It's Been a While!

Sheesh I haven't posted anything on this blog in a long time. I can't write much tonight cause I'm tired but I figured I'd put up some pictures and videos. Check back soon for some more concrete updates.

The Misty Mountains




On a clearer day...


The house we really want to get (applying for it tomorrow...wish us luck!) 2BR, 1 BA, $650/mo, W&D






Drew and Kate and I went to go see Do Make Say Think at the Gray Eagle--we got to talk to them afterwards too! Real nice chaps.






Sliding Rock


That little worm on my finger was just one of a hundred all over my body when I came out of the water


Never thought I'd see a millipede in the wild!


Drew 'n' me


Me sliding down Sliding Rock


Brie freaking out

Work Work Work

The Mettlers left for Italy yesterday, leaving us alone with uncle T for a week. We finally get to practice in the afternoons and play loud music around the house. I don't want to give the impression that neither of us like the Mettlers--it's just fun to have such a big house to ourselves for a little while.

We visited Slippery Rock yesterday--a kind of shallow-grade waterfall that is smooth enough to slide down. I forgot to bring my camera with me so I'll have to go back and take pictures for you later, but it's absolutely gorgeous. There are these holes in the rock created by the movement in the water that are up to 8ft deep. The water is clear, cold, and refreshing. I forgot to mention I bought a pair of black Crocs and they are perfect for creekwalking. Anywho, after Slippery Rock, we bought a huge load of groceries at Ingles, after unsuccessfully trying to open a Wachovia account. The lady at the desk said the representative was busy that day and we'd have to make an appointment for tomorrow. She then called to check with another woman at the front desk, but surprised us when she called her on the phone--even though she was no more than 15 feet away.

Our second day of work seemed a little busier, but only because so many people showed up at the same time. We bussed our butts off and the waitresses took notice--we got at least twice the amount of tip out that night plus some from the bar. When we were wiping down the patio tables at the beginning of work, we saw Billy in the back driveway with a driver and a golf ball. The first swing he missed horribly, then the second, he hit it and it bounced off the car next to him. We were doubled over laughing when we saw D and Kyle take their turns, almost hitting a few windows in the neighboring tennis court shack.

We mentioned to Gabe that we were looking for an apartment in Asheville and he called his friend who lives at a place called "The Grove." He said the rent was $500 a month for a two person, 1000sq.ft. apartment with--get this--a kitchen, two full baths, two walk-in closets, free internet, utilities, cable, furnishings, & parking, AND we can have pets. It's also really close to downtown. We're going to head to Asheville on Sunday and (I think) make a down payment for the second half of October. We won't be able to practice there, but with the money we'll save on all the extras they provide, we can rent out storage in town and have a 24/7 practice space.

So I guess things are really falling into place!

Oh yeah, we missed the Andrew Bird concert because that was our first night of work, but we requested off days to see Pinback and Do Make Say Think.

The Library

Drew and I started working at a restaurant called "The Library" at a country club in the next town over. We heard about the opening from Drew's Uncle's friend and went there two days ago to apply for the job. We met one of the owners, Joe, who told us we were hired without even asking our names. We went in at 4pm yesterday and started our training. Because we'll only be working for another month or so, we'll only get to do bussing, but bussers still make decent money. When the "leafers" come (the people who watch the leaves change here), bussers can make around $100 a night just on tips. The minimum wage here for bussers is $5.15 which isn't bad. We made about 45 dollars last night total--and it was a slow night. I think if you average it out, we'll be getting around 12-15 dollars an hour.

It's a pretty easy job--the usual bussing fare of pouring water, bringing out bread, taking dishes away when people are done, resetting the table, etc, etc. Not a bad job for one like myself who enjoys as little responsibility as possible. There are some pretty interesting characters here too.

