Ruminations on Life, Now.

So, it's been two weeks to the day since we moved. It is also the Fall Equinox and last night hubbie and I sat outside at The Prospect and toasted the moon with an icy PBR (we needed some downtime from the beer amazingness that embodies Asheville). Life in Asheville is pretty much COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than NYC. Sure, there are the common threads, like hubbie and the cats and my favorite coffee mug, but so of my daily life is so very different.

A major change in my time on the computer, which has gone down substantially. My normal week in NYC involved about 7 hrs daily in front of the computer -- working, emails, surfing the net, etc. Now, spending time with Dad, meals with the family, running errands, visiting friends, seed meetings, gym, breweries, antiquing, etc. have lowered my computer time to about 2 hrs per day. Sure, work still =s computer time, but the surfing time has gone to almost nil. I kinda dig it, at least for now. I'm interested to see how winter changes this aspect for me.

Also, I've gone from riding my bike 24/7 to driving everywhere. I thought giving up my bike (at least for now, no place to park it in the condo) would be more difficult than it has been. The car is a necessary luxury, and I try not to take it for granted, but it does make my life easier. From picking up Dad from exercise class to loading in large bags of potting soil and shrubs for Mom's yard to heading up Rt 209 to Hot Springs for a lazy Saturday in the mineral tubs, it's just HANDY to have a vehicle, though it is definitely making me think about our next car being more green.

Speaking of green, probably the most difficult part of our transition has been our condo's location. Who knew it could be noisier in Asheville than the Lower East Side? Living next to a helicopter landing pad (MAMA) hasn't helped, and the fact that Asheville High School is across the street and the stoners park next to our condo doesn't help either. Kids are LOUD at 8am chainsmoking American Spirits. Zoiks! So, while the condo is awesome in regards to location / city living -- it is not at ALL what I imagined when moving home to this lovely mountain town....Ditto for the rush hour traffic.

I have to say that my food preference is definitely Asheville, simply because (at least where we're living, downtown) almost every restaurant has amazing, local, fresh, affordable food so it feels easier and certainly more convenient to go out and have a great meal. That said, I've been cooking less (crappy kitchen) so I'm hoping to start getting back into the cooking mentality, and the farmer's markets here are pretty rad. I'm looking forward to Saturday morning's City Market as I found a fall soup recipe for Ribollita -- a fantastic rich Tuscan dish -- that I'm really excited to try.

I'm super happy to be back at my church where I'll be spending today in a silent meditation in reflection of fall and the equinox with my mom.

So far, two weeks in, I'm happy and optimistic about this "year of transition" --though I'm somewhat anticipating the shoe to drop and overwhelming nostalgia for NYC to rear up at any second. For this, I'm working to adopt my mother's mantra: day by day.