ummm....

Well, life has been very busy lately but amazing. This weekend has
been great, on Friday evening we had a Pink House Fundraiser which was
a black tie bunko night. With a lot of work it turned out to be a
success, over 50 people showed up to it and all said that it was an
enjoyable evening. I will post some pictures soon, we emptied the top
two apts and the ladies of the house decorated it beautifully. People
in the house gathered up gifts for the prizes and many people left
satisified. We had some incredible desserts made by Jazz and Nate,
cheesecakes, peanut butter balls, creme puffs and italian sodas. It
was great Saturday was another terrific day full of many great people
and events. Started the morning w/ Habitat doing some roofing, then
went to do some sorting at the wherehouse of the future thrift store,
and then had lunch at doghouse for Ashley's b-day. It was terrific to
hang out w/ friends and then continue to hang w/ dave and paul at a
little football match w/ Travis, Ryan and Austin. After about 35 min,
we were huffing and puffing and way out of shape. I ended the night
watching Planet Earth with some housemates, which had never seen it or
heard of it before. I couldn't hardly believe it so i put it in the
DVD player w/o hesitation.
Sunday came and it was nice to sleep in until about 11am. Jenny
(lives under my apt) had talked about going hunting for newt's at Pine
Flat so i thought that what better day to do on a beautiful Sunday
afternoon. WE made the 30 mile drive or so (which was so incredibly
gorgeous) and found a little streaming coming up out of the lake. She
decided to follow it and we walked up it for about 15 or so minutes,
and low and behold, she spotted a bright orange belley newt. I got
pretty excited and walked up stream to see if there were any others
b/c she said they usually travel in hoards. So i saw like 5 or 6 more
and wanted to grab them but it wasn't needed.
Later sunday evening, ivan (my roommate) and i were sitting around and
didn't have much to do. Well actually he was doing homework and i
didn't have anything to do. He proposed the idea of grabbing our
guitars and playing down on G street. On G is where the 'tent' city is
and where ivan and his buddies go down and skate and hang out w/ the
homeless at. I thought that it sounded like a great idea, so off we
went. we started playing on the street across from tent city. There we
were playing some guitar and a lady across the street from us started
grooving to the music. It was beautiful, she then came over to us and
wanted a cigarette, and offerred some misc. services to us, ivan asked
her if she thought it would be possible for us to go and hang out w/
the guys who had some sweet bonfires and play some music for them. She
heavily advised otherwise so and said they woudl most likely charge us
rent and probably steal from us because we were outsiders. So we moved
down the street a bit, (watched some drug deals happen) and met
another guy who sat down and introduced himself as Jay. So we ended up
spending quite a bit of time w/ him. He enjoyed listening to some
music and i played some AC/DC that he rocked out to. Ivan was pretty
hungrey and so was Jay so we decided to go to Rallys for a bit to eat.
In the truck Jay explained his story of homelessness and how is wife
had cheated on him and it was all downhill from there. He was a super
brillant guy and understand a lot of the systematic issues w/
homelessness and how there is a lot of scandel in it all. He informed
me of a lot that i had no idea about. He was very driven to pick
himself up and was waiting on a check from the gov't for the two
tourrs of wars that he served in. He definitely knew the gospel and
said some pretty profound biblical messages, said he attended
'cornerstone' church and the fact that the preacher was an ex ganger
member and could help those like them and relate to them. He discussed
miracles that he had seen God perform and explained how he prayer in
'cuss words' because he was so over joyed w/ how much God loved him.
We never mentioned much about God but agreed a lot w/ him about how
lovely he is. This happened to be his birthday and he felt truely
blessed that we crossed each others paths. He explained to me in the
car that he just wanted to talk about some stuff that was on his mind.
I haven't stopped thinking about Jay since and he shows me why we need
to seek justice for men like him. I dropped him off at his area of
tents and as i feel asleep in my warm bed i wondered how he was doing
in the cold in his tent w/ his buddy Gino. He said next time maybe him
and i could jam together on guitars...