Kim, a waitress and bartender, was born in France but moved to the US when she was six. She doesn't have much of an accent but you can tell with some words. Then there's the other waitresses, Dusty and Leigh, both of whom were nice enough to give us a tip out last night even though they didn't have to (bussers who are training don't have to get tip-outs). Steven is another busser we work with who's been there for 3 days. Then there's the head chef, whose name I don't know. He's foreign too, but I haven't heard him speak enough to really place his accent. When the hostess stopped seating people, he took a break from making food to show off his skills juggling a wine bottle and its holder around his back and catching it, balancing it on the back of his hand, all the while teasing the dishwasher, Billy, who talks exactly like Boomhauer from King of the Hill. Billy is also a bit of a pyro and showed up outside while Drew was having a cigarette (I was just out there with him--by the way, this is my 8th day without smoking!) with an aerosol can of cooking oil I believe, trying to get the busser who trained us, Gabe, to hold a lighter while he sprayed the cooking oil into it. After Billy had nearly lit me on fire, he went back inside, and Leigh (who was having a cigarette also) told us how he'll heat up a quarter until it's red hot and throw it on the ground. He'll wait for it to cool down a bit then he says to one of the cooks or bussers passing by, "Look, there's a quarter!" He also twisted up a towel and gave a rattail to Dusty, who was studying for a Marketing exam in the back.

So all in all, The Restaurant is a nice place to work. I was about as tired after 6 hours of work as I was 10 at A&W Drive-In. Before 7pm it's a lot of walking around, pretending that you're working, folding napkins, and, oh yeah, I forgot the best part about the job! We get to have as much soda, and as many salads, rolls, and bowls of soup as we want. It's a 20-30 dollar an entree joint so even the rolls and soup are prime. I had escargo and chicken parmigiano the night we got hired.

That reminds me--another quick story from Mr. Mettler that he told us over dinner: A while back he represented Henry Strater, a famous artist and friend of Ernest Hemingway. (Here's a picture of Hemingway congratulating Strater on landing a blue marlin and here's a scanned copy of pretty much the only portrait he did of Hemingway I can find). Anyway, Mr. Mettler told us that 90% of Strater's art involved a nude woman and, in Mr. Mettler's words, "He laid every single one of them, of course." From what I gather, Mr. Mettler was representing him because he claimed that a woman he got pregnant had put a hole in the condom with a needle.

Tom Tom

Mr. Mettler (whose nickname is Tom Tom) is Drew's grandfather. He and his wife, Sarah (or Sally) split their time between their Palm Beach residence and here, in Cashiers, where they go in the summer when it gets to hot there. They bought this plot back in the 70s after their daughter Beth (Drew's mother) visited here with a friend from school. They've been improving the house ever since.

Drew and his siblings have been coming here since they were little and have lots of funny stories involving crashing the golf cart, their cousins the Cecils (relatives of the Vanderbilt clan) making mischief, hanging out at High Hampton Country Club...But one random story I thought was funny: years ago, when Mr. Mettler was a judge, he had some extra power to exercise which included having a policeman follow his daughter (Drew's aunt) when she would sneak out and go to bars. He also "burned marijuana in his courtroom" (no, he didn't smoke it--just disposed of it making a statement) when "that kind of thing was more acceptable."

Even more impressively, he had a run-in with Donald Trump when Mr. Trump put an absurdly large flag in his front yard that violated a city ordinance. Mr. Mettler was on the town council at the time and had to deal with, what he calls, "one of the biggest egos on this planet." He claimed that Trump knew he wouldn't win the suit and was just doing it for publicity. The case was settled outside of court. Later, Mr. Mettler explained, he got a phonecall from someone who claimed to be Donald Trump. At first, he thought it was his friend who often pretended to be someone else when he'd leave a message with his secretary, one time pretending to be an officer who had a high-profile client of his in a holding cell. So Mr. Mettler comes to the phone, expecting his friend, and says "Hey, how are you, you lecherous bastard?" Mr. Trump was obviously taken aback by this, because it was in fact the real Donald Trump, who had called Mr. Mettler to ask him to be his personal lawyer. Mr. Mettler politely refused.

Mr. Mettler brings wine with him when we go out to eat because Cashiers is a dry county (for a good reason I suppose--I'll post a video soon of how windy and dangerous the roads are). I get to have a glass of wine with every dinner, and last night, he told Mrs. Mettler, "It's Saturday in Cashiers which means you have to have a glass of wine." I hardly have to point out that it was, in fact, Friday.

Canoeing at the High Hampton

The High Hampton is a country club nearby. It's actually just down in the valley below us--a short golf cart ride away. After reading Harry Potter all day, we decided to head down there for lunch because we couldn't find Drew's car keys. Drew and I took turns driving and made it there just in time before the food shop closed. We got some hot dogs and then went out on the lake. We originally wanted a paddleboat but the ones that were left were broken, so we stepped into a canoe (almost flipped over when Drew got in) and paddled around for a bit. After a while we just went back and drove the cart back up the big hill (almost getting stuck along the way) and now we're about to go to Ingles, (pronounced like the suffix -ing, not like the Spanish word) the grocery store chain that's prevalent here in NC, to rent the first Harry Potter movie. Sorry that was a ridiculously long sentence. Anyway, here are the pictures (and a movie of us trying to make it up the hill in the golf cart).



