Day 28: Fall is here

Sometimes when I wake up in cold rooms it makes me incapable of leaving the bed for a few hours and I can´t do anything about it or explain why- it just happens. Since I own a smartphone now the timespan of silent suffering automatically expands because I can check tumblr, nap, check Facebook, nap again and as long as I don´t get hungry there really is no reason to get up. Especially on a sunday when a cat is sleeping next to me.

I guess it took me about 3 hours to get up today and I am not sure if I should be proud or ashamed for it but I´m gonna put it on the internet anyway. In the kitchen I ran into Cheryl, one of Kitts roommates, so we ate breakfast and talked.

Cheryl operates an urban garden in the neighborhood where local children that don´t have access to parks or nature can learn about gardening and responsibility. She explained a lot to me and I think this is one of the best projects/causes I heard about in a long time.

The cats were totally pissed today because we were running out of cat food and it was actually really funny to watch them. Gizmo, the one that follows me around and, as I know now, belongs to Cheryl, just pretended to be mad and had a hard time on deciding if she hates or loves us. But she made her decision and is now helping me writing this blog entry. 

In Baltimore some districts are open on sunday so buying new cat food was easy. Cheryl planned to go to Hampton and I decided to join her since I heard that there should be a comic book store nearby. My phone does´t have service in the US so all I do the whole day long is walking from one wifi-spot to another in order to keep contact with my hosts. She dropped me off on 36th Avenue and I got myself hot chocolate because it was still very cold and even with my new thrift store clothes I don´t own warm enough stuff. The area consists of a lot of Antique stores, coffee shops, restaurants and gift stores. I ended up buying newspaper cut outs and stickers for my ukulele. 

As I finally found "Atomic books" I didn´t really like it. There were a lot of people in there and the room was very open so you had no chance to wander around a discover stuff, everything was just presented. But they had a very good independent comic book corner with self-published works by local artist. I bought myself "milk and moo" by Yumi Sakugawa which is about two cats that have to take care about existence itself and right now I don´t understand it but I´ll have time to think about it on my bus ride to NY tomorrow and I think it has some kind of deeper message.

The plan was to find wifi and contact Cheryl as soon as I was done so maybe she could take me with her if she´s still in Hampton. The sun was setting again and I wasn´t too keen on walking home in the dark. Usually what I do to get wifi passwords is walking into coffee shops, buying a cookie and then asking if I could use the internet but in 3 shops the wifi didn´t work at the moment. I then tried an Italian restaurant where I bought crab chips and, after not really getting the wifi there to work, just borrowed a phone from the son of the owner and called her. My journey of finding wifi got me a bunch of snacks for dinner.

We met up at atomic books and while waiting I spotted a poster announcing the first issue of the sandman overture that just came out. I walked up to the counter and not only did they have it in stock, it only costs 5 dollars. This is surreal and a possible reason for me moving to the US someday. I then found an entire shelf dedicated to Neil Gaimans works and bought an illustrated version of the "make good art" speech he gave at Philadelphias University of Arts in May 2012. Seems like this store is actually pretty neat!

Cheryl took me to a friends place because we decided to go for a walk. 2 lovely Ladies joined us and one of them also played the ukulele so we had a lot to talk about. Somehow we ended up at a greek festival and decided to eat there. It took place in the cellar on an orthodox church and there were blue balloons everywhere. On one side on the room you could buy food and on the other one they watched american football. Ravens game tonight.

It has been a very nice day and I am preparing for NY now. This time I´ll be living in Brooklyn. It is still extremely cold in this room even though I have an electric heater 30cm away from me. I checked the windows and a few glasses are broken so I guess whatever temperature we reach outside I will experience tonight but I get hot showers here so no reason to complain- I built some kind of office on the floor and it´s nice.