In the Mountains

Friday, it started to snow.

I left for work because I had a lot to do, and I didn't really think I would have much trouble getting home. I could always leave early if I got my stuff done. Got there just fine and then the reports started coming in.

For those of you that don't have an idea of where I live and work, let me paint a picture. We live in Swannanoa, which is between Asheville (the "big" city) and Black Mountain, which is not a mountain, nor is there a mountain nearby called Black Mountain that I am aware of. It's just the name of the town. All of these towns are situated in a mountain range, such that you have to take the interstate up the side of the mountain to get to them. We're about 2200 feet above sea level.

At the bottom of the Mountain, East of us, is Old Fort. And beyond that a few more miles is Marion, where I work, about 1000 feet above seal level, so from home to work and back every day I have a bit of a hill to climb. The interstate has a 55mph speed limit for cars and a 35mph limit for trucks because there's quite a bit of semi traffic up and down the mountain. There are areas on the East bound side for trucks to run into if their breaks go out. So this gives you an idea that even in good weather it's a somewhat dangerous stretch of 5 miles or so that goes up the mountain side. Now imagine it covered with snow.

I do not have any issues with snowy weather and driving. I learned to drive in Alaska, where it was fairly common to drive in the snow for a good portion of the year. I've driven in Boston, though I prefer not to, in bad weather. I wasn't worried about my ability to drive home. What I should have been more concerned about was everyone else's ability.

So I get to the point at work where I think I'm ready to leave, about 2:30 PM. Then we get a phone call and surprise surprise I have to cut a last minute check to move some product. I get out the door about 2:45 PM, and on the road. It's been snowing fairly steadily since eight that morning. The roads are covered in snow, so I'm driving pretty slow and make it to the interstate just fine. Interstate traffic is about 40mph in a 70mph zone, which I'm okay with because that's about how fast I can go and still feel like I have control over the car. In fact, let me share with you my snow driving tips.

Do everything you normally do, but slower and in smaller increments. Accelerate slower. Brake slower, and pump the breaks when you do. Give yourself a lot of room between you and the next car and think ahead a lot more than you normally would, such as putting on the breaks a long way before you actually reach the intersection. Keep the wheel straight and when you need to turn, or change lanes, do so by turning the wheel slowly until the car responds. The key is no sudden movements. No sudden braking, no sudden turning, no sudden accelerating. If you can do all that, you should be in good shape.

I get to Old Fort, which is where the interstate starts to head up the mountain. Traffic came to a stop. I couldn't see ahead of me to see what the hold up was. I should mention I had already seen several cars and a few trucks slid off the side of the road by this point. After about 30 minutes of going no where, I sort of get the idea I might be here awhile. I wish I knew if it was an accident, or just slow traffic or what, but I never did find out. Eventually we inched forward bit by bit. I started to see police cars and it looked like the police may have been directing traffic. I went about a mile in the span of a couple hours. A lot of trucks and cars were pulled over.

By this point it was dark, but I was finally moving. I went about another mile up the mountain... and hit another wall of traffic. I still don't know what's keeping us from moving, other than cars and trucks just not moving. Another hour or so goes by, and at long lost a snow plow chugs up the mountain on my right with a long trail of cars behind him. A nice man from the car in front of me advises me to back into the plowed lane instead of trying to pull forward over the snow, which I do, and it gets me in the lane just fine. I follow the snow plow at about 5mph up the mountain for the next 5 miles. So I guess it took me an hour.

I made one stupid driving mistake that night, and it's when I tried to pull into my driveway and got stuck. With the help of my Brother-in-law and his friend, we got the car back into the road, and finally just parked it on the side of the road in front of the house. Finally, at 8:45, I was home. A six hour drive to go 30 miles.

Anyway, that's my sad story. I think what I take from that is that there should be a law. A law that if you don't know how to drive in the snow, you are required to stay home. Then, the people that do know how can get where they need to go, and those that don't know how will be safe at home instead of strewn along the sides of the interstate up the mountain.

Now it's Saturday. We have probably a good 12 inches or so of snow on the ground. It's very pretty. But I hope you understand if I choose not to go out in it today. Here are some pictures for your enjoyment, as well as some long awaited ones of our Christmas Tree.

Holly Jolly in Black Mountain

I never did post last weekend about what Holly Jolly was. I put pictures up at my Facebook page though for those that are interested.