Ridin' in style (photo credit: Drew Veres)


The Honeymoon Cottage on the course (Drew's mom says it's a dump)


The good paddle boats those people took and the crappy ones left over


A View of Rock Mt. behind a golf hole (while on the canoe)


Drewy


Drew told me to try to convince people this was a 90ft drop--it's only about 20ft and it's the dam that keeps the water in the man-made lake we were paddling around


Inside the country club inn


Swannanoa Valley, where my girl Kate's going to Warren Wilson

Pictures!

Here are some pictures for you guys...


The back porch



Chimney Top Mountain (aka the view on the back porch)



The living room (and open upstairs with four bunkbeds) and Brie



Taken from the spiral staircase



Uncle Tom Tom's Cabin--a clubhouse where the kids would play...



...and now it holds our music equipment



The view from beside the clubhouse



My bedroom (still unpacking...)



My bathroom (notice the massaging jets and the flat faucet)



View on a street in Highlands (a town or two over from Cashiers)



Weird shops...


You know you're in the South when...they sell guns in the local pharmacy

Just Say Yes To Harry Potter

Drew and I have been reading the Harry Potter series (he finally caved in once we got here). I bought the collection a week ago (1-6...I'm waiting for the paperback of 7) and I've been ploughing through them since. I'm on the third one now and still very surprised with how well the movies stuck to the first couple books and how they captured the little things like the moving portraits and the effects of spells. Today, I read a couple chapters on the couch, outside on the deck, and in the beautifully warm and comfortable bathtub in my bathroom.

In other, more interesting news, we drove around a bit in Highlands where we shopped a bit (I bought something for a friend and Drew got fudge). In about an hour, we're going to go eat at Cornicoupia, the restaurant we applied to today. Sarah, Drew's sister, worked there this summer and got us the jobs there. I believe it's part-time work, but I'll try my luck at being a waiter (the menu is only 2 pages--I should be able to memorize it OK) and if that's not enough work, we might get jobs at the High Hampton--a golf course nearby. I'm excited to work again, crazy as it sounds. Though lounging around the house and reading and taking baths all day is nice, I'd like to be a little more financially sound when we get off the Asheville.

Anywho, I'm off to read some more before dinner. Afterwards, we're going to come back and watch "Blades of Glory" which I hear is a decent movie...

Box Fan Nightmare

I woke up from a nightmare this morning. I don't get them very often and most of the time it's for no particular reason. But last night, I dreamt I had found a haunted box fan in the greenhouse at Kenyon. At first I thought there was a ghost in the room with me fooling around with the fan but, after carrying the fan over to some friends--Josh Carrigan, Chris Gray, and Dave Liebenberg included--I realized that the fan itself was a ghost of sorts. It had a malevolent presence and tried to scare me. The way it sucked the life out of everything around it reminded me of Dementors. Then, being reminded of that I suppose (and subliminally making connections), some wizard told me that someone had actually squeezed a kind of fruit that would turn inanimate objects into ghosts. I asked him what would happen if you ate the fruit yourself and he told me, "You don't want to know."

That was around four in the morning, and it was hard to get back to sleep, but eventually, I woke up at 6:30am. I wanted to see the sunrise so I meditated a little (something I've been intending to get back into once I came here) then I sat outside reading "The Prisoner of Azkaban" until it came up. Now, I'm about to make eggs in a basket and continue on with the rest of my day.

FINALLY!

My Dearest Friends,

As you all know, I am now safely down here in North Carolina, for a time living with Drew Veres's grandparents in Cashiers--about an hour outside of Asheville. I am taking a year off of Kenyon to play music with my band, King Tut. We will be moving to Asheville proper after a month of working and living here, saving money for our down payment and deposit on our as-yet undiscovered house. I'm starting this blog so I can keep in touch with people, so people can be voyeuristic and not talk to me but just keep tabs on what I'm doing, and also just to get into writing again. Anywho, just cause I sent you this link doesn't mean I actually expect you to read and comment--you're all in school and have got better things to do than read about this bum's travels. So, anywho, here's what's been happening the last couple days:

Drew and I arrived in North Carolina yesterday after spending a day in Athens with our friend Mike. After a four hour car ride, we pulled up to the very top of Mound Street, just off the Ohio University campus, and found Mike on the porch, barely looking up from his laptop, working on an article for the local newspaper. After a quick tour of their lovely house, I met Ian, of whom Michael had spoken very highly, and told me just how much I'd love hanging out with him. Ian used to go to OU but now he's living with his girlfriend Emily and working at a pizza shop. He hails from the small but beautiful city of Gambier, Ohio, which is where Kenyon College, my alma mater, is located.

