One-legged grasshopper.

Posted on August 2, 2015 by luckyotter

A one legged grasshopper just chillin’ on a trash can at the local Fastop.

Spiderkitten.

Posted on August 2, 2015 by luckyotter

My daughter’s 3 1/2 month old kitten Zelda was climbing the walls today.

Full moon 2.

Posted on August 1, 2015 by luckyotter

This is a photo I took of last night’s full moon. I played around with the photo a bit to enhance the colors and moodiness.

Click photo to enlarge.

Last day of vacation.

Posted on July 26, 2015 by luckyotter

Relaxing by the pool.
A little sweet and a little sad.

The dead mall in town.

Posted on July 22, 2015 by luckyotter

Entering the Innsbruck Mall. Notice the 1970s era tile pattern on the gleaming white tile floor and the fake gaslight.

I finally got my registration this morning. My car’s legal!

But I’ve already said enough about the registration ordeal. This post isn’t about that. It’s about the building the DMV registration and title office is in.

It’s housed in a dead mall. The Innsbruck Mall in Asheville, NC to be exact. The mall is small but so famous it’s featured on Deadmalls.com, one of my favorite websites.

I love dead malls. They’re cavernous, creepy, and so very nostalgic.

The indoor mall’s heyday was the late 1950s through probably the 1990s, with their peak in popularity occurring in the 1970s and 1980s. After that, they seemed to lose popularity quickly in favor of the “big box” stores like Target, Walmart and Staples. No doubt the rise of online shopping had something to do with it too.

The Innsbruck Mall was a busy social and shopping center in the 1970s and possibly the late 1960s (I don’t know the exact year it was built). When the much larger and hipper Asheville Mall was built in 1979 or so, the Innsbruck Mall (which is just down the road and offered no competition), began to lose customers and its stores began to close.

Innsbruck is barely alive but someone’s keeping it on life support. Nearly all the storefronts are empty or boarded up, and the only inhabitants are offices of various kinds–the DMV, a couple of insurance agents, and one or two other offices–and inexplicably, a bridal shop (which just opened) that I’d bet will close soon just like all the other stores that have tried to do business here in the past 30 years. There are no longer any anchor stores. I don’t know who owns Innsbruck or why they bother to keep this dinosaur clean or even maintain it, because the mall is empty. The only humans you see there are the long line of people in front of the DMV and an occasional random homeless person who isn’t going to find any food or handouts here, since there aren’t any eateries or a food court and the only other people are DMV patrons who probably aren’t in the mood to drop spare change in a homeless person’s coffers.

I took some photos. The mall is creepy but very clean. It’s also a wonderful testament to late 1960s/early 1970s mall decor. When I was there today, there was actually 1970s music being piped in on the mall’s ancient, crackling PA system. It was quite eerie but in a cool way. I felt like I was in a timewarp and I wondered if the choice of music was deliberate. The DMV office looked just as dated, with dirty wood paneling, a worn beige tile floor, stained acoustic ceiling tiles, and unpleasantly bright fluorescent lights. I didn’t take a picture of it.

It makes me giggle that the plants surrounding the benches (which are real), actually look pretty healthy. Maybe they like all the old Elton John, Seals and Crofts and Captain and Tennille crackling through the speakers. Hey, I do and I’m not a plant.

Creepy empty storefronts.

Better view of the plants. They’re real!

ETA: I didn’t take a photo of the DMV office, but I found this one on Google!
Notice the tired 1960s/1970s wood paneling (which I’m pretty sure is original):

DMV at the Innsbruck Mall.

I found this photo of the mall from 2012–not looking much more active than it does now. Notice the faux-“colonial” architecture of the storefront. To me, that screams 1960s.

Here’s a “virtual tour” I just found too (from 2011). Both the Christian bookstore and the furniture store shown in the video are closed and nothing ever came along to replace them. They’re just more empty storefronts now. The long-abandoned Ingles grocery store is still there, creepy as ever. From the look of it, I’d guess it wasn’t ever renovated since it was built, probably at the same time as the mall it served as an anchor for. It’s green and white tile floor pattern, pale green walls, and overall look remind of the smallish supermarkets I went to with my mother when I was a kid.
The tour shown here is fascinating but kind of sad.

Here’s an even better virtual tour that includes hilarious commentary. 😀

Little gifts on a crappy day.

Posted on July 20, 2015 by luckyotter

Latest additions to my rock and geode collection.

Life can be surprising. On the whole, today has been a crappy day, but there’s always something to make a bad day more tolerable, if you just pay attention. God doesn’t forget about you even when things seem hopeless and you’re ready to either pull out all your hair or kill someone.

My day started like this. I’m trying to get my car legal but everything about it has been so hard. It failed inspection because of the emissions test. I go through this crap every year. Because I’m off work this week I finally have time to get this shite taken care of, but after everything I need to do is finally done, it’s going to eat up half this week. Cars require more maintenance and cost more than kids, I swear. Especially if you are too poor to buy a new one and are forced to drive an old beater like mine.

Sitting in the repair shop at about 9 AM and feeling put upon and surly, I posted this on my Facebook wall:

So i’m sitting here at the car repair shop trying to get my 13 year old junker fixed so it can pass the emissions inspection…or i can at least get a waiver from the dmv so i’m not driving this pos illegally anymore…gonna spend some time at the library or the rock shop while i wait. Then tomorrow probably going to have to wait around at the dmv all day for the waiver if i still fail inspection. This state just wants to suck money from you any way they can…if i lived in south carolina, florida or tennessee i wouldn’t have to put up with this shit, spend money i don’t have, and waste half my vacation on this. Sorry about all the lower case letters but i’m trying to type this on my phone.

