[gmku]

In my efforts to orient myself to my new town, I have vowed to venture to some new thing or part of town every day. Yesterday I made my way to the J. Crew store in the Biltmore Village shopping district. Today over my lunch break, I made my way downtown, found parking, and discovered a grunge-oriented and rather dismally hip coffee house called Izzy's Coffee Den (superlative coffee but sucky service--evidently surly and lesbian is the new hip and cool) as well as a really decent record store called Voltage (bunch of great used and new vinyl). Tomorrow I intend to find another record store (name escapes me now) on the west side of Asheville.

Getting around here is pretty easy.

Asheville has great radio stations, too. Right now I'm listening to World Cafe after an hour or so of listening to a very smooth and intersting broadcast of alt-country/folk style music on a local radio station WNCW-FM, or something like that.

Oh, yeah, and work--going well so far.