Essentially, the downtown area of Black Mountain is made for Tourists. There are about two blocks of stores and restaurants designed for people traveling through, visiting, and picking up the odd hand crafted item, antique, or doo dad. Pooky Bead shops as my Grandpa would call them.

Last Friday, Holly Jolly, consisted of the stores staying open later than usual and having various candies, appetizers, and drinks for the people browsing the stores. There was also a parade, and several places had live music. It was all pretty neat, and we had our fair share of cookies and candy.

So that's what Holly Jolly is. If you take a look at the pictures, you'll see there was a nice pottery exhibit, some of which you could buy. In the bottom of that building was a mosaic of tiles on a wall. The tiles were each done by different people, mostly children circa 1997-1998. What was significant about these tile mosaic was that one of the tiles had been painted by Teresa and her brother David. Teresa only vaguely remembered it, and one of the people that were visiting with her mom and dad found it. A quilted tile with the initials TE and DE in the corners. I had never known this existed, so it was really neat.

If you're ever in Black Mountain after Thanksgiving, be sure to stay up for Holly Jolly as you're sure to find something you'll want. Some of the pottery was very cool, and for sale, but in the end we decided on buying two art pieces at a local gallery. Small pictures to put up in the house. An early Christmas present for us, I suppose.

In other news, I'm still working on getting pictures up of the tree. There are some at Facebook, but I still need to get a better one with a real camera and put it up here. Maybe I'll get one of our family (Teresa, me, and Hannah) and put it here too. Then instead of a Christmas card, you can all have a Christmas blog.

Thanksgiving

Teresa and I stayed put in Swannanoa this year while her parents and her dad's family came to visit. It's the first Thanksgiving since we have been married that we've gotten to spend with her family. We only left Boston for one Thanksgiving while we lived there, and that was to go to Oregon to spend it with my family. So it was a nice change of pace.

What was even a further change if pace is that no one cooked while we were there. We ate Thanksgiving dinner at Cracker Barrel, and it was very good. I'd like to thank the Andersons. I don't know why your party of six didn't show up when called, but because of you, we only had to wait five minutes for a table instead the thirty-five we were told we would wait. Thank you, and I hope you got to eat eventually. They were having a special with turkey, ham, stuffing, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie. It was yummy. It was served quick and hot and we didn't have to do any of the clean up!

Poor Hannah had to stay at home most of the day in the bedroom. We got her out for walks on occasion. I think she got some ham and turkey bits to make up for it. Speaking of, thank you to the Earleys who brought turkey and ham. It was delicious.

By Friday night everyone was gone. There was a whirlwind of activity at the Black Mountain house as it was decided that the 45 year old living room rug had to go, and it was ripped up, revealing the hardwood floor beneath. Furniture was arranged and an oval rug placed in the center of the room. Then everyone went home to attend to whatever weekend plans they had. Teresa and I, not being sure of what we'd be doing that weekend had not made plans, so we settled in for a relaxing couple of days.

We went out and got a Christmas tree at Ingles, the grocery store. They only had a few, but they were all pretty good quality. I think this is the biggest tree we have ever gotten. It's almost 8 ft tall, and fairly bushy. Sunday night we decorated it, so now the house feels all festive for the holidays, which is a good thing. The tree is in the living room, right behind the front door, so if you're coming to our house, be sure not to open the door too wide. I'll get a picture up soon. I took some with my phone for my Facebook page, but they aren't great pictures.

Now it's back to work for three weeks, and then a week off for Christmas!

Carolina Renaissance Festival

Well, I said we'd do it and we did! Saturday, Teresa and I took off to Charlotte for the Carolina Renaissance Festival. We had the joy of meeting up with Beth and Jonathan, friends from college, and their two year old son, Julian, who we had never met and were thrilled to get the chance to see. We arrived at the fair grounds a little ahead of them, and went inside.

First of all, it was remarkably similar to the fair in Maryland. The buildings were the same, and the signs all looked familiar. Many of the souvenirs and other things were identical to ones found at the other fair. It makes sense when I think about it, that people who make and sell these things would find similar venues for them. The scale of the Carolina festival was a little smaller. There was still plenty to see and do, but you didn't have to walk quite as far to see and do it. We got there shortly after it opened so there weren't too many people at the festival yet.

