It's a "2 for 1" Kind of Week

Have I ever told you that before I decided to major in Art History in college, my ideal career was Storm Chaser?  I was hampered by not having the proper curriculum offered in my home state combined with a fear of leaving said state for school.  Which is kind of funny looking back on how far away I've traveled since then.  At any rate, I am not a storm chaser, but am still enamored of crazy weather.  I look forward to all major weather events and natural disasters with a childish glee that scares my husband.  He worries for my sanity.  It's not that I want to be in the middle of something that will kill me.  I have no death wish.  But the raw power of Earth is a beautiful thing, and as long as I can experience it in a way that keeps me alive, I will.

The whole time I lived in California, I kept expecting to experience an earthquake.  It's not like I wanted to the ground to rip open beneath my feet or anything; having some glasses rattle and my bed shake is plenty fine.  It never happened, though there were a few that were near enough to me that my family freaked out for me.  I didn't even know about them until I found I had a bunch of frantic messages on my phone.  So the fact that my first earthquake experience was in Philadelphia on Tuesday was disorienting.  I think if it had happened in CA, I would have been like, "whoa! this is an earthquake" and went with it. Instead, I woke up to my bed shaking, the whole building swaying, and thought maybe it was being torn down and no one had checked to make sure everyone was out.  Look, your brain does not function quite right when you first wake up.  Shut it.  The only casualty was my cuckoo clock, which fell and busted.  I think I can fix it, but all things considered, this was probably the best I could hope for in terms of experiencing an earthquake.  I'll go ahead and cross that off my list.

An electronic billboard on my way home from taking Bri to the train station today.

Just when I thought that was my excitement for the month, I find out there's a hurricane coming.  DS keeps telling me it's no big deal, and in hurricane terms, he's totally right.  As of this moment, Philly is still in Irene's path.  It's projected to be somewhere between a CAT1 and a Tropical Storm by the time it gets here.  Either one would be a first for me, and neither are likely to cause my building to fall down, so I'm excited.  To be on the safe side, we brought all my plants in tonight while it's still dry out.

This room will probably be infested with spiders now...

My tomato is still growing.  It's insane.  The netting is to keep the birds from eating the ripening tomatoes.  Bastards.

We live downtown on the 4th floor of a building, so flooding isn't an immediate worry as far as our stuff is concerned.  I suppose there's an off chance our building could float away, by which I mean like 0.05%.  However, both rivers surrounding us are expected to flood, and they're only 2.3 mi apart where we are.  The Delaware River is 2 blocks from me; I can see it out my window.  It's kind of weird, because we're not on the coast, but we're very close to the mouth of the Delaware, and it has tides up here.  So flooding in my area is entirely possible.  My weather app on my phone is also telling me loss of power is a possibility, so we've gathered the candles and charged all our spare batteries again.  The main thing I worry about with loss of power is losing the internet.  That should tell you something about our worry levels.  And probably something about how much I use the internet.

My plan is to read Game of Thrones, quilt, and take photos.  Maybe I'll even get inspired to write another song.