Time to go home.

On Monday afternoon I picked up lunch at Chick-fil-a and got onto the Blue Ridge Parkway, and ate my grilled chicken sandwich at a random scenic overlook.


Sorry, but my best-laid plans to update while in Asheville sort of fell by the wayside again.

It has been a WONDERFUL visit. I found not one, but five apartments that would all do nicely, and I could be happy in any of them. I do have them ranked in order of preference, but each has something to recommend about it and any one of them would work just fine. Amusingly, my first two front-runners from my internet scouting were eliminated right away, and one I never heard of jumped to second place in the ranking. I'm setting Dec. 1 as my move-in date. They can't tell me about availability until residents start giving notice, so I'll follow up the first week in October. OMG, I'm really doing this! It's so exciting, and crazy, and I love it!

But of course, there are photos of the beautiful Granddaughter. Here we are in the tasting room of the French Broad Brewery. In Asheville every day is take your child to a brewery day; this was our second brewery stop on this visit. The first had great beer but a really primitive tasting room. On the very hot afternoon we visited, there were two infants, a couple of preschoolers and a couple of friendly dogs hanging out.

The tasting rooms are located in small industrial areas and are un-airconditioned and very warehouse-like. This one was more fun for Granddaughter, because the tasting area is adjacent to the big shiny beer tanks, and there was music and a mirror ball and ceiling fans. She enjoyed it very much.



We also visited prospective wedding venues for the planned October, 2011 wedding. DiL2B has her heart set on an outdoor ceremony in the fall, and that needs to be scheduled a year in advance. We have two really nice prospects, and one I perhaps tactlessly dissed as like getting married at Medieval Times Dinner Theater (but I'm sorry, it was!) The search will go on, and I think I'm glad I'm missing it. My nerves can only handle one wedding at a time, and Mother of DiL2B has the pleasure of dealing with this. As mother of the Baby Daddy, I will show up when I'm asked to and smile a lot.

It really has been a delightful trip. I spent time with the baby, time with the future inlaws, and it was great. My apartment search made me much more familiar with the city, and by today I honestly knew how to navigate and recognized landmarks and even learned a few shortcuts. This is IT. This is what I'm going to do. It feels so right.