Our friends showed up soon after we got there and we took our time going from place to place. It was really wonderful to see Julian rushing from place to place, and Jonathan following closely behind as they took in all the sights. We somehow ended up near a stage where they were doing a falconry show, which turned out to be really cool. The birds would fly out over the audience, really low, from perch to perch.
Teresa and I did not wear any renaissance clothing this time, but there were plenty of people that did. Sometimes it's hard to tell if they work at the festival or if they're just attending! After taking this next picture, the group of people started to do a dance. The formal kind you see in things like Pride and Prejudice.

Further on was a place where there were several Greyhounds just lounging about for people to come up and pet. I can't remember the name of the place now, nor what the dogs were there for, or where they came from, if they were rescued racers or what, but they were sweet dogs, and Teresa loved them.
We continued to take a look at everything as we made our way to the food area. I ended up with another turkey leg, and man, was that thing huge and tasty. Better than the one from Maryland for sure. I don't know what the difference was, but I know I liked it better. We found a play ground for the kids where we ate, and Julian played. After lunch we continued on down to the petting zoo where there were goats, a highland cow, and elephant and camel rides. Then it came time for the joust.

This was our knight. There were three in total, and two of them were heralded as being evil, and this one, ours, was the good one. He also looked very young. At a point in the show where our knight had won a skill trial, he was given a crown of flowers to give out to someone as princess of the joust, and he gave it to a little girl. One of the evil knights commended him... for picking a princess older than he was.

This joust was a bit different from the one Maryland. At that one, they competed for points and in the end, a winner was selected. At this joust, they did more play acting, falling off their horses and culminating in a challenge to a Joust to the Death, which was to happen at the next joust that day. It was entertaining, and I would have liked to see the next joust, but it was getting too late at that point. All the more reason to return!

On the way out of the park, we took the obligatory heads on picture, picture. Look at us! We're King and Queen!
But then there was one other thing near the exit to the park . The goose holding booth. For some reason, this was very cool. And all it is are some very well trained geese. And what they're trained to do is sit in your lap. I did it earlier in the day, and Teresa was a little bit timid. But by the end of the day, she was ready to hold a goose. This is Teresa and Mimi.
It was a great day, and I'd definitely do it again. It wasn't just the fair either, but the chance to see our friends again. Our friends who, it turns out, only live a couple hours a way, so we have no excuse for waiting another five years to see them again. The next festival in North Carolina is in April, but there may be one in Georgia before that. I'll have to start doing some more research!

Howl-a-Ween

I failed to post last week when we went to Howl-a-Ween in Black Mountain, so here's a quick post. Every year they do a dog costume contest and parade in Black Mountain where people dress up their dogs, or with their dogs and just have some fun. We tried to get Hannah into a Lobster costume... but she didn't want any part of that.

We still went, just to see all of the other dogs in their costumes. There were quite a few people, including a couple dressed as Batman and Batgirl, and their two dogs were Robin and Wonder Woman. There was a whippet or something dressed up like a giraffe, and one in a pink jacket of some sort. I'm not sure what it was. Below are a couple of our favorites.

Zorro!

Snow White

Sherlock Holmes, searching for clues...

Our New Couch, and The Onset of Fall

There it is. Our new couch, all comfy and inviting. Teresa likes to the lamp side of the couch most I think. At least that's where she always sits. We've been using if for the last week and a half and I think it's working out pretty well. And yes, Mom, we are gradually getting our Homer Simpson butt prints settled in.

Our house is looking pretty good. We've got pictures on the wall, furniture in the living room, and just recently we finished setting up my keyboard, stereo, and the large book shelf in the small bed room. We threw the Papasan chair in there and it makes a passable reading and music room!

Just one bedroom is unfinished. We need a desk/keyboard chair, and a futon mattress so we can make it a true guest bedroom. Then all that's left is the mess of old boxes and paraphernalia that's in the attic, but it's okay to take some time on that.

Fall is here. I LOVE the fall. Favorite season by far. I can tell when I go outside and the air is cold with a slight breeze, but the sun is up, and leaves are everywhere that my favorite season has arrived. Here is a shot of the hillside from our front porch.
I've got some other shots from this week where it's a lot more pronounced. This was when they first started to turn. The picture doesn't do it justice, but you can start to see it.

