And so it begins…

These two photos were taken from my house on Saturday afternoon in Medford, outside of Boston. I cannot get over how HUGE this storm is — the center of it is still down in North Carolina, and we’re already seeing the start of it up in Massachusetts!

We’ve been getting ready for a couple of days, but this morning my landlord and her husband came over to help us finish preparing the house. He cleaned out the gutters, and she helped us close all the storm windows. (To close mine, we had to take on a beehive in the corner of my window with only a hockey stick and some air freshener. That was fun.)

Right now, my car is in the driveway within shot of a tree and a telephone pole. I’m going to try to move it to a covered garage in the area tomorrow morning, but it might just have to stay put: right now, the garage isn’t planning to open to the public until after 70 mph winds are supposed to hit us, and there is no way I’m walking home in that, lol!

Hang on, East Coast!

Around the house… my new place in Medford.

The nice thing about moving to France after college is that, by comparison, everything afterwards seems so much easier

It’s been a long week without Internet, but it was finally installed today, so I can post these photos from Monday! The drive up wasn’t too bad, aside from how it began raining the moment I crossed the Massachusetts state line. That didn’t seem to bode well, but it let up by the time I got into my house, and I was able to unload the whole car that first night.

Since then, I’ve just been unpacking my room and the kitchen and watching a lot of TV on my laptop while I waited for the Internet to be installed.

Speaking of which, there are many things I miss about France, but there are times when I’m really really glad I’m back in America.

Like when I need an Internet connection.

In France (as you may recall), I had to go to the office in person, lug all the equipment home myself on the tram, wait several weeks for the first appointment with the technician in which he told us the line was faulty, get my landlord to sign an authorization slip, make another appointment with the technician… and finally got working Internet one month later.

In America, I called Comcast on the phone, got their earliest appointment, waited three days for the technician to show up with everything he needed, discovered the line had to be rewired, watched the technician rewire it on the spot, and voila! had working Internet one hour later.

So congratulations, Comcast — I’m sure I’ll complain to high heaven about you in the months to come, but at least you’re faster than the French.

(Then again, Whole Foods does not know how to properly bake a baguette, so…)