Musings - Day 501 (Yr 2, Day 123)

Asheville, NC

I can't believe it's Friday, again!  Every week, one of my clients greets me with "Happy Friday," and I try to talk to my Dad on Fridays.  It just seems like this is happening every other day.  Where is time flying to???

This has been very slow week for me, work wise.  The weather has also been rather nasty, so I've been stuck indoors and bored.  Mostly I spent the time researching this and that and practicing my crocheting.  Today looks like it'll be a very  nice day, so I'm looking forward to taking my urb-e out.

Speaking of urb-es, Mitch's died.  Support (actually, the CTO of the company) spent about an hour on the phone with him, trying to troubleshoot the problem.  After trying every possibility, they suggested he send it back for repair or replacement.  Thank goodness we kept the box and packing materials!  So last night, we went to FedEx to deliver the box, stopped for a bite to eat at Chipotle's (they have braised tofu on the menu -- sofritas) and then went shopping at the new Publix that opened.  It's the 2nd store in Asheville (1st is Harris Teeters) that has a small frozen kosher section, with some chickens - both cooked & prepared - frozen gefilte fish and Tabachnick soups).  Still, I do miss Shoprite Kosher Experience in NJ!

Along our travels, we witnessed a magnificent sunset.  This pic was taken from Mitch's camera.  Not bad, but still doesn't do it complete justice.  I still can't say that I've seen any breathtaking fall foliage.  I've seen some colors, but nothing that took my breath away.  They say people come from all over the country this time of year specifically for that, so they're either in for great disappointment this year, or the best is still yet to come.

Better weekend - Day 497 (Yr 2, Day 119)

Asheville, NC

On Friday night, we had some friends from shul join us for Shabbat dinner (Doris and Bill).  They live 6 months near Orlando, FL and 6 months in Shannonoa (about 15 miles east of Asheville).  This was their last week here before heading back south.  At shul, they seem like such an interesting couple (and they are!!!!), that we just had to spend more time with them.  A wonderful evening was enjoyed by all.

On Sunday, Mitch was asked to put in some overtime, and I had a pretty big project I needed to get a head start on, so it was a full, billable work day for both of us.

Today, and for the next 3 days, the nice weather we've been having has broken and there will be lots of rain yet again.

Our friends from "next door" (Kathy and Allen) will also be leaving this week, heading back to their FL home.  They have a lot of family in this area and it's been non-stop for them for the past month.  Tonight is the only night they have free, so we decided to try to do something special, even if it's just happy hour (be nice if in front of a campfire).  But due to the rain, it's anyone's guess what we'll end up doing.  Will post tomorrow on the outcome.

Oh, there's this awesome place opening very soon just down the road (and within urb-e distance):  www.ashevillefoodpark.com.  There's a great cafe (with quite a few vegetarian choices on the menu and they roast their own coffee beans), a bar with music, a farm stand, and lots of food trucks (and of course, in this area, I expect to see a lot of natural and vegetarian options there as well).  I'm really looking forward to their opening.

Again counting blessings - Day 493 (Yr 2, Day 115)

Asheville, NC

A little rain must fall....  a few bad things happened to both of us today, but surely God has been watching over us.

Mitch -- started out his day, with 3 gas tanks totaling 105 gallons - ran out of gas!!!  He wasn't paying close attention.  As luck would have it, it pulled into a place where there was a truck carrying diesel fuel to fill school buses.  He was able to negotiate "buying" a gallon of gas -- enough to get to a gas station.

Later in the day, he parked on the side of the road, not realizing it was a drainage ditch and got stuck in the mud -- up to the top of the tire!  4 wheel drive, which as helped him out of a difficult spot in the past, only sunk him deeper in the mud.  He needed to wait for a tow truck to pull him out.

Cheryl - was out riding Urb-e, and took a path down an isolated dirt road.  Didn't see the hole in the ground.  Scooter struck the hole and I went head first over the scooter.  It was nothing short of a miracle that I didn't hurt anything (although my left shoulder is a bit sore).  It was a bit of a challenge getting up off the ground without something to lean on or pull me up, but after about 10 minutes, I finally did it (holding on to the Urb-e, which wasn't steady to begin with, and which I also had to lift up to a standing position).  Counting blessings that the fall didn't dislocate my hip again!