Today, I went to a golf tournament with my company. We did Captain's Choice, or Best Ball, where we played in teams of four and hit from where whoever hit the best. I actually got put in a team of three and we just rotated a 4th hitter. I was worried at first. I haven't golfed since before Teresa and I got married. I never managed to find a time to go golfing in Boston. But I am so glad I went today. My first shot off the tee was beautiful, and I continued to do well throughout the day. On the second hole, I think we played from my ball for every shot and parred the hole. On hole 17, I birdied the putt for our group, (That's one less than par for the golfing uninitiated, par being the amount of shots it's supposed to take you.)

We ended 18 holes at 72, just 2 over par and won second place in the tournament which equals fifty bucks for me. After the green fees, the longest drive pot, and lunch, I came out a little ahead for the day. Nothing better than free golf! And even if it had been bad golf, the weather was absofreakinglutely beautiful. This was the view from the tee on hole 18.


Teresa's parents are visiting this weekend. They took off to chimney rock while I was golfing. Hopefully Teresa took some pictures and I'll post those later on today or this week. I'll have to post again just to show off the fall colors before they disappear!

Renn Fair Recap

I've posted pictures of last weekend's Maryland Renaissance Fair to Facebook already, but if you haven't seen them, take a look here.

It was a lot of fun. Would do again. Will do again. In fact, I may even do it soon since I found out there is a fair only a couple hours away from here near Charlotte, NC. Teresa had fun too, at least she tells me she had fun. Our hostess made us outfits, so Teresa got a medieval style dress, and I wore a black tunic. Teresa said it reminded her of dressing up for dance performances. She even had an awesome tiara to go with her outfit. I wore my Red Sox hat. Go 16th century Sox!

We stayed with friends in Arlington, Virginia. Friends who we had never met before. Wait.. what? Yeah, let me expand on that. Teresa and I spend a lot of our entertainment and free time playing an online video game. You may have heard of it. It's called World of Warcraft. I'm pretty sure that's not a secret, so I have no problems talking about it, but I won't bore all of you, my friends and family, with the details because I'm smart enough to know that you don't want me to ramble on about the game, and why I play it. Besides, I have another blog for that.

Well as you might imagine, a lot of people that we play this game with are into the whole Fantasy, Sci-fi, comics sub culture and would enjoy things like Renn fairs. Over the last couple of years of playing, we've gotten to know some of the people pretty well in the game. We're part of a guild, which is just a collection of players in an official group. The guild's name is Veritas. So the people we met up with in VA, are people from our guild. After more than a year of talking and playing together online, we finally met face to face. And it was great. Everyone was just as nice as they are online and very gracious hosts. We even had a guy come all the way from Puerto Rico with his wife just to visit and go to Renn Fair. Whoa!

Okay, so we all got matching tabards, again made by our hostess. The tabards mirror similar tabards that our characters in game wear, so it's a nice little homage to the game. That's the red thing with the flame on it that you see in all the pictures.

Enough about the guild, more about the fair! The first thing I wanted to do when we got there was watch them joust, but that wasn't happening for another hour, so we made our way to where they were selling turkey legs and got ourselves lunch. Teresa wasn't so much into the turkey legs so she had baked potato. The turkey was good. We looked around for a bit more before making our way to the joust. The knights wore actual plate armor and were assisted by squires as they performed feats of skill such as hooking a ring off a post on their swords without touching the post. Then they had some mock battles where they beat on each other with wooden swords. Finally, at the end, they did full on jousting. They didn't knock anyone off their horse, but they broke a lot of lances. Very cool to see up close.

From there we saw the sights. Lots of artisans selling hand made clothing and weapons and cups and pouches and trinkets. I wanted to buy a handcrafted wooden cup but they were pretty expensive. Maybe next year. There were quite a few people very elaborately dressed from different time periods. There were pirates, and wenches, and Robin Hoods, and faeries, and all manor of different medieval style dress. There was also a fair number of pot bellied men walking around in kilts with no shirts, and women with really tight corsets. I'll leave it at that.

We tried Meade, which is a honey wine. It was okay to try, but I don't like wine all that much, so I don't think it's something I would have regularly. Still, I can say I've had mead, and that's worth it. We visited with our friends, saw some more booths and watched part of a stage show where they were calling people up on stage to act out the story of the three little pigs. It was pretty humorous. I think it was mostly improv by the stage actors, so that's always fun.

