boy oh boy

Do I have a lot to post about today!

Well back over the summer I decided I did not want to be home for Thanksgiving. I looked around for cities that we could road trip to that we hadn’t done before, and decided Asheville NC fit the ticket. My parents decided to come with us too! So we booked an airbnb so we could all stay together and not in separate hotel rooms.

So we left Wednesday bright and early. Mom and dad stopped and got us cronuts to eat on the way. We caravaned – mom and dad drove their car because they were going to have to leave earlier than us. We stopped at a Buc-ee’s on the other side of Nashville for lunch:

I have been in a lot of very busy, over-stimulating Buc-ee’s, but this stop took the cake. It was SO BUSY and crowded I ended up grabbing my sandwich and a drink and then hiding in kitchen goods until it was time to go. Worse than disney on a holiday!

It took longer than expected to get to Asheville because of traffic. Several times we were just sitting in crawling nearly stand-still traffic. By the time we got to NC it was dark out and the map took us down some twisty back roads, I guess trying to avoid the interstate issues.

Got to our airbnb, which was a 2 bedroom loft over a coffee shop.

It was really nice to have a full kitchen, a living room where we could all sit together and separate bedrooms.

We headed across the street to a bbq place to have dinner, got dessert to go and brought it back to the airbnb, where we watched the tiger game on the ipad LOL

Thursday – Thanksgiving Day – we loaded up in the car and headed up to the top of Mt Mitchell.

The views were incredible and it was funny watching the outside temp reading drop lower and lower as we got higher. Look at all the ice! Also it was wild seeing all the damaged areas up in the mountains.

Got to the top and turned around. By that point we were hungry. We figured this is a tourist area, there should be some places open for lunch. I also had a whole list of places that were open for thanksgiving saved. We decided to drive to Black Mountain and see if anything was open there – nada. What a cute area though, we’ll have to go back. So I referred to the list I had and turns out most of it was fancy sit down dinner things. But we found a pizza place about 15 minutes away, and headed that way. They were open! Went in and discovered they were serving free lunch to the community for Thankgiving. We didn’t want to take free food meant for the community so we left. Headed back towards our airbnb to look for anything open and no dice. Ok maybe a chain? A Starbucks? Nope, closed. By this point it was 2:30 in the afternoon, we were starving and had dinner reservations at 7, so we just needed something to hold us over. We ended up at an Ingles grocery store getting chicken salad sandwiches. LOL

Back to the airbnb for a quick nap and changing clothes.

We had dinner at Red Stag Grill in the Grand Bohemian Lodge. What a gorgeous hotel!

It was a pre-fixe 4 course meal. I got the pumpkin bisque, a ravioli, the turkey entree and pumpkin cheesecake for dessert. All so good!

My parents made a friend while waiting on the car.

Next morning we went to Biscuit Head for breakfast.

Their cat decor was cute!

Then we went to Grove Arcade and had to wait on things to open, but at least we got to sit inside (it was cold outside!)

Did some shopping. We all got hats LOL Mine was a cute knitted hat with sheep on it. I didn’t get a pic, I will later!

Next we headed to the Moogseum. Dad was looking forward to this. I got to play a theremin! It was fun!

We had lunch at White Duck tacos which was really freaking good. I wish we had one here! Also here’s mom and dad’s new hats LOL

Went to an art store, and then to a big art place called Marquee that’s basically a giant warehouse with tons of artists booths. It was so cool! We walked around there for a couple of hours. I bought a shirt. There was one art piece I realllly wanted but they didn’t have prints – followed the artist on instagram hoping to maybe one day see prints available.

Back to the airbnb for another nap. We headed back out to see if the bookstore I’d wanted to go to was open now before our dinner reservations. It was – cool place and I bought a book.

Then we headed over to Lobster Trap for dinner and even though we were about a half hour before our reservation, they got us in.

Mom and I had lobster rolls, Chase had crab cakes, dad had cioppino.

