It's Wet Outside.

Here are three Hurricane Sandy related pictures for your wet and wild afternoon pleasure. For those of you wondering about the window situation, so far, so good . . . mostly. So far everything is still intact, but there are some fun leaks springing around my A/C units.

Stay dry east coasters!

So true.
I'm the one with the bow.

This actually went around the office on Friday.
It was hilarious to hear people randomly burst out laughing. 

A friend of mine shared this picture.
It was taken this morning at the tomb of the unknown soldier.
That is dedication.

Now This is What I Call a Preemptive Strike!

As most of my family knows my living room window and heavy winds don't get along very well. In fact, in the year and a few months that I've been living here, my window has popped out four times.

The first was during Hurricane Irene, when my window popped out at 4 a.m. Fortunately my mom was there and (after nearly an hour of holding in place ourselves) we finally came up with the ideal to lean my empty bookcase against a box against my window. That worked pretty well and a few hours later we hit up Lowes for some tape to hold it in place a little less cumbersomely.

It next happened a few months later. This time I was prepared and taped it in right away.

And then two more times after that. . . .

Well, when I heard that Hurricane Sandy was supposed to pound us with mad winds on Sunday and Monday (and maybe even Tuesday), I (with my parents' urging) decided to make a preemptive strike this time around.

Enter the 2 x 4.

For the record, a full 2 x 4 will fit in my car. Who knew?

My window is now taped, braced, and as I discovered today, it's also screwed into the window frame. I guess maintenance got tired of visiting my apartment armed with a caulk gun. However there's only one screw and it's not flush with the frame, so I'm not convinced that it will do much good, except to prevent the plexiglass from falling completely out. I've also got towels packed around the A/C unit to catch all the leaking water that inevitably happens when it rains hard.

So, BRING IT Sandy. I'm ready for you.

Just don't take my power. . . .

Apocalypse Now.

I don't know if you've heard about it, but the middle atlantic area (i.e., Arlington/DC/where my parents live) was party to a killer wind/rain storm on Friday evening. 

I happened to be in downtown DC at the time and not only witnessed a funnel cloud of newspapers, dust, and popcorn (not a real tornado obviously, just an annoying wind thing) and a ridiculous frog squelcher of a rain storm, but I was standing in it. 

Soaked.

Great times.

Eventually it ended and on Saturday we all started picking up the pieces. We had tons of branches and leaves down in my complex and so many people didn't have power (and still don't have it) it's crazy. I'm pretty sure that we are in worse condition than last summer when the hurricane hit. That was basically a day long storm, Friday night's storm lasted two hours at most.

huge tree branches fell everywhere!

People were pretty much acting like the apocalypse was happening. Grocery stores (at least the ones with power) were cleared out and gas stations were (and some still are) completely depleted of their gas supplies...

Which made this super scary... 

Super scary. Never want to see that again!

 Yes. That is my car's distance to empty meter. I actually had about an eighth of a tank, but when I last got gas, I foolishly only put about a gallon in because I thought I could get it cheaper elsewhere.

Big Mistake!

After trying to get gas at two separate stations (which were completely out of gas) I ended up having to wait in line with all the people who were fearing the worst (no gas ever again) and the people who were silly like me, for about 20 minutes. Then, I paid about 20 cents more than I had paid earlier because the only gas left was super duper premium.

I think I've learned my lesson.

But at least I have power and internet, which is more than many, and my car didn't get damaged by falling branches or anything. Too bad my window fell out again, otherwise I would have come out completely unscathed.

Maybe next time.

Not Yet Please.

June 10 is far too soon for my thermometer to say that it is 109 degrees outside.

Granted, the temperature part is currently sitting in the sun and the weather channel only says it's 91... 

but I'd say that 91 degrees is still too hot.

Houston, We Have A... Weather Station!

Where did winter go? Apparently it didn't go anywhere, since good ol' Punxsutawney Phil (and the newly crowned Potomac Phil... weird) predicted six more weeks of winter. But it was in the high 60's yesterday and felt downright balmy.

Know where else it's been feeling downright balmy? My living room. Thank you radiator.

This is a super old picture.
I've since shortened the middle curtain because I was afraid that
the crazy heat that the radiator was emitting would hurt it.

I'm not exactly sure what it is that causes my radiator (and sole source of heat in the living/dining/kitchen areas) to turn on, but when it does, get ready to die of heat, because it gets super hot and my living room becomes a sauna.

It's horrible.

It was almost the subject of a fantastic post I was going to write called, "Welcome to my Sauna," but I felt weird writing about how hot it was when I couldn't actually tell you, so, I finally invested in a thermometer. Now I'll know the outside temperature (convienent for dressing appropriately in the morning... yes Grammy and Leslie, you can say I told you so) and the inside temperature, so I can justify running my air conditioner at full blast in January.

I never really wanted a thermometer because I couldn't quite figure out how I would do the outside temp part, since that usually requires you to put a little probe thinger somewhere. But this one is neat because the probe is attached to a super skinny cord that I was able to shove out my window. Very convenient!

I'm pretty excited about this.

I'm Dreaming of a White... Thanksgiving?

Thanksgivings (or at least the-day-before-thanksgivings) with snow are weird.

What a Lot of Red

Traffic is no fun... Especially in the rain. At night. When you're hungry.

It's never good when you watch your GPS go from saying you'll reach your destination at 10:35 p.m. to saying you'll reach it at 4:45 a.m.

Holy Earthquake!

I (along with thousands of other people up and down the east coast) just experienced my first ever earthquake!

That's crazy right?

A 5.9 earthquake.

Since when do we have those in Virginia?

I happened to be in the parking lot of my apartment building with my mom when all of a sudden the van started shaking. We looked at each other and were like 'did we just experience an earthquake?' All the other people in the complex ran out of the buildings... It was crazy.

My brother called and said that he had felt it at home and my uncle called and said that he had felt it up in Vermont!

I'm just glad we survived and that it wasn't a terrorist attack...