Several people asked us about the matching tabards, and a lot of them were familiar with the game if the didn't outright play it. We met an older couple right before we left the fair who had all sorts of stories to tell of the game and what they play in it once they found out we were in a guild. They were a riot. We think the man may have had a bit too much mead...

Towards the end of the day when everyone was getting tired, we congregated around a table and just visited. I tried ye olde milk and cookies. They were good. They sell just about everything you can imagine on a stick. Chocolate cheesecake on a stick. Fried Macaroni and Cheese on a stick. Steak on a stake. Lots more I can't remember right now, and a lot I wanted to try but didn't have the stomach to. It was all fairly pricey, but that comes with the territory.

I think I could easily go to these things often if I had the time and the money. It would be fun to build a nice outfit piece by piece until you had something really cool. I think I'd go for a more rustic, robin hood type thing than a royal Renaissance look, with leather pouches and a sword and bow. Oh, weapons weren't allowed in the fair, not even play weapons, unless they were bought there, so I didn't bother bringing the sword I actually owned, but it would be cool to include that somehow.

The fair I mentioned that's in Charlotte runs through November. I'm thinking we might be able to get out for a day and go with Teresa's family or friends in the area. We'll see. Oh yes, we'll see.

The Joust

Prepare thyself for merriment.

Teresa Stencils

Teresa is painting the guild symbol on a tabard to be worn at the Renn Fair. The name of the guild is Veritas, and the guild symbol is a gold flame.

Off to Rennfest!

Teresa and I are (soon to be) on our way to the Maryland Renaissance Festival! We're going to stay with some friends who live near Washington D.C. and enjoy a weekend of eating Turkey Legs and seeing people dressed up in fancy medieval gear and stuff. I'm pretty excited. Our hosts may even be putting together some costumes for us, since they do this more often and have extra stuff on hand. That sounds silly at first, but where we're going, it won't be silly. At least I hope so.

I've always enjoyed fantasy. From books to video games to the fascination with swords and knights. But I've never actually made it to a Renaissance Fair. There was one called King Richard's Fair that was held near Boston, but we never went because we didn't have anyone to go with, and it was more my kind of thing than Teresa's. Well now we have someone to go with, friends of both of ours, and even Teresa is a little excited about it which makes me happier about it all too.

The trip is about 7 or 8 hours up, but I'm taking the day off from work tomorrow so we can spend two whole days there. We'll spend tonight in Greensboro and then drive the rest of the way in the morning. It's been a long time since we made a trip just for fun and not just to see family, or to move. Some of our best memories are of traveling places during college, and seeing new things. We've been cooped up too long. Time to get out.

Speaking of getting out, the weather turned all Autumn like this week. After the rain cleared up on Sunday it's been nothing but chill breezes and lazy sunny days. I love it. It's my favorite season. And my hope is that soon it will frost, and then the grass will stop growing. And then I can have two to three hours of my life back on weekends. Wait, I mean, darn, I won't get to be outside with that awesome lawn mower of mine I talked about. Shucks.

Dan Luckman Theme Song (Remix)

Several, several, months ago, I took a commission from my sister to write a song for my dad. I make up a lot of music as I go along while playing the keyboard a lot, but I never really write anything down, or remember it when I come back to the keyboard later. It's always just for fun. I took this opportunity and wrote something fun and catchy with some things about my dad that my sister and I have experienced and love him for.

At the time I had just gotten a Powerbook with Garageband. I didn't really know how to use it and ended up just recording the song while playing over the lap top microphone. The quality was bad, and I wasn't so great and singing and playing together but the idea came across and my parents and my sister loved it. At least that's what they told me.

Well today after church, I was inspired to play my piano again and decided to try and understand Garageband a little better. Dad's song loaded when I opened the program, and I started thinking about ways I could improve on it. So here's what I did. I added drums and a bass line, then recorded piano and vocals on separate tracks so I could do one at a time. I also used an external mic as opposed to the on on the laptop. This all culminates in a remix of the Dan Luckman song which I am absolutely thrilled with. It was a lot of fun.

This one's for you dad. Love you.



