Long time no see

Sorry it's been forever since my last post. For a while I wasn't writing anything when we were still living in Cashiers because, well, there was nothing to write about. The last couple weeks were mostly work-filled an exhausting. Kate needed a place to stay for a couple days before she got a ride home for her fall break so Drew and I moved in a little earlier than we expected to. The house is wonderful--I'll take pictures and post them later. The carpet is new but wasn't vacuumed after it was installed so there are lots of pleasant little furry loose carpet hairs everywhere. I'm sleeping on a mat on the floor with two sleeping bags until I feel financially stable enough to purchase a futon.

Believe it or not people, I was this { } close to working at A&W again. I had an offer there for a job starting at $7/HR 40 hours a week. I wasn't too happy about it but I was just relieved to have a job. Then, the weekend we moved in, I got a call from Earth Fare, a local health food grocery store I applied to a couple weeks prior on one of our one-day job-hunting excursions. They had a position open and I went in for an interview. Erin, a lovely woman who works at the juice bar, was mostly responsible for getting me hired. Now I work about 37 hours a week at the slicing meat, bread, and cheese at the Deli, and also in this other position called a "floater" which is basically someone to clean up spills, wrangle carts, provide help to departments that are swamped, and clean the bathrooms and take out the trash at the end of the day. Benefits are as follows:

Official Benefits:
-$8/HR
-20% discount card
-1-2 week (I forget) paid vacation after a year
-Paid sick leave
-Affordable health/dental insurance
-401K plan after 1 year where you can put away up to 3% of your income and Earth Fare will match you (making it virtually 6%) and after 3 years you can walk with that money

Unofficial Benefits:
-I get to eat "broken" cookies at the deli
-Free pizza in the kitchen sometimes (usually around 7PM)
-Hot Bar food is dirt cheap (70% off) for employees after 8PM (normally $7/pound) because it's 50% off plus a 20% employee discount
-I get to learn a lot about food and cooking
-Wonderful co-workers (already have made some friends!)
-Great supervisors

I've said this to a lot of people already but I've had higher paying jobs and I've had easier jobs but this is without a doubt the best job I've ever had. I actually like going to work. They've got a list of ingredients they won't allow in the store, including but not limited to: partially hydrogenated oils, artificial colors, flavorings, and sugars, and no GMO crops or milk that was made by cattle fed GMO food. Most of the store is organic and almost all of it is "all-natural" meaning either they don't use anything artificial in the process, or they're a local farm with not enough money to be certified as organic. Drew and I are making a real effort to buy all organic food, eat lots of veggies, buy local when we can, and not buy so much cheese (it's damn expensive) or meat. I'm mostly vegetarian now, but if it's free, I'll eat meat. The people at Earth Fare are pretty quirky but hell, so am I.

Asheville is gorgeous right now. I walk to work (it's only a mile away) and I take the long way, down a long road with beautiful properties with forested areas on either side, then come out at the end at the Western North Carolina Livestock Market. I think it's abandoned or at least not used currently, but there's the Stockyard Cafe right next to it that opens at 6AM so I might get breakfast there sometime when I go to open in the deli. I hear a lot of the leaves are off the trees already in Ohio but for some reason they're just glued on here. A lot have fallen off but it hasn't gotten to that critical point where enough fall to rake them into big piles (and then jump in them, of course). Our neighborhood is quiet, the neighbors are wonderful people, and there's a gas station down the road that sells biodiesel. There's also a great music shop called Harvest Records where Drew and I have collectively dropped about $150 dollars so far on vinyl. Drew got three Coltrane albums, an Explosions in the Sky LP, and a Battles EP. I bought two Do Make Say Think records, an Akron/Family LP and an Ulrich Schauss album. There are many more albums there that I've put imaginary future money away for, but they'll have to wait.

Basically, we're in the long process of getting settled, facing an ever-increasing list of things we need to buy. This is the original list:

Bookshelves
Bed
Stereo
Dining Table
Water Heater Insulator
Shower Curtain
Table for the Mac
Microwave
Juicer
Reading Lamp
Scissors
Paint
Tape
Cutting Board
Dressers
Bedstand
Curtains for doors (I have no idea what this means, Drew wrote this--maybe he's talking about those hanging beads they have all the time in headshops...or maybe he meant "curtains for windows" who knows)
Renter's insurance
Bikes
Tea Pot
Steamer/Iron
Coffee Maker
Vacuum Cleaner
Mop

Some of the stuff we've bought but most of it is waiting on the shelves at various stores for our loving embrace. We got some furniture that was stored on the back porch of Drew's grandparents house. It is the furniture that the Veres' were given when they first got married so it's pretty sentimental for Drew. We also got a great lazy boy chair from a neighbor that really goes well with the paint in the room but is a kind of horrid shiny yellow corduroy. At least it's clean.

Well that's about it--we're just trying to make friends here and get settled. Tonight we're going to babysit Drew's cousins so that should be interesting. Lots of XBox 360 and World of Warcraft, I assume.

Hope you're all doing well and I promise I'll be a little more regular about posts in the future.

Have a bright and beautiful fall day!

<3 mark