Athens is a beautiful city--very hilly and scenic. We partied with some friends from Bay High who are freshmen there now. On Labor Day, we played a show at the Wire, a kind of community center/show space/front for anarchistic subterfuge (if they could serve beer I'm sure they'd call it "Tapped"). It was probably the biggest show we've ever played in terms of the people who came out to see us (instead of barflies who just happened to be there when we were playing). I saw Leo and Gina and Michael Kortlander, a few friends who went to the Kenyon Young Writer's program with me the year before my senior year. All in all, it was a beautiful night and I met many wonderful people who will hopefully show up to our return to Ohio sometime this Fall.

The next morning (yesterday) I got up early and packed the car up--a kind of present for Drew who was still asleep and would be driving about six hours later that day. After some warm goodbyes with the promise of many returnings, Drew and I left (FINALLY) for North Carolina. We made great time--I finished "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" and started on "The Prisoner of Azkaban" all in between endless music and mountains around us.

The mountains here are gorgeous. West Virginia's mountains were tall and imposing, herded right up to the edge of the road. The mountains here in North Carolina are spaced further apart, but layered beautifully, fading back into paler and paler shades of blue. Drew and I spent a night at Warren Wilson College visiting Kate Ziegler. She showed us around the campus a bit, but it was already dark so it was difficult to really appreciate how beautiful it was until this morning. As a belated birthday gift, Kate gave me a girl's sweater from the Gap in Ireland, a few of her dad's old ties she loved, and the complete boxed set of the Planet Earth DVDs. This morning, she and I went on a walk into a beautiful pasture. I'm sorry all you Kenyonites reading this right now--Warren Wilson's natural beauty puts Kenyon's to shame. After lunch, Kate had to go to work, while Drew and I went back to her room to shave our stubble. We ended up going to the wrong room, not knowing it, and were incredibly frustrated when the key simply wouldn't turn. After calling Kate and almost slipping the key under the door and leaving, we realized that we were on the other side of her dorm. We made it back to her room and had use her two-bladed shaver and conditioner instead of shaving cream. I would have avoided the whole shaving business altogether but we had to do it for our appearance here in Cashiers.

And now this house! Drew's grandparents on his mother's side bought this property back in the 70s as a vacation home for the summer when Palm Beach got too hot. Ever since, they've been improving and adding on to it, so here's a quick list of the main features that jump out to me:

• First off, the house is up a huge winding hill and overlooks a mountain that has a bare rock face. The stars are beautiful and bright and the air is sweet and clean.
• The back of the house is basically one giant window that faces said mountian.
• There is a porch in the back with a hammock (upon which I read a little HP this afternoon).
• I lied, there are TWO porches, one beneath the other, which is OUR porch because Drew and I have our own rooms in the lower level (not really a basement since the house is built on a slope).
• There is a club house (emphasis on house) that is basically a one-room, den-like place off the lower porch where Drew and I will practice when his grandparents are vacationing in Italy. (note: This particular addition was made to get all the kids out of the main part of the house so they wouldn't bother the parents as much.
• Our bathrooms have large tubs that have jets in them for massaging power.
• Did I mention there's still a beautiful view of the mountains from our room?
• The beds are almost four feet off the ground and ludicrously comfortable.
• There is a golf cart we can drive around.
• There is an upstairs that is basically four bunkbeds and a bathroom for all the kids who used to come here when they were young.
• There is a spiral staircase.

Pretty cool, eh? I feel like our summer vacation has finally begun. After our extremely dirty, hot, and, well...dirty summer in Kent, we're relieved to be here. On Friday, we start work at a local restaurant called Cornicoupia. We'll either be waiters or bussers. But tomorrow, Drew and I are going to have a picnic near some waterfalls and perhaps go tubing down a river. Best part about it?

NO HOMEWORK!

I hope you're all doing well and having a beautiful new year at your respective colleges or apartments or whatever. May only peace and happiness come through your doors!