Lyrics:
Hey look who's that over there?
Watching NASCAR in his La-z-boy chair
Drinking Henry Weinhard's Root Beer
Don't worry you have nothing to fear
From Dan Luckman

Works at Fred Meyer down the street
Selling produce to all that he meets
His sidekick Dax at home at his feet
Faithful forever, she really likes meat
From Dan Luckman

He's your best friend
He'll be with you
Until the end
He's Dan Luckman

Once in a while he'll come to you room
Say he's a terrodactyl and then he'll screech real loud
He'll make you proud

Then he'll play his air guitar
It's not that good but you'll still laugh
Cause it's so bad
And he's your dad

Yes, he's crazy, it's true
He'd wear Hawain shirts every day if he could
Goes out on his boat, to catch fish
Brings them home to make a tasty dish

He's Dan Luckman
He's your best friend
He'll be with you
Until the end

He's Dan Luckman
He's your best friend
He'll stay with you
Until the end

He's Dan Luckman

Our Smoky Mountains

This is a view of our new place from the street. That's the front door and the living room window. On the left are the master bedroom windows. There are two drive ways, one on either side, and that's our garage back there on the right, but it's mostly for storage and lawn equipment, not for a car. The staircase you see goes out to the street, so we don't really use it much, but it looks nice. One of these weekends I'm going to work on removing weeds and brush from that front yard. We're responsible for yard maintenance, so I figure I should take it seriously. Teresa just bought me a rake and shovel too! Isn't she thoughtful? Oh, and by the way, this picture was taken just after mowing with my fancy electric mower. If you look real close at the front door, you can see Hannah wondering what I'm doing.

Here is the back of the house. That door leads to the kitchen and the windows are to the 2nd and 3rd bedrooms. The larger bedroom will be a guest room and study. The third bedroom is slowly becoming a music room where I have my keyboard and stereo and various other items that don't fit anywhere else in the house. Again, I had just mowed the lawn, so it looks real nice. It had gone three weeks prior to this. It did take me two hours though. Even with a nice lawn mower, the lawn is just big. Speaking of the lawn.


Here is the back yard. It's fenced on the sides and at the back, which you see here, but not the front to either side of the house yet. I'm working on fixing that so we can let Hannah out without a leash. Supervised, but free to run. I'm pretty sure if we just left her on her own, she'd find a way out, but it would be nice to be able to play with her out there. The yard is sloped. High at the left, and low at the right, so it's really easy to mow going one direction, and lot harder going the other.


And this last picture is the view from the South side of the house taken from our front porch. If you're facing our front door, as in the first picture, and turn 90 degrees to your right, you'll see the mountains. It's really pretty. And in the mornings and some rainy days it's either completely obscured by fog and clouds, or you can see them lingering around the mountain tops. We're not sure, but we think that large gash in the mountain top might be preparation for a road leading to the new Tiger Woods golf course that they're building somewhere around there.

So that's our new place from the outside. Eventually when we get a couch and set things up how we want it and it's all clean, I'll take some inside pictures for you all to see. Speaking of a couch, we did some more shopping in Asheville and didn't really find anything. We did however revisit a store in Black Mountain and Teresa kept coming back to a couch she had tried out several weeks ago. It may end up being the one. I'll keep you posted since I know you're all riveted to the Luckman Couch Search 2009 adventure.

My New Electric Mower

So with our new house comes a huge yard. Well, maybe not huge, but big. Bigger than any yard I've had I think. Certainly since leaving Alaska.

Teresa thought it would be great to get a non gas powered mower. Better for the environment, less maintenance, slightly higher initial cost, but you save in other areas. Cool. Well, since we're trying to save money, we usually hit up Craigslist first to find stuff on the cheap, and she found something for a very good price. 25$! And it wasn't gas powered either. Neither was it electric.

Yes, we got a "Reel" mower. Get it? Reel?

Anyway, I mowed our big, no, huge yard our first weekend in the new house. I took 3 hours. That's a long time. But on top of that, the yard looked awful. Anything that was longer than 4 inches didn't get cut because it just laid down as the mower ran over it. This wasn't working out.

So a couple of days ago we found a fairly good deal on a barely used electric lawn mower. It had a 100 foot outdoor extension cord that came with it too, so I called the guy and went out to take a look at it.

