Had a great weekend in Asheville. I'm not sure I have ever had a bad weekend there. oneandonlymatt actually left for Asheville last Monday and spent the week up there doing some work. The plan for me was to drive up on Saturday and stay until Sunday when we would both come home.

Now, my car is a 1996 Saturn. While it is a good little reliable car that gets me to and from work every day, we weren't convinced that it would do well going up and down the mountains to get to Asheville. So, we rented me a car. On Friday, I went to Enterprise to pick it up before I went to work. I had reserved a compact car and when I got there they told me I could get the brand new, 2010 Hyundai Elantra with all the bells and whistles. It even had XM radio. Now, I will tell you that I do not want a Hyundai Elantra but it was pretty fun driving a nice new car for a couple of days.

I got up at 4:15 on Saturday morning. I got ready, put my stuff in the car, gave Piglet her food and water for the weekend and left for Asheville. I stopped for gas on my way out and hit the highway at about 5:15. I have never driven there on my own, but having been there so many times I had no problem finding my way. I got to the Downtown Inn on Patton Ave by 8:15. After Matt got finished getting ready we went straight up to Mt. Matt. He had decided not to camp because it was getting pretty cold at night in the mountains. However, it was absolutely gorgeous during the day. So, we spent the day insulating the tumbleweed house. We got the walls 75% insulated. We stopped half way thought and went to the brand new French Broad Deli and Cafe, which was right on the cut off to downtown Marshall. We had a great lunch and then went back to finish our work. We had to finish up around 5:30 because it was threatening to get dark.

We went back to the hotel where we relaxed for a bit before going to the Thirsty Monk for dinner. We went upstairs to the American Craftbrew bar. They had two different Bell's beers, the Double Cream Stout and the Winter White. Both very tasty. We also got a "build your own" cheese and meat plate - very tasty. I was pretty exhausted, though, so I went to bed pretty early.

This morning, we decided to go our separate ways. No, not permanently. Matt wanted to leave early and get home in time to go to the sports bar to watch the Lions game. I wanted to go to church at Jubilee and leave after that. It was a nice service, as usual, but this is the time of year where things are a little more introspective than celebratory in their liturgical calendar. I ended up leaving a little early because I was ready to go home.

I got back to Atlanta, turned in my rental car, and picked up my own car by 2pm. I met Matt at Mazzy's to have some lunch and watch the Vikings beat the Lions.

Now, we are home and I am just chilling out.

I do have photos of our insulation work. As soon as I download them and get them up on flickr I'll be sure to post the link.

Edited to Add: The link for the photos on Flickr... http://www.flickr.com/photos/13073825@N07/tags/asheville/

In honor of a dear furry friend, Kody.

It is hard to believe this was so long ago. Piglegt was only 8 months old! Now she is 8 years.

I use to post all the time about my "upcoming events". Then, once we started working on the Tumbleweed Tiny House I put that on hold and posted almost exclusively about the building process.

We're coming up on Winter, so things will be slowing down a little on that front, so I thought now would be a good time to go over some upcoming events.
( things I will be doing soon... )
I think that is all. I'm not a stress ball yet, but I expect to be relatively soon.

PS - sorry for typos and such. After typing all that I don't feel up to editing.

off to Asheville with the mom. Real post soon, I promise. In the meantime, a little Halloween song...

I am a huge fan of the show How I Met Your Mother. Marshall's song from the last episode is the funniest thing I have ever seen. Check it out - but do so somewhere you can turn it up!

http://www.itwasthebestnightever.com/

We told some people about this yesterday. Enjoy:


Now off to see the Lions play the Steelers. Truth is, the Fast Food Folk Song might be the best thing I'll get to watch all day.

Don't you think Piglet looks like the zombie dogs from I Am Legend? Except less deadly. You know, she is all hairless and blotchy in color and stuff.



PS - I tried to find a still of the zombie dogs from the movie to compare, but apparently my google foo is not that strong today.

I just have a few moments before I have to leave for a doctor's appointment.

