I wouldn’t have believed this prior to moving to Asheville.
It sure took it’s time getting to me, though I suppose that is what makes it unexpected…

Well…In preparation for the move and in an effort to take some of the lessons I have been learning from all of the Clean House marathons I have been watching lately (don’t ask. I have no good answer besides procrastincation.), I had a yard sale yesterday with lots of my junk and some of Wylie’s things. It was a week of living in mayhem to get ready for it–stuff literally everywhere in various stages of being sorted and whatnot, but the big day came yesterday and it was very interesting…Up very early to get everything out there and set up in a way to make junk look appealing somehow…And it must have worked! The people started coming around 6:30 and it was steady until about 10. Many things were sold, and many treasures have good new homes. It seems that having a pile of “free” stuff makes people want expired microwave popcorn, 1/2 used bottles of turtle wax, and gently used three ring binders–luckily the majority of that box went to a teacher.

The best thing about it–besides the money at the end and the feeling that I had somehow gotten something for nothing (which isn’t true at all, but somehow it still seems that way)–were the characters. I found out that I have a neighbor accross the street who likes to stay up all night (she literally got home as I was setting up) and wanted me to know that she used to smoke a lot of pot with the kid who used to live in the front unit of my house. This explained lots of that kids’ behavior before he moved out. I also could have had a new boyfriend in a mumbling man who “just rides” on the weekends and picks up lawnmowers to repair and sell for $30. I was not interested. There were other characters as well, and the social scientist in me spent a good part of the morning trying to come up with a good research question so that I could do a study of yardsale folks…so if you have any ideas, let me know. I could not come up with anything that was justifiable, really.

Mainly, it is really satisfying to get rid of so much stuff. Once it got too hot to even think about staying out there any longer (around 11), I packed up what was left into my car–stuffed it to capacity, actually–and left it at the Goodwill. Ahhhhhh….I got my living room back! The craziest thing about it all is that we are literally 2 weeks from moving now. Hooray! Very soon we will actaully start talking about Texas on this thing….

Before the move I am trying to get in as much kayaking as I can since I think I will not get to do a lot while in Texas. Things could change, I am just assuming that there will be more flat water, and less whitewater for me to enjoy. I have no video of the river itself since I have no way of keeping my phone dry, but here is a short video of the drive (it takes 1.5 hours from Asheville to get to the Nantahala) and a little bit of the river from nearby the takeout.

I heard today that some folks were trying to contact Teresa and myself via this here website. There was only one option before today and that was to leave a comment on one of our posts. All you have to do is look towards the end of a post and click on the link that says No Comments yet, add one », or Read the # Comment for this post, or add your own ». Both of those links will take you to the same place so you can add your own comment.

Let’s say that comments are not your thing and you want to leave a private message for the two of us, well now you can do just that. If you look up top, not all the way, just under the big 10gallonhat up top, you will see the new contact tab. Clicking that will send you to our new form page where you can write us an email. Please note that this email will go to both Teresa and myself, so do plan on us both reading it.

We hope to hear from you soon.

Have we mentioned that we have an apartment? I don’t think so. Or maybe I forget. Well, we have an apartment! The image above is from the road in front of the house. We just got some photos of the inside of the apartment, so now we know that the whole thing is real and not a scam. Or if it is a scam, it’s a really good one.

So, the place looks cute from the outside, and it looks pretty big on the inside. We might need more furniture. Or we can just see where we end up next year after this Texas adventure before we start to fill up this place with stuff that might not fit into the next place.