The lawn mower was in Sylva, which is 30 minutes West of Asheville. I work in Marion, which is 40 minutes East of Asheville. So I drove for over an hour to get to this place. By the time I had arrived, I was determined to purchase it simply becuase I'd already come that far out. The seller was really nice, showed me how to use it, and I talked him down on the price a little bit. Enough to make me not feel too bad about the cost of getting there. So I loaded up the mower and headed home. There she is. A 12 amp, electric lawn mower. Comes with a bag and mulch plug and everything. Last night I took it out and did just the front yard, the most visible areas of the yard, and it worked really great. It took a bit of getting used to mowing with an extension cord following me, but after a while, it felt pretty natural and I never was in danger of running over it. It cut the gross really short, which I like, and didn't leave a lot of large grass clippings laying around. I guess it cut them up really fine.

It still takes me a long time to get the yard mowed though. I guess it's just that big. I'll tackle the back yard this weekend. I just hope 100 feet is enough to get to the back corners! Still need to get one more piece of yard equipement though. Our front yard has some areas I can't reach with the mower, so I'm looking for a weed eater to get into corners and the edgings of a fence. Criagslist, here we come.

Now, does anyone want to purchase a reel mower? Works great for small yards, and short grass.

Settling In

The house is wonderful, or at least I think so. It has it's quirks. The basement is kind of shabby, and the overall plumbing needs some kinks fixed, but it all works. The yard is a lot bigger than I was expecting. And by that, I mean the mowing size of it. It looked nice when we bought it, but I didn't realize how much yard was there until I walked every square foot of it with a scissor blade lawn mower. Yeah, no power, no motor, just a rotating blade and me pushing it. It was cheap, and we thought it would work, but it just doesn't cut the grass very well. Perusing craigslist for better one this week.

We still don't have a couch, so that's high on our priority list as the living room seems very empty without it, and we still haven't figured out where to put everything until we can figure out how big the couch will be. Our bedroom, the dining room, the kitchen and the bathroom are all in place. We have a washer and dryer down stairs that work well. All that's left are the two other bedrooms (which contain lots of boxes at the moment) and the aforementioned living room.

This weekend will be spent couch shopping, as well as some other household things. Hopefully I can find a cheap lawnmower to mow the yard with so I don't have to use the manual one. I've also got to start looking into fencing the yard at the front so we can let Hannah out without being on a leash, and still be reasonably certain that she's contained. I don't really think she would run away, but she would chase after any kind of animal or something that caught her fancy. I don't think we will ever train that out of her. Might be part of her beagle/hound instinct.

Speaking of Hannah, I believe we've successfully trained her to sleep on her mat on the floor in the bedroom now instead of on the bed. That's a pretty big step. She'll still get on the bed during the day if we don't watch her, but she's now sleeping all night long on her mat. Woohoo! When we get a couch, it will also be a no dog zone. Hopefully she picks that up as quickly as she learned not to sleep on the bed at night.

House Found, Getting Excited

So earlier this month we secured the lease on a really nice house in Swannanoa which is actually just a 5 to 10 minute drive from where we are currently staying in Black Mountain. It's got a great view of the mountains and a very nice backyard for Hannah to play in. It will need a fence added on one side to close it off from the road, but I've already spoken with the landlord and he seems like he'll be okay with that. I'm starting to get excited about having our own place again, and getting all of our stuff out of storage. I miss our dishes and our cookware, our TV and our Bed. We move in on August 1st! I found a washer and dryer from a co-worker who was selling hers. We're trying to find a couch and a futon mattress as well.

Teresa did quit her job, and she's already a lot happier. She's looking for something more manageable both in terms of time and in type of work. We were talking about it the other day in that now that she's gotten rid of the really crappy job, she needs to find a job that she doesn't mind so much. And then we can work on paying off our debts and getting to a place where she can get a job that she wants to do! That will be an exciting day. Maybe something to do with dance.

I'm still enjoying my job. It's a lot of responsibility which I've probably said before, but it's fun being in charge, instead of being the grunt. I was thinking about more long term, and I really think I'd like to eventually go into financial counseling or advising. Once I have a career and experience to back me up, I'd really love to help people with money. And I had felt like that long before I listened to Dave Ramsey. Prbably as early as my first year of college when I felt led to take business courses in the interest of being a Godly business man. Funny to think of where life has taken me since then.

Hannah is Hannah and we love her. I think she needs her own place and her own yard too. She's been really weird in the last few months about needing to go out and use the "yard" every hours or being especially needy. The training we put her through worked really well in terms of walking her. We're using one of those head harnesses now and she behaves great, stopping, and heeling when you ask her too.

