I start the day working while Julia sleeps. I often do this when I have free time and I’m on vacation because I may have some defect, or I also like to go back to work and not have people freak out that they need something from me. I chip away here and there until Julia wakes up.
This morning is another sort of washout day, as the rain starts up at 9:30. The weekend is not panning out in terms of weather – or much of anything for that matter. – but you take what you can get. At least I’m doing something different this weekend.
We hop out of the AirBnb and go for breakfast at Green Sage Cafe. Cheryl suggested it the day before and it was a good place to grab a bite to eat. We sat outside, and while things were not normal, they were definitely not especially abnormal. A couple sat and ate their breakfast not too far away with the dog sitting there with them.
After breakfast we drove over to West Asheville to check out some of what’s going on there and unfortunately on a Sunday morning not much is open. We found a hiking store which had a few trinkets we bought. The book store was not open and I could not find a good coffee in this neighborhood which is an oddity, to say the least.
We did find a book store in Asheville proper. Julia got some books and we dropped them in the car and walked around some more. We found a huge store of miscellany which had all sorts of things from local artists as well as other tourist trinkets and places to spend your money. I bought Julia a necklace.
We walked around a bit more and got some Ben & Jerry’s which more or less topped us off for lunch.
Randomly while walking down the street, we saw my friends Matty & Patty driving by. They swung through and we talked in the parking lot. Mind you, they also live 650+ miles away in NJ and we just happened to run into each other this morning.
Back to the room to watch some YES Theory before heading over to Terren & Cheryl’s in the early afternoon.
We hang out a little bit trying to figure out what to do with the day. In the absence of a phone Julia has picked up doing Sudoku. It’s a good mental exercise and she’s pretty good at this stuff so I encourage her to keep at it.
We talked about going for a hike of some sort but Livy hurt herself when she crashed her bike a few days ago and she doesn’t want to hurt herself further.
We end up all piling into the minivan and heading over to the Retrocade which is a retro-arcade, over in West Asheville. Unfortunately the occupancy limits combined with a rainy Sunday equate into a line that doesn’t seem to be moving. Since there is no timetable on when we might get in, we head in another direction.
We go to a big parking lot and the kids practice driving. Then we get donuts. Woo hoo to the south! The we drove around a bit more while Terren explained the different neighborhoods. Cheryl, meanwhile, had gone food shopping.
We head back to the house and just hang out. Oddly I find myself fitting right into a sort of uncle role with these kids and I enjoy just hanging out with everyone. One thing that becomes obvious is that the 3 adults really have not missed a beat. Julia would remark about this later, that it doesn’t seem like we haven’t seen each other in so long. It’s like we’ve just been hanging out every week forever and we just saw each other last week. It’s really nice to see that between us, and for Julia to notice.
Dinner is burgers and tots.
After dinner we put together a game of 7 Crowns which we also play at home from time to time. Julia seems to always win or lose, nothing in between. Tonight she manages to pull out a victory over Terren by a point or 3, I forget.
We end up staying late, just talking and hanging out. The younger 2 kids went to bed earlier and the 3 adults and 2 teenagers stay up and chat for a while before it is time to call it a night and head back to the room.
Even though we did not accomplish too much today, it was a really good day to hang out with some old friends.
Traveling Normandy 