Day Trip: Black Mountain

Last week, i picked up a magazine about day trips in North Carolina.  Yesterday, we decided to take off and do one of the suggested trips, to visit the small mountain town of Black Mountain (note: site was down as of this writing, so keep trying).  What a cool little town!

Black Mountain is about 2 hours from Winston-Salem, right on interstate 40 this side of Asheville.  Its "downtown" is full of quaint, quirky shops.  Our first stop was the Acoustic Corner, where David (not our David, of course) educated us on the nuances of banjos, dobros and mandolins.  Then, there was map store, the gourmet chocolate shop, antique stores galore, a household gadgets place called the Common Housefly (don't ask me why).  There, the kids immediately smelled the coffee aroma, and i showed them the bins of beans.  Jackson had apparently never seen coffee beans before, and he asked why they made coffee out of bugs.

After lunch at My Father's Pizza, where we sat on the streetside deck, in the rain alternating between drizzle & downpour, we strolled up & down Cherry Street.  The Seven Sisters Gallery.  Ice cream cones at the soda shop.  The Ivy Corner antiques (Emily: "I know why they call it the Ivy Corner... because it has ivy and it's on the corner of the street.").  Bone-a-Fide, a bakery for dogs.  Yes, dogs.  The Black Mountain Iron Works.  Garrou Pottery.  And ending with the Town Hardware &General Store, which was full of old-timey things.  Oh, and the amazing used book store, a special treat for bibliophiles & antiquarians.

We spent the most time in Song of the Wood, learning how to play the hammer dulcimer, the lap dulcimer, and other mountain instruments.  We bought a Bowed Psaltery.  I hope to post a picture soon of Emily playing it.  She picked it up almost immediately, easily figuring out how to translate the tunes she knows on the piano.  I have to play it backwards/upside down, but i've got it, too.  Maybe next time, we'll get a starter hammer dulcimer, or maybe a mandolin.

Back from Hosptial

Can't write much, but wanted to let everyone know that i'm back from the hosptial after my laproscopic gall bladder removal surgery yesterday.  Not in too much pain, just an annoying wavering pain in my right shoulder muscle.  The docs say it's from releasing gas (CO2 from the surgery, not intestinal gas), but i'm not sure anymore.  Seems the gas bubbles would have been worked out by now.  Anyhow, keep it treated with a hand-held massager and a heating pad.  All in all, that's not too bad.

I remember absolutely nothing about the surgery.  Kudos to the needle-doctors.  Though the writer in me would really like to have had a conscious experience to tell about.  The last thing i remember was being asked what color cap i wanted (though i had to be reminded afterwards about even that much), and how i warned the nurses that they better pick the right color (Duke blue, not Carolina blue).  Shades of Reagan and his quip:  "I hope you're all Republicans."  After the cap caper, my next memory was of the rough jostle transferring me off the surgery gurney to the post-op recovery bed.