We had a fairly light weekend in Asheville. The only job on the docket was to kill the mold, which appears to have been dying anyway - with it getting cold and less wet. We got up on Saturday and decided to go get coffee at Zuma in Marshall and then drove around. We wound up in Mars Hill where there was a street fair going on.

We got back to Mt. Matt about noon, had some lunch and then got to de-molding. We used MoldBlaster and sprayed the whole house. Once the mold is dead, we will treat with boracare the next time we go up.

After all that, we went to dinner with our neighbors and a good time was had by all.

Yesterday, we went to see the Lions game at Baylee's Sports Theatre in South Asheville. We won't talk about that.

Here are the photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13073825@N07/sets/72157622288371869/

oneandonlymatt and I were back in Asheville this weekend, as you might expect.

( Read about our adventures here )

Here is the link to the photos on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13073825@N07/tags/asheville/

Coming up to Asheville always fuels the creative side of me. As many of you know, I have been writing for years. I've been published before (both in PanGaia Magazine and Llewellyn's Magical Almanac), but for some reason lately I have been at a wall with my writing. It wasn't that I was unable to produce work, but more that I was waiting for "something" to happen so I could move forward.

I realized it was stupid to wait. I was working on a devotional project for Persephone and I just have all these peices stored away on my laptop. Why not start a blog! Why not share them with anyone who is interested in reading them.

So that is exactly what I just did.

Please check out my new Blog: http://maidtoqueen.blogspot.com/

Please spread the word to anyone you think may enjoy reading what I have to say.

Just some images of the Great Atlanta Flood of Ought NINE* courtesy of our friend lerg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/akalat/sets/72157622310693017/detail/

He lives in a condo complex right next to where our old apartment was. If we were still living there, this is what we would have experienced. Except, based on the time line presented I would have never made it home!

*I originally had Ought Eight. My only excuse was that it was very early in the morning when I first posted this.

oneandonlymatt told me about I Fight Dragons. They were going to play a show at Dragon*Con. We listened to them and I fell in love! Then we saw them live last week and it was even better.



I <3 I Fight Dragons

I told a couple of people to watch some YouTube videos this weekend. Here they are for easy reference

A link for all four Sad Wolverine videos:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=8346CC5CD1731C81&search_query=sad+wolverine

And an old favorite, Charlie the Unicorn. Inspired by a costume we saw of the two unicorns and dreamsidhe hadn't seen it.

I wanted to get the information for D*C 09 down on virtual paper before I forgot. So, in brief, here is what happened:

( Dragon*Con 09 )

Some friends are playing a show tonight at the Magic Bag in Ferndale or Royal Oak or wherever it is. Go see them - Troubled Ones.

However, the best part about The Magic Bag is that the photo on their myspace page shows Superfiction on their marquee. That's oneandonlymatt's old band. Several members are now the Troubled ones. Go see them.

Last week, instead of going up to Asheville, oneandonlymatt and I went to the Len Foote Hike Inn. It was actually Matt's Christmas present, but since I had to schedule so far out we didn't go until last weekend. You check in at Amicalola falls and hike 4.9 miles to a lodge in the woods. It has a bunk house, a bath house, a dining hall and a social building. There are pretty outdoor places to watch nature too. Eveything there is done with an eye toward conservation. It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed it. The hike out was more brutal because I had just hiked 5 miles the day before.

When we reached civilization again we joined reikimaster and thunder24 for a game at the Gwinnett Braves Stadium.

Oh, we also saw District 9 last Friday night. I liked it quite a bit. I loved the style and the storytelling. I loved that it was an average person - a cubicle monkey really - who found himself in that situation. I am glad they didn't cast an A List Actor in that role.

This week has been spent pretty much getting ready for Dragon*Con. My costume is done and I am ready to go. Matt is going up to Asheville this weekend with lerg. I am staying home to get the house cleaned up and pack for D*C. dreamsidhe arrives next Thursday evening and the fun will begin.

The weekend after D*C, Matt and I are heading to New Orleans for the Lions opening day game against the Saints. Two very different weekends of fun - fandom and football. I am a renaissance Wheezinggirl.

