Homeless bowling

David and I left our warm homes at 8:45 this morning to pick up this barbecue trailer. Of course, when we reached our destination, no one was there to greet us.

We were participating in the Douglas County Homeless Count 2008. The event was pretty much what the name suggests; we counted homeless people, gave them hot dogs (at one point the health inspector came through and tried to shut us down, one of the homeless people yelled at the inspector; "whats your problem? Their just trying to feed us!"). We also passed out things like socks, toothbrushes and "Disaster Blankets". Disaster Blankets are made through a process similar to the process of making particle board. Because of the way in which they are made, you can't wash, dry clean or get the blankets wet (I guess that makes them not dissimilar to a Gremlin) it just seems that such a blanket may be a less than optimal choice for the homeless community.

I'm totally going to get one of these steering wheels for my futuristic station wagon. Maybe I can also get fuzzy upholstery and some of those little balls that hang down.

This summer they tore down the old bowling alley.

In it's place; they built a new bowling alley. The amazing thing, to me, is that nothing from the original bowling alley was retained, I think that everything that couldn't be sold to other bowling alleys was burned.

The new bowling alley was filled with teenagers. Here are said teenagers playing Dance Dance Revolution.

Megan was so excited about the new bowling alley that she dressed up as The Dude.

Matt (who took bowling in college) and I lamented the fact that; while they had done a complete remodel of the entire bowling alley, destroying any referent to the old bowling alley and sparing no expense, they still did NOT have Budweiser in bowling pin shaped bottles.

They gave us one of those pager things like you would get at a chain restaurant e.g. Red Robin. While we waited we drank beer that did NOT come in festively shaped bottles.

At the ends of the lanes, which have little blinking tracer lights running their lengths, they have giant TV screens playing an eclectic mix of music videos. while we were there they played AC/DC, Boy2Men and Counting Crows, just to name a few.

We didn't see John (or the creepy bowling guy, as he's sometimes known), wondering if he had been scared off by pastiche and postmodern-warfare, I inquired as to his whereabouts; apparently he was fired for hitting on teenage girls.

Here is a pack of angry teenagers. The one to the far right is Janis's daughter, her fashion involved muddy pants, falling off shoes and an ironic/vintage/I don't know anymore, Bob Marley t-shirt.

Our game ended with a few frames to go. We weren't too sad. I guess we'd all had our fill of postmodernism and angry teenagers.

Nebraska has closed all of it's rest areas

Me, Laura and Julia went to the Bongo Room for breakfast. The waitress spilled coffee on Laura. Julia gave me a car sculpture. I went back to Village Thrift and bought a boom-box for $8.00, said boom-box takes eight D batteries. The gas station didn't have enough batteries so I had to stop at a corner store.

I drove through the Illinois countryside, this was for the most part uneventful. Stopped at a truck stop in Des Moines, Iowa and had a "spicy" chicken sandwich. Called Rachel to let her know I would be getting to Denver later than expected. All of the rest areas in Iowa are clean, well lit, offer free wireless internet access and provide machines for vending coffee with lightener (I had the hot chocolate), what I'm trying to say here is that Iowa's many, many rest areas are great and other states should really take a rest area lesson from Iowa.

At some point I enter Nebraska. I will note that Nebraska's rest areas, witch there are NOT many, don't hold a candle to Iowas rest areas and most of them are closed for some reason. My plan had been to drive until I could drive no more and then sleep at a rest area. After passing many closed rest areas I finally decided to stop and find a place to sleep. I pulled off the highway and wondered why there were giant piles of sand everywhere. I guess I hadn't realized that there was snow in this part of the world. I slept in the Wal-Mart parking lot.

Karma

I saw Laura at Zander's memorial service. I decided maybe it was an inappropriate time to take pictures. Laura was working so afterwards I went to her "office" and we talked for a while. I think I'm getting better at aiming the camera.

That evening or possibly the following evening I went to the corner to get a beer, 2 beers actually. On the way I ran into this homeless guy, he asked me for 99 cents for some soup. I gave him $1 and maybe said something to the effect of "I guess I only really need one beer" or something like that. He said "oh, you want a beer? Here take mine" and he gave me the rest of his beer, I think it was King Cobra. He then asked if I wanted to get high, I declined and he apologized profusely.

I drank the beer.

The next day I was coming home from "pounding the pavement" and some guy robbed me. It was day time so, this is not actually a picture of the event. I wasn't hurt or anything it just kind of sucked.

This is a portrait of sad.

I went and tried to donate blood It had rained so it was hard to figure out where I needed to go. This is one of the many un-helpful signs.

I gave blood. After, while drinking juice and eating cookies, I talked to a man who's job, I guess, was to talk to people after they had given blood. He talked about how he thought crestations were disgusting, how to cure fat people from being fat, and about how he would rid the country of neo-Nazis. I left and got my complimentary Subway sandwich.

On my way home I got rained on. This is me being wet.