This evening, a new couple pulled in next to us with a tear-drop type trailer (Gary & Wendy from CA). They do a lot of traveling - hardly really stopping to enjoy the places they stay.  They had a great campfire going and I joined them for a bit.  They are a very interesting couple.  I am really enjoying getting to meet all these interesting people and am happy I'm coming out of my shell to intrMitch (understandably) was feeling very anti-social and didn't want to join us.  I was going to stay for smores, but I felt guilty leaving Mitch alone in such a mood so I came back inside to keep him company.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a brighter day.  But again, things could have been so much worse and we have so much to be thankful for.  In fact, as I'm writing this, Mitch just fell off his stool, but fortunately was not hurt.

Fun show - Day 493 (Yr 2, Day 115)

Asheville, NC

Not sure if I mentioned that the computer chaos has mostly died down.  Mitch still has a bunch of wires, cables and components laying around, and my machine still hasn't been migrated, but at least it's up and running and I've recreated most of what I need, so at least I'm not panicking where work is concerned, and I can work at my "desk" again.

People continue to come and go for only a few days at a time here, and I have been getting much more comfortable with walking over to folks and starting up a conversation when they are outside.  I've shared a few "happy hours" with some, and am really meeting quite a lot of interesting people, most of whom are vacationers or part-timers.

So we went back to the Asheville Community Theater last night (first had dinner at Mellow Mushroom) to see "Olde Virden's SuperHappy Trivia Challenge."  Olde Virden is actually the sponsor who makes "Red Hot Sprinkles" (a spice mixture of chili peppers).

This was not so much a performance as it was an interactive (audience participation) game show.  This had a Halloween theme.  The theater seated about 50 people, and it's like everyone knew everyone else.  Guess they have a cult following!  Basically, there were 2 teams of 2 players who sat at their own tables in front, with the "MC" at a podium in the middle.  They took turns having to answer all kinds of questions to do with the holiday, superstitions, horror movies.  There were also other types of games thrown in, such as tell a story and the audience has to figure out if it's true or not, or fill in the blanks.  I'd say it was a cross between Family Feud, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Ask Me Another, and of course, just good old-fashioned improv.  All in all, it was hysterical and such great fun!  Even the program they had specially made had me rolling on the floor!  It's 6 pages, so not very easy to take a photo of to post here.

I said audience participation, right?  For those of you who know Mitch, you know how chatty (putting it nicely) he can be.  He actually got an award:

Fun day out - Day 479 (Yr 2, Day 112)

Asheville, NC

We followed our plans and spent the day in downtown Asheville.  First, we visited the HardLox Festival in Pack Square Park.  Kind of like the Organicfest, but with a Jewish theme.  We needed a new mezuzzah for the bedroom and found a very nice, yet inexpensive one.  We had our urb-e's with us, although I did more walking with it than riding (particularly on the narrow and/or crowded streets).  We must have been stopped at least 10 different times by folks wanting to know what it was!  We stopped at Gourmet Chips for a quick snack before going to the Asheville Community Theater's production of Young Frankenstein.  That was an awesome show!  Then again, anything by Mel Brooks has got to be hilarious!

The show was over at 5, and Mitch still had a bit of work to do getting the computers fixed, so we headed straight home.

We have another show at the theater on Wednesday evening, which I'm greatly looking forward to.

Weather was sunny, but didn't get up past about 55 degrees and windy.  There have been frost warnings around, and we've been waking up to temps in the 40s.  Winter is definitely around the corner.  I hate the cold, but it looks like I'm going to have to get used to it this year.

Computer chaos -- Day 477 (Yr 2, Day 110)

Asheville, NC

This week has been very stressful with regard to the laptops.  I thought it was a matter of just taking it out of the box, pressing a few buttons, and viola, it's ready.  Nope; especially not when you're working with an IT professional.  For one thing, he needed to replace the router (which required a lot of rewiring of the RV) because the new ones weren't up to date with what we had.  There's just so much technical mumbo jumbo that's beyond me to understand, so you'll just have to accept that this has been a major undertaking, trying to get my new machine up & running.  One of the things holding us back is that Mitch wants to migrate my old machine to the new one, but the system he needs to make the backup also crapped out (Jess - if you're reading this, we need to take the UPS's back).  Bottom line is that, although Mitch told me to hold off, the ONLY way I could get any work done is by starting over.  At least I was able to get the critical work files off the old hard drive.  Personal stuff I'll just either need to recreate from scratch or wait until Mitch has more time to fix the problem.