I wanted to at least come by and post the link to Flickr for the most up to date photos of the Tumbleweed House.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13073825@N07/

We had a really great time. In a nutshell, we took Matt's mom to Asheville and took her to see the house. She was really impressed that the two of us had done most of the work by ourselves. I don't think she would even fathom building any part of a house. Then we went to French Broad Fridays - a citywide event in downtown Marshall. Our neighbor's studio was open and we got to go hang out with her and see what she was working on. Then we went back to Asheville and checked in to the hotel. Ethel was done for the night so Matt and I walked to Sante and had some wine and a chocolate flight. Then we turned in for the night.

The next day, we left Ethel in the hotel and went up to Mt. Matt to do some more work. She spent the day riding around Asheville on a trolley tour and had a great time. We got everything accomplished on the house that we set out to do (first time the whole project that has happened) and we were satisfied when we went back into town. We went to Table for dinner and then back to the hotel to watch a movie. Watched I Love You Man, which was surprisingly funny.

On Sunday, Ethel went with me to Jubilee. I love that church. Then we met up with Matt and went to Lowes to see about ordering a roof. They couldn't answer our questions (we want it to be safe for rain catchment and not have any weird chemicals), so we couldn't place the order. Then we had lunch at Green Life Grocery (yummy sandwiches) and came home.

Once home, we watched a recording of the first Lions' preseason game this year. We won - but we won all of our preseason games last year too. Then Matt and I watched the latest episode of Being Human on BBC America. I really like that show, but I think that Mitchell is a very irresponsible vampire!

And that is all. Matt goes up in two weeks without me and then we won't be back in Asheville until late September (Dragon*Con and a trip to New Orleans for Lions Opening Day happen at the beginning of September).

oneandonlymatt and I went back up to Asheville this weekend to do some more work on the house. We got there Friday night like we normally do, went to bed and got up early to start working.

Saturday started with a trip to Home Depot where we got the plywood sheathing for the house as well as some 16 foot 2x4s for the top plate. We got back to Mt. Matt and unloaded. Then our friend Chris came up, arriving about 1pm. He wanted to get right to work, so we got everything up to the worksite and got busy. We put up the collar ties, which are essentially the joists for the storage loft above the door and the sleeping loft above the bathroom and kitchen. That turned out to be an easy process, but Matt informed me that he had spent days on end thinking about how to do those the best way, and obviously that obsessing paid off.

After our work was done for the day, we had to take the truck back to Home Depot. We had originally planned to go into Asheville for Bele Chere (the music festival) but Chris decided he didn't want to go. The headliner was the Family Stone - without Sly - so Matt and I decided we weren't invested in that. So, instead we went to Longnecks in Marshall. We got there minutes after they were starting to close up the kitchen, but the bar was still open and the owners said they could make us a couple of things. We told them we would be fine to find somewhere else, but they insisted and we sat at the bar and ate like kings. We talked with them for hours about their travels around the world and living in the Madison County area and the things they had built on their land. They had been a husband and wife team of realtors but now they own the bar. The wife asked us a lot of details about our land and as it turns out, she was the agent for the woman we bought it from! We were there forever and had a great conversation.

We finally went back to Mt. Matt and I crashed. Matt and Chris stayed up and made a small fire and I think they both went to bed around 1am. We got up the next morning and got started on the wall sheathing. We got the bottom half done all the way around and cut all the top pieces, but then it started to rain so we needed to clean up the work sight and tarp the Tumbleweed House. Chris left around 2:30 and Matt and I left around 3:30. We decided to stop at the Asheville Pizza Company for dinner, which was fantastic. Then we got home around 8:30 and watched Being Human on BBC America and went to bed.

Check out the latest batch of photos on Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13073825@N07/

I got my Dragon*Con costume in the mail yesterday. dreamsidhe's mom made it for me. Considering I wasn't there for a single fitting and she had no pattern, it is amazing. I just have to tweak a couple little things for it. I also have to make a couple of the accessories. I have a few things already and I just ordered a couple things from ebay as well. I have to go to Michael's for the rest.

D*C is only 7 weeks away! Squee!