Back to the room and discovered a whole rifftrax channel AND they were showing Planet of the Dinosaurs. We used to have a VHS of that at Mema’s and me and Cath and Rach and Dave would watch it allll the time.

Saturday morning my parents loaded up and headed home – dad had a gig Sunday he had to get home for.

Chase and I went to Antidote for breakfast – what a cool place! I had a latte and goat cheese danish. Yum!

Then we spent the rest of the day at various antique, vintage and other kinds of little stores. I got a pair of vintage gloves at the big antique store we went to – that one was fun, lots of cool stuff to look at.

We dropped some stuff off at the airbnb and checked out the Cheese shop below us.

We got this amazing cheese dip and crackers there which would hold me over for the next couple of days in important ways when things went south LOL

We headed over to West Asheville and got a donut at Hole. Bought a record at a record shop, checked out book and vintage stores. Found a vintage fair. I did find this old 1979 Star Wars book I wish I’d gotten now. And a red bomber jacket I’m still thinking about. I did get a vintage 80s sweater that is SO of its time. I don’t have a pic – I’ll post one later, because I’m on the fence about removing the little sewn-on applique on the front.

Had lunch at Botiwalla – yummy! Altho I didn’t even think about the cilantro and had to pick it off LOL

Came back to downtown, more vintage stores, a cat store, book stores, etc. It was a fun day.

Headed back to the airbnb as it was getting dark. We decided instead of eating out somewhere, we’d order takeout and hunker down and finish watching the new eps of Stranger Things. We’d watched the first ep in chunks when we could, but I was starting to get spoiled, so I wanted to get the rest of the watched ASAP.

We ordered takeout from a place called Jack of the Wood, and watched the last 3 eps. God I love this show. So good!

Headed to bed so we could be up and out early in the morning. Around 3 am, I was awakened by a loud slamming, followed by a lot of yelling. Looked out the window, it was a man and a woman, each sitting in their own cars parked right below our window. She was screaming “YOU DON’T LOVE ME! YOU DON’T CARE!” at him. He got out and stood next to her driver side door. More yelling. Finally they quieted down and we went back to bed. Was woken up by yelling again at 4:30 AM – looked out and they were STILL OUT THERE and this time he was yelling at her. They were both sitting in their own cars again, both cars running. She was wrapped in a blanket, vaping. He kept lighting a lighter. She threw something out of her window at him. More yelling. Laid back in bed, looked out at them again around 4:45. Still there. Looked again around 5, and they had finally left. What a drama!

Got up the next morning, finished packing, took out the trash, laid out the towels and loaded the car. Chase went to start the car and it started fine… but the dashboard sent up a lot of errors and wouldn’t change gear into drive or reverse.

Did some research and it seemed related to the way we were parked – we were parked on an incline, nose down. The first fix we tried was a jump because it may have been related to a low battery. Chase’s little remote jumping kit didn’t work, so we got on the insurance app and requested a jump from a professional. We waited in the coffee shop for him to arrive, and he tried jumping it to no avail. We still had some time left in the airbnb so we went back up there to warm up while we figured out what to do next.

So after reading a bunch, we came to the conclusion that if we could just get the car to flat ground, it would be fine. But we’d have to have it towed there. So we got back on the insurance app and requested a tow. Props to our insurance folks because they were ON IT. They got a local tow arranged, and it was supposed to arrive around 12:50AM, a little over an hour later. By that point we’d had to leave the airbnb, so we sat in the car and waited. It was cold.

A little before 12:50, the ETA was updated to 1:30. Ugh. Ok. We waited. A little before 1:30, the ETA updated to 2. UGH. Our insurance guy kept checking on us. We called the tow company directly and they apologized and said he’d been called to a wreck but he was “ON THE WAY NOW” — and then the ETA updated to 2:30. And then 3. By 4 it was apparent this guy was not coming so our insurance guy canceled it and ordered a new one, and it was going to be an hour to an hour and a half for him to arrive.