They told me there were 5-6 cars ahead of mine and they probably wouldn’t be able to get to it until late this afternoon and I didn’t want to wait that long, so I decided to start walking home (I had no access to a ride and taxis are way too expensive). The walk home was 5 1/2 miles, in the burning hot sun, along roads with no sidewalks. I will NOT walk back today, but am prepard to walk back there in the morning to get the car early in the morning when it’s cooler (I’ll be sure to wear better shoes instead of the flip flops I wore today).

But it won’t be over. Not anywhere near it. Once I get the car, I have to take it back for a second inspection. If I don’t pass, I can take the second “fail” inspection plus all the receipts for the work I had done (you are required to spend at least $200 to prove you at least tried to get it fixed) to the DMV and stand in line for a waiver so I can drive the car legally. THEN I have to take the waiver to the tag office and tax office (two separate buildings) and pay for the registration and taxes. This crap is going to eat up most of my vacation week.

My court date is August 6th (I was pulled over last month for a expired tags because of the failed inspection) but this week is the only time I have to get all this crap done. I probably won’t have a day to just relax and do other things until Thursday. It really pisses me off because the car is safe to drive, and would pass inspection anywhere else. It’s a waste of time and money in my humble opinion.

But there were a few small things that happened that made this ordeal a little less aggravating and even made me smile. Before I made the decision to walk home from the repair shop, which is in an area with a lot of funky shops and outdoor eateries, I decided to get coffee and a muffin from one of the cafes. I sat down at one of their little outdoor tables, read a book I brought with me, and ate the muffin and drank the coffee, which were both delicious.

I happen to collect rocks and geodes, and across the street was a rock shop. Most of their rocks and geodes are indoors, but some of the less expensive ones are displayed on tables in front of the store or in little fountains. I found a large geode filled with white crystals that kind of spoke to me. The shop wasn’t open yet but an employee was just pulling in. I asked him how much the geode was and he said he thought it was $5. I was shocked such a big, beautiful rock would be that cheap. He said he’d have it held for me and to come back in 15 minutes.

When I returned, the woman in the store told me I’d been quoted the wrong price and it was actually $15. I guess she saw my disappointment because then she smiled and said since $5 was the price given to me that she would sell it to me for that price. I was overjoyed. I selected 3 small colorful stones (the red one in the photo is actually a piece of glass) from one of the outside fountains. So I walked away happy, prepared to trudge the 5 1/2 miles back to my house.

Along the way, I saw a dead bush whose branches intrigued me because of the pattern they made. This is not a black and white photo but looks like one:

About 45 minutes later (when I was about halfway home), I had to stop and rest and refill the water bottle I was carrying. I found a Shell station that had a little sitting area next to it complete with a bench to sit on near the curb. I placed the rocks down on the curb and took the beautiful photo of them you see at the top of this page. When I looked up, I saw something else–a magnolia tree in full bloom, so I decided I needed a couple of pictures of that too:

I walked the rest of the way home thinking about the post I was going to write and suddenly the issue with the car seemed a little less aggravating and overwhelming. I even felt that these little gifts from nature were God’s way of letting me know he was always there no matter what.

ETA: About 15 minutes before the shop closed, I called them and was told they were actually able to FIX the problem and I should be able to pass inspection, but was told to drive about 100 miles first to make sure the engine light doesn’t go back on.

So I got the idea to go back to The Light Center in Black Mountain tomorrow, which will put about 100 miles on the car. I found this place to be very peaceful and healing when I went there last September and wrote this post about it (this blog was exactly one week old!) I’ve been wanting to go back anyway while I’m off. (I don’t think this is incompatible in any way with my Christian faith). If the light doesn’t go back on, then I should pass inspection and will be able to bypass the waiver thing at the DMV and just be able to go get the car registered and that will be the end of it, God be willing.

Ominous clouds.

Posted on July 18, 2015 by luckyotter

For awhile it looked a bit threatening, but nothing happened and soon the hot sun was back out. It’s been like this all day, as if the weather has Borderline Personality Disorder.

Wild carrots.

Posted on July 16, 2015 by luckyotter

There’s always something by the the side of the road worthy of a photograph. Even weeds like these can be beautiful. Click photos for more detail.

Summer storm.

Posted on July 14, 2015 by luckyotter

At around 7:30 PM the sky began to get very dark, and a severe thunderstorm warning was issued. I drove to the nearby shopping center parking lot so I could get some good photos of the storm coming in.

It looked pretty impressive and scary as it rolled in, but turned out to be a washout, with rain but no hail, although it did get VERY windy for a few minutes just before the rain started.

I also got a couple of shots of the sky as the storm moved out, around sunset, and the colors were so pretty. (Click on the photos to see more detail).

Taken at around 7:30 PM:

I took these at about 8:30 PM:

Alone on the 4th…

Posted on July 5, 2015 by luckyotter

…just sitting on my darkened bug infested porch with citronella candles like tiny bonfires illuminating the painted mint green table with burnished gold

…I eat my buttercrunch ice cream from a chipped ceramic bowl and listen to distant fireworks
I remind myself that tomorrow the grass needs a mow…

…I watch as fireflies twinkle like Christmas lights
and mosquitoes intent on their suicide missions crash into the sulfurous flames
and sizzle like dying fireworks.