I know, it's been a while.

I know it has been several months since my last post, but things have been busy and hectic. Some of you know the reasons why, but I will catch others on what's been going on. April has had a rough two and a half months with kidney stone surgeries and the like. She had four surgeries, and was in and out of the hospital during that time. I was working at Summit Coffee most of that time, a little coffeehouse in Davidson, NC. It was a very cool place, and I loved working there, however the pay was very minimal, and there was no insurance option, which I needed. April has free insurance through the school system, so I just needed it. So, I was offered a job at Caribou Coffee as a shift supervisor, which is as close as they have to an assistant manager, so I took it. The pay was a good bit more an hour, and there are benefits. So, I have been there for about a month. I like alot of it, alot of it peeves me. It seems to be a good company, with a lot of emphasis on serving fresh, great quality coffee. I like that part, but it is a corporate environment, and as such, has like 18 million policies about everything and anything. That aspect gets a little annoying at times, and I long for the free spirit of the independent coffeehouse. Heck, at Summit I picked the music, a coffeehouse playlist that I played on my iPod. I wore whatever I felt like that day. I wore my hat forwards, backwards, wherever. I know Caribou is going for a specific thing, and they are doing what they need to achieve an across the board continuity.

So, one thing I have been doing is working on my Barista certification through the SCAA and Counter Culture Coffee here in Charlotte. Counter Culture is a roaster out of the Raleigh area, and was named Roaster of the Year last year. They have a training center here in Charlotte, and I have been attending classes there. Anyway, in one of the classes one of the leaders told me I would be perfect for a position she had in mind. Habitat for Humanity is opening a coffeehouse in one of their local ReStores, and they need a manager/director. It seems to be a good fit for me all around, and April and I agreed we would look into it, which I did. I interviewed Monday, and we will see.

Now, I bet you wonder what's going on with The Bean'ry! Well, it is still in process, it is just taking longer due to lots of variables. One is, the builder came back with a build-out estimate that is $100,000.00 more than we had originally estimated, so I am waiting on a meeting to get with him to go over his estimate to scale it down to where it needs to be. If it gets scaled down evn half, that still leaves a good bit more than the church was going to be putting forth in an initial investment. Also, the initial arrangement seems to have changed a little, and I want to meet with my pastor to go over that aspect, and he has been in and out of town, and very busy to get ahold of. Another thing is the leasing agent had originally told us one number for the main space we were looking at, and now she is saying another figure that is $2 more a square foot, and on a 3500 square foot space you are talking about a good amount. So, we are holding out for them to go back to their original price I was quoted. So, I have had to wait, but The Bean'ry is still in progress, it's just a matter of taking a little more time than we had anticipated.

April is loving her position at the school. She is teaching with three other P.E. teachers at a magnet school, a language immersion school. She likes it, and she is not threatened by her students like she was at her previous school. The only thing she does not like about the school is the traffic getting to and fro, as she works in the middle of Charlotte, and boy does Charlotte have crazy traffic. I really do think it is worse than Atlanta's traffic. Other than that, she still has a few kidney stones, but right now they are too small to bother her much. The disease she was diagnosed with, Renal Tubular Acidosis, will form them for the rest of her life. Sucks, I know, but we take what we get, I guess. She is doing well now, though, and that is a relief to both of us.

We have been doing some with Blood:Water Mission recently, and got to see the Jars boys up in Asheville at a free concert a couple of months. We got to hang out with Charlie a good bit after the Jars show, and even had some special guests! Libby Perry and Kathy Hightower have been good friends of mine since I lived in Augusta, and drove up for the show, and since Charlie had reserved us spaces, we all sat in the front row, middle! It was great to see the guys again, and to hang out with Libby, Kathy, and Charlie Lowell. We also helped with a Derek Webb concert Monday night, which was cool. It was good to see Derek again, and he looked like he was doing well. I will see him and Andrew Peterson again in a couple of weeks when they come back to Charlotte, and we are supposed to be helping with that show, too, which will be cool.

We did make up the mountain to Boone for a couple of Saturdays in October to see the leaves, which were beautiful this year! We also got to go to an Appalachian State football game, which was great. It was ASU's homecoming game, and it was great to be able to take April for that.
We also got to do the corn maize maze this year! It is something we had always wanted to do, and got to do it with some friends of ours from church. It was alot of fun, and I am happy to report it only took us 30 minutes, as opposed to the other two groups that took over an hour and a half! I was also able to attend my family reunion this year, and it was good to see my dad's side of the family. The picture is of me and my Nana. It was in the NE corner of NC at Lake Fontana. I will try to write more later, as I know I have forgotten things. Enjoy the pics!