious. Though I have found the Upstate Freethinkers group, which is a start!

Thanks to everybody for the good wishes. If I go dark for a while I've either (1) lost Internet service (2) been kidnapped by space aliens or (3) found Jebus. The probability of either (2) or (3) happening are about equal.

At least you'll have the compensation of beautiful country there, green hills instead of flat, potentially malarial swamps and periodic inundation by tourists.

I'm sure Jesus would be easy to find with all those old neon crosses every 100 yards or so still functioning, more or less.

I think it will likely be more uncomfortable to be a Democrat than an atheist in that part of the country, at least if the elbows you're rubbing are white ones.

Well, unless the Democrats finally catch a clue and campaign on a rising tide that really does lift all boats, one caused by rising wages.

Come to coastal NC.... the climate is better! And even tho' they are trying to make NC as bad as SC and VA, I think they will fail ultimately. So we need more liberals here in the Old North State....that voted for Obama in '08, remember!? (and almost did in '12.... why we are being punished now)

Besides the climate and "blue" dots of Research Triangle and Asheville, it's closer to DC and NYC....y'know, some culture!

Or is it God getting you?

This is the same thing that happened to me when I was thinking of moving back to PA from Houston. Houston had a housing crash in the early 80's, and it was still not recovered in the early 90's when my father was getting older and sicker and I wanted to be closer to home. I put my house on the market, expecting to have 6 months to a year before I could get rid of it. It sold in a month and I was not close to ready to move. I had to end up getting an apartment so that I could wrap everything up before I moved.

I hope everything works out for you, however you deal with this.

lol, no I won't.

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