Meanwhile, it's been a major stress event for me because of the clutter.  He's working on about 4 machines at once, so there are all kinds of cables, wires and components laying out on every inch of free space (counters, tables, chairs, floor).  You know my OCD kicks in when there's a single paper clip out of place, so you can imagine what it's been like living like this all week.  I'm especially freaking out right now because we're having a guest for Shabbat dinner tonight (I already warned her about the mess; she's going thru a difficult time and I thought it was more important to give her a little respite and a warm shoulder than worry about having her sit on cables).  That's a really big step for me, although I'm still freaking out.

We didn't get to the bluegrass music on Tuesday because that's the day the laptops arrived and Mitch only has a limited number of hours after work that he can deal with this.  We do have plans on Sunday -- the Jewish festival and then the community theater (Young Frankenstein). 

New laptops, goodbyes - Day 474 (Yr 2, Day 107)

Asheville, NC

I had forgotten to mention that both mine and Mitch's laptops finally croaked.  Mind you, they once belonged to the company I used to work for -- purchased about 8 years ago.  About 4 years ago, they bought a few new ones and gave one of these older ones to me to replace my very old desktop model.  They also had another older laptop that they had no use for, and being old and obsolete, it wasn't worth anything to sell, so they gave that one to me to take home.  When the company closed, they let me take my laptop with me rather than try to sell it (being 7 years old by then, it was also pretty much worthless to sell).  Well, in our home downsizing and moving into the RV, we decided to keep only one tower computer, which is being used as our server, and use the 2 old laptops.  Over the past year, they have been slowly dying.  Mitch has "band-aided" both several times (by which I mean doing surgery on them -- taking them completely apart with screws and parts all over the counter -- or spending hours and hours formatting and reformatting).  Last week, both machines decided it was time to go to computer heaven.

Of course, this put me in a somewhat difficult position since I need my laptop for work.  Mitch was able to remove my hard drive and connect it externally to the server in order to copy the files I needed.  This machine doesn't have Microsoft Office, so I have to use and convert from a different set of programs (Libre Office).  Not happy about it, but it's a good temporary solution and gives me the ability to continue to work.  I should mention what my current setup looks like.  I use my laptop on the dinette table, but am currently hooked into the server machine, which is a tower that resides inside the cabinet next to the fireplace.  The "monitor" is our 42" flat screen tv.  I have the coffee table turned sideways (parallel to the fireplace) with the table top lifted to its full height to form a desk, and am sitting on a dinette chair.  This makes for a fine desk, although I'm not happy about it being in the middle of my living room!  Oh well, another test in patience and a reminder to count my blessings that at least I have a computer to work with for now.

Meanwhile, we found a very good deal online for new laptops (actually a combination laptop/tablet).  The giant box arrived yesterday.   Believe it or not, Mitch doesn't want to open the box yet!  He says there's still way too much to do first before we can get them up & running (first he needs to repeat what he did with the hard drives to remove all the files we need), we need to wait for a new router to arrive that's compatible with these machines otherwise we won't be able to access the internet, he needs to do file migrations, run a junk remover and do some other installations.  In other words, we can't just take it out of the box and start using it.  At least not the way he feels we should.

On another note, Barbara & Larry left this morning but we said our farewells yesterday afternoon.  I had a "tour" of their 1995 Blue Bell bus which was just amazing on the inside!  I also discovered that Barbara makes jewelry which she sells wherever she can (not for a living; just for fun and spending cash).  I was in need of a new black & white necklace to replace the one I lost, and she happened to have a beautiful set (black & silver necklace and matching earrings, for $18, which I bought).  They live in N. Ft. Myers so if we ever get back to that area, we'll be sure to visit them.

Nothing to report - Day 473 (Yr 2, Day 106)

Asheville, NC

Sorry; I didn't realize that I hadn't written after we moved the rig to the other side of the campground due to the threat of being evacuated as the river was about to overflow its banks.   We were very blessed in that it only came about an inch below the bank but did not overflow.  We actually did move back to the other side on Sunday (after writing the 10/4 post) - naturally with help from about 3 people to back in!  We're snugly settled in our favorite spot once again.

Last Monday and Tuesday were synagogue days - the last in this long holiday season.  My workload was pretty crazy on Wednesday and Thursday due to some of the backlog from those 2 days.  Today, however, I am totally caught up and have nothing to do (yet -- it's still early in the day).

