Pick stuff up on your days off?? You're not going to ever want to do that because you're not going to want to give up your Tues/Saturday off every week. It seems like (since you're asking questions that have already been answered in this thread) you haven't read this thread. You NEED to before applying.

If you don't do that, at the very least know this: your QOL will NOT improve simply because you are FL based and living there. I don't care what regional you're coming from...Great Lakes pilots currently have better schedules than us.