Sunday, January 18, 2009

The Joys of Moving

Well, what can one say about the trials and tribulations of the moving experience after moving almost every three years for the last 45+ years. Well, it doesn't get any easier that's for sure. OK, you do pick up tidbits of wisdom on "best practices", but bottom line is that is still takes a lot of hard work/patience and the ability to remain extremely flexible (semper gumby as they say). Here's my better half plugging away at the 150+ boxes of stuff. What a trooper!



About half of our stuff did not go to Norway and was in storage for the past 3 1/2 years. I guess you could say it was sort of like Christmas (on a large scale) as we opened up some of the boxes and discovered some of our long last treasures. Both of us are looking forward to the day we can display them on a permanent basis. Each piece has its own story, whether purchased on some Navy adventure, handcrafted by Chris, or handed down from a past generation.




And the down side of moving....your stuff ends up like this poor globe!


On the bright side, you also get to experience new and interesting restaurants. After experiencing quite a few "bad" food experiences in the past, we now look for verbal recommendations before taking the plunge. Our prospective builder gave us a tip on a good Italian place in Asheville. The small, family run restaurant is in a strip mall along a busy road, somewhere we would not have thought twice about, but with a good word on its food we went to it the other night. And to our delight, the recommendation was valid. Here's a small portion of their menu...


The atmosphere was cozy and it was packed with locals. We started off with an appetizer of fried calamari. The batter was light and came with a nice dipping sauce, some greens, olives, roasted peppers and a deep fried lemon on top. A nice start to the dinner...


As we sat eating our appetizer, the plates of other patrons started to roll out. Of course the portions were huge, but looked very appetizing as well. Our interest was peaked. And I think our service started to get better as well as we started discussing our food, taking pictures of the menu, our food and the interior of the restaurant. I almost think that they thought we were food reporters or food critics, well whatever works!

Here's Chris' Farmhouse Rigatoni....


And my Penne with Sunday Gravy....


All in all a very good food experience. We will definitely go back to this place. And to top it all off we got a Cannoli to go. The Cannoli ended up as part of breakfast, but hey nothing like dessert for a quick "pick me up" in the morning.

Speaking of breakfast, oh no wait that was in my younger days...here is another benefit of moving. Finding a store that specializes in import beers! This place is downtown Asheville and boasts approx 700 beers from around the world, although I think they over exaggerated the numbers of beer. Anyway, it is called "Bruisin' Ales" and here's their website: http://bruisin-ales.com/index.php. And below is my haul for the visit. A dabbling of various beers, one even comes from a way far off place called Baltimore. The "Below Decks" beer is made by Clipper City Beer Company and is modeled after an English Barleywine style ale. Can't wait to get underway with this 10% beer.

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