Campground continues to get many people who stay a day or 2, or less than a week.  We met 2 very nice couples (who parked on either side of us):  Barbara & Larry from FL, who are staying 5 days just passing through on the way to a rally in Greensboro SC, and Cathy & Al, also from FL but with a lot of family in the area.  We also had the privilege of getting to know Betty & Tom from shul.  They are also Floridians and come up this way for a few months during the summer to early Fall.  They are leaving NC this week and I will miss them.

We have some upcoming plans for the next week or 2:  maybe tomorrow night, there is a restaurant nearby that has live music and a lot of vegetarian choices.  Tuesday nights they have bluegrass, so we're thinking of going there.  Next Sunday is the "Hardlox Festival" in Pack Square Park (where Organicfest was) which is a large Jewish festival (sadly, I inquired about their food and learned that it is only kosher style, not certified kosher, so the pastrami sandwich I was looking forward to is out).  Also next Sunday, we have tickets to see the musical version of Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks) at the community theater which is only a few blocks away from the park.  Since parking is very difficult in the downtown area, we're looking forward to bringing our urb-es.

On Wed. 10/21, there is another event at the community theater -- a trivia show, very similar to Wait Wait Don't Tell Me (our favorite NPR radio program).

There's also a 6 week class starting next week at Chabad which I would like to attend.  It's at night and Mitch has no desire to go.  I can't drive at night, so unless the rabbi can either arrange a ride for me, or they can have someone bring a laptop with a webcam, running Skype or Google Talk, I won't be able to go.  They're also running the same class at Chabad in Cary, so I've inquired whether they'll be live streaming the way they do with their Lunch & Learn programs.

As for the gorgeous fall foliage we've been told about - nothing yet, although I'm starting to see patches of color here and there.  We still haven't had a chance to ride the Blue Ridge Parkway or visit Biltmore.  Hopefully there's still a chance.

In terms of travel plans (remember - plans are made in jello!), ideally, since we have the campground booked on a month to month basis (cheapest that way), and it's now reserved until 11/3, it would be nice if they would let us relocate for the remainder of November back to Raleigh, and then move south or to AZ after Thanksgiving for the winter.  But it all depends on Mitch being able to make contact with his boss, who has yet to respond to him.

All OK - Day 465 (Yr 2, Day 98)

Asheville, NC

Yesterday (yes, we had to break some Shabbat rules, but I think it's ok where safety is involved), as the threat was getting more severe, we hitched up and moved to the other side of the campground where it's a bit safer.  We were told there was still no guarantee that it would be completely safe if the river overflowed significantly, but there was still less of a chance the flood waters would reach this side.  We decided to take our chances on this side, staying hitched in case we were evacuated, in which case we would go 5 miles down the road to the empty supermarket parking lot.

Fortunately, the river did not overflow, although it came very close.  Remember, the water was about 15-20 feet below the bank before this storm.  Here's a picture of Jessica at the bottom of the steps a few weeks ago, and Mitch near there today.  You can see how the water is at the 4th step from the top now!  Also following are a few more photos of how close to the bank the water is.

There is still a warning out that the river is still rising and can still overflow the bank, although not significantly.  We will stay on this side for a few more days.

Tomorrow is another major holiday (Shemini Atzeret - 8th day of Sukkot) and we plan on attending services.  Guess we'll have to unhitch and then hitch up again if we want to move to the other side.

REALLY bad weather - Day 463 (Yr 2, Day 96)

Asheville, NC

Not much time to write a lot right now as I'm heading into Shabbat, but a quick update.

As my previous posts stated, we've had a lot of rain.  Well, there's a hurricane off the Atlantic coast whose effects are being seen as far west as the mid-West.  The mountains of NC (where we are) is being hit especially hard with flash floods; the worst is yet to come tomorrow into Sunday night.

Being right on the river, it's been interesting to watch how much the river has risen in the last day.  Usually there's about 10 feet from the water to the top of the ridge; now it's about 5 feet.  We're under a flood watch and were warned there's a (good) chance we'll be asked to evacuate some time tomorrow night when the heaviest rains arrive, as the river will overflow its banks and we'll get flooded.

Currently, we're packing up everything that we can.  We put all out outdoor stuff away yesterday and currently Mitch is disconnecting the sewer and water, so if we have to pull out, all we'll need to do is unplug the electric.  We already filled the fresh water so we have enough to use the sink and flush the toilet for at least a week.  The evacuation plan is there's a supermarket that closed down (they moved to another location) on the main road about 5 miles away.  That should be a big enough space for us to park for a day or 2 or 3.

Watch for the next post to see what happened!