mrs. BAUMbach, mrs. BAUMbach

dudes !!! yesterday around 3pm there was a huge storm in philly. i didn't think that much of it, because i'm from florida- it lasted about 20 minutes tops with wind and hail and torrential rain but like... again, that happens several times a day every day all summer in florida ! i didn't think it was a huge deal, but when i went outside there were tree branches and fallen trees everywhere on penn's campus ! when i got home, i saw that there was a giant tree bough in our power lines and everyone was outside, which i correctly guessed meant our power was out.


the corner of my street

i talked to my neighbors and heard that the electric company had no estimated repair window, so i called mouse to ask if i could stay over and packed an overnight bag and headed to milk and honey to use their air conditioning and internet until mouse was home. unfortunately, everyone else also had that idea and i ended up sitting in a random table-less chair eating an ice cream cone while a 5 year old stared at me in pure jealousy and contempt as her mom tried to make her eat food that wasn't an ice cream cone.

after that, mouse and i walked over to clark park to check out the devastation. it was pretty crazy- TONS of trees were down, like 100+ year old trees, with random dudes with chainsaws cutting them up for firewood. here's a mixture of pictures mouse and i took (his are the real pictures, mine are the camera phone ones):


people climbing on two downed trees


mouse trying to pet a dog


boughs surrounding the world's only charles dickens statue


kids climbing on trees


another downed tree at the 43rd and baltimore entrance of the park

we went over to mouse's afterward and he made spaghetti (i wasn't hungry cause, um, i ate an ice cream cone) and then we ate a ton of watermelon and watched tv. at this point i was getting really cranky because i hateeeee not sleeping at my house, but mouse was being reallllllly accommodating and cool and nice (not that he isn't usually, but he totally doesn't usually put up with my tantrums). we walked back to my house to check if the power was back on, and it totally wasn't, so we went back to his house and went to bed. this was at like, 10pm, which is roughly four hours earlier than i usually go to bed (mouse and i have very different lifestyles, though if i didn't have cable or video games i'd go to bed at like 5pm).


early to bed !

soooooooo at around 2am, the heat in his building started BLASTING. he said that they were hotter than they'd ever been in the winter ! at around 4, it woke mouse up, so he put wet towels and a blanket on top of the radiator. that helped for awhile, but around 5am it became unbearable so i gathered up my stuff and went home. i felt bad leaving him in the disgusting heat, but i had to get out. the power was back on at my house, but our internet and cable were out, so i got bored and came into work super early. now i'm going to leave early because i've been here foreverrrrrr.

comcast (the worst !) is sending a technician to check out my cables since they say the service interruption in my area was fixed. it's obvious that like... a cable is loose somewhere because the picture on the tv/internet/phone service kept flickering in and out, so hopefully they can find the problem without me being there, causeeeee i'm at work.

i have no real plans this weekend. hopefully my internet will be fixed and i can play some video games? other than that, i want to:

- straighten up my room
- do my reading for my history class (it hasn't started yet, but the instructor suggested we do it in advance)
- work on my craft swap scarf (and possibly go pick up 2 more balls of noro kureyon for it at loop)
- hang out with christina if she finishes her paper (my baby's first class is almost over !)

what else? i just got a few cheap summer dresses with an old navy 30% off coupon.


i'm going to remove that belt and wear a wide black belt with it


also going to wear a wide belt with this

i don't care about clothes still, but i'm trying to dress like a normal person at work. i think most clothing looks weird on me (because all plus size clothing options suck) but wide stretchy belts have really opened a lot of doors for me cause now i can just wear whatever... belted.

okay i'm gonna go do a mild amount of work and complain about my crappy night to coworkers to get sympathy !

i eat stickers all the time

heyyyyy dudessssssss. i'm feeling pretty good ! i slept pretty well last night and once i'm done writing this stupid thing i'm going to get a gigantic iced coffee !

you guys haven't really missed much. our internet was out for a few days, so comcast came and replaced our router. it confuses me that no one at comcast understands how the internet, computers, tvs, or cable works. like every single person i talk to is clearly doing that thing where they make up an answer and hope you don't understand computers or whatever enough to question them.



among other things, he told us that the reason our internet was fucked up was because our router was too old and not "compatible with xfinity" (really? it isn't compatible with an intangible thing that amounts to little more than a marketing campaign?), that hdmi cables "don't work" (the sound on our dvr box cuts out, and he said it was because "hdmi cables don't work" and no one uses them and we should use component cables, which are "the same"), and asked me if i painted my frank frazetta prints.



anyway, our new router seems to work. i'm really nervous because i'm taking online classes starting in july and i hope to have a reliable internet connection so i don't have to take them at work.

when christina got home from work yesterday, we watched youth in revolt. i remember liking the book, which i got in the same shopping trip as girl by blake nelson, both based solely on their covers, with a walden books gift card i got at school for being a nerd.

+

i can't say i actually remember much about the book so i couldn't really compare it to the movie, but the movie was really wooden and dispassionate. like, there were definitely some really weird/funny things in it, but overall it seemed like everyone was phoning it in. they had a great cast too ! it just like... lacked any kind of feeling or excitement which seems like important stuff for a movie about first love and blowing stuff up. i assume the book wasn't that good either though because i barely remember anything about it, though i totally hated girl and i remember every single word of it (todd sparrow, cow dress, we are all pretty candy, sins of our fathers, etc.).

i knitted for awhile and made some progress on the entrelac scarf. i'm being super annoyingly insecure about it because i can't believe anything i don't like is desirable in any way to any person, so give me some reassurance. here's some stuff i don't like.


entrelac scarf


john krasinski


bell peppers


mint stuff that is green instead of red, pink, or white

no one likes any of that stuff right? ugh. i hope my craft swap recipient has an art teacher aunt she can pass it on to if she hates it.

last night i was going to kill zombies with ken, but i missed my chance, so i ended up watching love in thoughts, which i only added because i'm weirdly fixated on daniel bruhl (my celebrity crushes have no rhyme or reason- my last big one was bill paxton? and this was before big love ever aired, when he was pretty low profile). i'm happy to report, though, that i am into him even when he isn't dressed as a nazi (my biggest fear being that i'd somehow developed a "nazi thing") !



the movie is about a suicide pact gone awry. it takes place in the 70s and involves a straight virgin and his openly gay best friend getting involved in a weird love triangle (virgin is in love with his best friend's sister, sister is in love with HANS, best friend is also in love with HANS, HANS makes out with brother AND sister, sister's best friend is in love with virgin) that leads to them deciding to kill everyone who stands between them and love (aka sister and HANS) and then kill themselves. it was really beautiful to look at, and they did a wonderful job portraying first love/first sexual experiences. the actress playing the sister, hilde, was really amazing, especially considering that she was like 18 or 19 when it was filmed. it was a little frustrating to watch a german subtitled movie though because i could understand what they were saying 75% of the time and it didn't always match up with the subtitles exactly. so like, maybe don't watch it if you took a bunch of high school german?

by the way, the reason i kept capitalizing hans is because hans was super funny looking and it was so funny to see people pining for him !


HANS

i have to go make fundraising calls now. twice a year, every year, everyone in my office has to do it, and it's always the worst day of the year. at least hardly anyone answers !