So getting ready for the move and enjoying life. We had a great time with family of the fourth weekend and I think we're meeing a friend this weekend for hiking and pizza. Here's to good food and friends!

House Hunting

Now that we have stable jobs, we're trying to find a house in Black Mountain that we can rent for a couple years. We've found one really nice house in Swannanoa nearby, but it's a little out of the way to get to. I looked at a house in Black Mountain yesterday and it's decent, but the location is great. Both houses have yards that Hannah could play in, though the nicer house will need some extra fencing as it's not fully enclosed.

So the question is, nicer house, or nicer location? Considering how much we get out of the house, the location is probably not as important, and considering this is not going to be a permanent residence, it's probably better to go with the house we'll enjoy living in more. An extra hurdle is that the nicer house is about $100 more a month. Not a huge deal, but I'm sort of on a "kill debt" kick, so any thing we put in to rent will be less we can put towards debt. Teresa is going to look at the house in Black Mountain tomorrow and see what she thinks.

Speaking of debt, I've been listening to Dave Ramsey a lot. He's a Christian guy, and his job is helping people get out of debt and learn to invest and how best to do it, etc. He has a daily radio show and he wrote a book. I read the book first and then started listening to the radio show. It's really inspiring, and since I already was trying to pay off our credit cards and student loans, it was encouragement and a little more structured help. We've only just started the "Total Money Makeover," but I'm looking forward to knocking out some of these bills one by one.

Some of the costs of moving will have to be taken care of though. We'll likely end up buying a washer and dryer. I bet we can find some cheap ones on craigslist or something. I'll have to look around.

Teresa's job at the kennel isn't working out well. The hours are lousy and the work is crummy. She's applied for another job that's more her style at a library, and I really hope she gets it so she can quit this one. I think she'll be a lot happier and a little less trapped.

My job is going great. I really enjoy it and feel like I'm doing well at it. I'm starting to dig into the finer points of being a controller and organizing the financial future of the company. Scary! But exciting.

Here's to keeping this blog updated more with updates on Teresa, T.J. and Hannah.

Update On Life and Blogging

When I started this blog, it was to have an avenue to write about what's going in our lives for family and friends to read. Or random strangers I guess, thought my thinking is that they would lose interest quickly... but that's not what I'm concerned about.

I want to start writing again, at least weekly in this blog so that I have some sort of place to write thoughts, ideas and updates in our lives. It might be fun to make it more personal with pictures and what not as well. But with that said, here's a quick update on where we are.

In January Teresa and I moved back to North Carolina from Boston. We were lucky enough to have a place to stay until we found work, and about 5 weeks ago we found that! Hopefully we'll be moving into a place of our own buy late June or July. I love the area here so the plan is to find a nice small place for us and Hannah to rent while we work and save and adjust to living in a new state.

Teresa is working for a dog Kennel called the Bed & Biscuit. It's in Black Mountain, so it's not a far drive, and while it's hard work, I think she likes it. She's got some pretty lousy hours though, working a lot of weekends and 12 hour days. I got a really good opportunity and took a job as the controller for a manufacturing company in Marion, NC, just East of Black Mountain, so again a quick drive. About a 25 minute commute versus the 90 minute commute I had in Boston by subway. To facilitate us both working and driving, we just (as in this week) bought a brand new-to-us (read 13 year old) car! It's a Nissan Altima which we got on the cheap so we don't have any extra car payments. It will mainly be a driving to work and back car really. It's in great shape though. A manual transmission too, so it's fun to drive, and I get to teach Teresa how to drive it. That will be fun!

I think Hannah enjoys the mountains though she doesn't get out as often as she would like, I'm sure. We're taking her to another dog (or owner) training class so maybe we can work out some of the excitedness she has. Two things I would like to train in her the most. Not having separation issues whenever we leave the house, and not going crazy whenever she sees another dog or cat. Just the other day she saw a cat outside and pushed open the storm door to the house. She ran around the neighborhood for 15 minutes before ending up back at the front door. Well, at least she came back, right?

So jobs are a go, cars are registered and tagged, now we're saving money to rent a place in Black Mountain and we'll be able to get our stuff out of storage. Looking forward to that!