The thing that was so frustrating is that we couldn’t GO ANYWHERE. They kept updating the ETA right before it was supposed to arrive, so we had to stay there thinking it was going to be here within 20-30 minutes. So we couldn’t walk to a restaurant to eat or warm up, we’d risk not being there when he arrived (and we needed to be there to explain the situation). I ended up eating a lot of that cheese dip and chips we’d got at the cheese shop the day before – that was all I had to eat all day until dinner! Thank god for that cheese dip.=, it held me over.

By this point we’d come to terms with the fact we weren’t making it home today. I emailed my boss and put in PTO for monday. Chase called his boss and let him know. Even if the new guy showed up in time, there was no way we were going to risk driving the car overnight and have something go wrong in the middle of the night. Thankfully we called the airbnb folks around 2 and they said their other, smaller loft – right there in the same building – was still available for that night, and they were able to give us a code right then and there so we could go on in and warm up, well before check in time. Much appreciated!! It was a little pricey but worth it to not have to lug our luggage somewhere else and have somewhere warm to wait on this tow.

Tow Truck driver #2 finally showed up around 5 I think? He understood immediately what was going on and why we were only towing it to the parking lot around the corner. He got it up on the flatbed, moved it – and it started up JUST FINE. It was 100% the angle throwing off the sensors – plus the driver said it was also because it was low on gas.

So this was all super frustrating. We could’ve been home yesterday if the first tow truck place hadn’t jerked us around for hours.

Chase wanted to drive the car around a bit, so we at first tried to drive to a Culver’s for dinner – but it was apparently way further away than we thought so we abandoned that half way through. (Bummer, we don’t have culver’s here and I really wanted it LOL) We drove back into town, found a mcdonalds and brought it back to eat at the “new” airbnb. This smaller loft was really cute! It also had Maxfield Parrish prints on the walls which I appreciated.

Ate dinner, took a hot shower, laid around on the couches for a bit before crawling into bed around 9. We were exhausted. A day of doing nothing but waiting really takes it out of you LOL

Next morning at the buttcrack of dawn we got up, got the car loaded again (it started fine!) and hit the road just as the sun was coming up. Ate some more cheese dip to hold me over again until we got to Knoxville. We mapped our way to a Chick-fil-a – only to discover it took us to one on the UT campus that was like, inside their food court. Mapped to another one nearby – same thing! LOL Finally found one and got breakfast. The little detour did take us right by the sunsphere at the con center where we went for Adventurecon years and years ago. I was like, “I took Poison Ivy pics RIGHT THERE!” LOL

Made friends with a crow at a rest stop.

Rest of the drive home was uneventful. Stopped at a Buc-ee’s for snacks. Finally got home in the afternoon just as rain was starting here at home – there was a chance for it turn to sleet so we really wanted to get home before it got bad. Took a long nap, cuddled with Luna.

Grand Canyon Luna

Chase picked up dinner, and then he went to the HOA meeting while Luna and I vegged on the couch. He got home and we started the new Defunctland video, and then went to bed early because again, we were tired.

Discovered this at the front door as I was shutting down the house! She arrived so much faster than I thought!! YAY!!

Work was crazy today. Since I was out unexpectedly yesterday I didn’t have my Out of Office notification on and I came in to a shitstorm. Also still don’t have yesterday figured out PTO wise. Will tackle that later.

Anyway, shitty Sunday aside, and cold weather aside, we really really enjoyed Asheville. We’re already talking about going back again when it’s warmer next year. I loved the vibes of the city. So much art and good food!

Now that we’re passed that, its time to start white backdrops. I’m so ready. I need new picssssss

12/5 EDIT: OMG I forgot to add – lost a contact for the first time ever. And didn’t realize it til hours later. Long story short, mom found one on the ground in our airbnb, I assumed it was this one old one from our bathroom counter at home that kept getting stuck to the bottom of stuff and had already escaped the trash once — I figured it had hitchhiked to NC with us. Nope. It was my right contact. And I didn’t figure it out til going to bed that night. Had to wear my readers the rest of the weekend which was a PAIN but at least I had them and wasn’t blind/unable to read my phone for the next 4 days!!