Claire van der Plas

Well I've made  break for it and got out of the valley. It was the lawn mowing that got to me in the end.

Time to plant them beans and squash.
All the leaves we dug into the garden plots in fall are now...still leaves. Guess what? Things rot much faster in Auckland than they do here. Grow faster too. But I think it'll work just fine and the crops are in - beans, squash, zucchini, melon, tomatoes, lettuce, broccoli, spinach, kale, eggplant. Hopefully they'll all be ready by the time we're flat broke later in summer.

My current contract came to an end and because the State of North Carolina (like many others) yanked budget back from the Universities there will be no new full-time contract for me in fall. Also for the same reason there are very few jobs advertised in my field anywhere. I do have part time work lined up and as long as Mark has some part time work too we'll be able to make rent and get groceries. The landlords were very kind and dropped the rent when we said we'd have to look for something cheaper. so we're staying, which is great because it's a lovely little house.

So Mark's applying for jobs all over the place and in the meantime he's registered as a school bus driver and a relief teacher. (I'll give you all a moment for your minds to stop boggling at the idea of Mark choosing to work with people of the 3ft tall variety).

Boggle at this instead....

Yes! It's my old pal Marie and me acting like complete eejits as usual. Marie swung by for a visit on her way back from visiting our good friends Lynn and Dave and their new baby boy in Edinburgh.
We went to Asheville for a day and among her purchases were this amazing Mexican wrestling mask and fluffy kitty pom pom hat. So of course we had to model them. Lots of fun. Lots of gin & tonics too of course. I'll spare you the air guitar photos that came later.

It was great to see Marie and also catch up with John, Pip & Michalea Stroud in Atlanta. Here's us at Stone Mountain Park.

Mark and I had gone down into Georgia just a fortnight earlier to go to an Anzac Day picnic just south of Atlanta and meet other antipodeans and maybe make soem job hunting contacts. It was a nice day and we met some cool people.

We also recently took a trip to Nashville Tennessee to see a show called Paint Made Flesh which was great, especially the painting Hyphen by Jenny Saville which was HUGE and fantastic. Nashville seemed pretty touristy and since we're not into country music it wasn't really our scene. We drove back via Chattanooga, which seems a handsome city, and some beautiful river scenery through the Nantahala Gorge. We stopped to get some pizza here...

This place is run by some very colorful local mountain folk. It was...an interesting experience. It was raining and one of the guys was chopping fresh green logs for firewood. They were trying to get an outdoor firepit going, but it didn't want to light.  A few gallons of gasoline fixed that. By some miracle no-one got set alight. The pizza was fine.

We've lit a few fires of our own in the back yard to grill steaks on. yum yum. The trees behind Mark in this photo are all fully green now. It's been raining quite a bit with thunderstorms interspersed with hot sunny days. Everything is incredibly green. I saw the first hummingbird of summer the other week.

So now it's officially fully spring in our house. Cataloochie closed today so that's the last weekend of work as a ski instructor for Mr Rookie of the Year (!!!!!!!) Mark. 

Went to the open day at Penland School of Crafts.

Snow last weekend. Snowboarding Tuesday.

Sure is cold.

Wow! I went skiing the other day with My Husband The Hot Ski Instructor at his new place of employment Cataloochee Ski Area. Huge huge mountain. Acres of powder.

Touristic cliches. Candy box pictures of the fall colors. Spot the new kid in town who hasn't seen a northern hemisphere autumn for several decades. It sure is purty.

So the mail is in the mail, your voices are on video, the movie has moved across the ether, the invites are out, it's almost time.