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o/` With bloodshot eyes, he was letting me know/He said ten years from now, I said a hundred ago o/`
OK, as promised, here's the entry on miscellaneous Real Life Shit (tm):
1) The Kerry rally
Friday night my parents and I went to the Kerry/Edwards rally. Our tickets said the gates opened at 8:30, but my stepdad had an e-mail from the Kerry headquarters saying it was actually 7:30. We got there at 7:15, and were glad we did. The line to get in stretched for blocks. Fortunately, after about half an hour or so the line started moving really fast and by 8:00 or so we were in the Union Station parking lot.
Then came the boring part. Until about 10 p.m., nothing happened. They just played crappy music (and even started repeating some songs near the end, argh). But finally, after 3 hours of standing, Kerry and Edwards came out. Edwards gave a good speech - I didn't hear his DNC speech, but apparently it was pretty much a retread. Ditto with Kerry, although he added some new stuff - most notably a new program to help kids pay for school. Basically, once you get a high school diploma or GED, you spend two years working community service - mentoring troubled kids, helping the elderly, picking up trash, working in soup kitchens, etc. - and in return you get four years' paid tuition at your state university. (It's about time someone implemented something like this, and I'm feeling really sold on Kerry at the moment.) Both of them were dynamite speakers, of course, and both made references to KC landmarks - Edwards went to Stroud's, while Kerry went to Hereford House, and I think they'd both gone to Gates for lunch because Kerry said it was the best barbecue EVAR.
The Kansas City Star pegged the audience at 20,000 people, while the New York Times said 25,000. Either way, that's a hell of a lot of people, and their biggest audience since the Democratic National Convention. And really, you could tell...it was a MASSIVE audience, stretching out as far as the eye could see. And personally, I'm glad to see Kansas City doing it up right for Kerry. And I've NEVER seen people volunteer in such copious numbers as they did that day. :D
(But then, of course, after 3 hours of standing, my mom - who has back problems - was in horrible shape and so my stepdad and I had to support her from either side and help her hobble the several blocks to the car, which was less fun.)
For more info, see![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pekeana's entry.
2) The gangland gunfight
Then on Saturday, we found out that a friend of ours, Trish, had had a close scrape. She and a friend were down at the Ethiopian restaurant (the Blue Nile, I think) and then drove over to the Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea memorial park thingy on Thursday night. Her friend wanted to stay in the car, but Trish wanted to go to the park. So they did, and there were a lot of other people there - families and such.
But then a gang war broke out at that exact site, with automatic weapons and all that. Everyone was fleeing, and Trish ended up jumping off the wall down to the street below in order to avoid gunfire. This was a pretty smart thing to do, except she miscalculated. She was thinking the wall was only about three feet high, but it actually ranges from 6 to 10+ feet high. She landed on her foot, which basically shattered. (She was lucky she didn't land on her head.) Her friend climbed down more slowly and carried Trish on her back to the car, staying down to avoid the shots. By the time they reached the car, the police and ambulances and such were arriving, and the gang members had fled (except for the wounded and dead ones, of course).
The scary thing? Their car had been riddled with gunfire during the shootout. If they'd stayed in the car like her friend wanted, they'd both be dead.
The police said this thing is not uncommon down at that park, so I think I'm going to stay away from it. Sure, it may be pretty, and it's in a section of town that I didn't think was THAT bad, but yeesh, I'd rather not risk being blown away by an AK-47.
Anyway, we went over to her house and took some food (from New York Deli, no less), helped set things up so she could get around easier on crutches, and set up a window air conditioner for her, because her central air had just gone out on Friday.
3) The mysterious lump
And then finally, this week my sister Crystal (who lives in Phoenix) called because she has a tumor. She's going in and they're going to do a biopsy, I think, to see if it's cancerous or not. They're not sure whether the tumor is in her ovary or uterus - I'm hoping the latter, simply because it's more likely to be benign and also because I've known people who died of ovarian cancer, and it's not pretty. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it turns out to be benign and definitely NOT cancer, because one family member with cancer at a time is more than enough.
Wow, I started this post in a pretty good mood...I wonder where it went.
1) The Kerry rally
Friday night my parents and I went to the Kerry/Edwards rally. Our tickets said the gates opened at 8:30, but my stepdad had an e-mail from the Kerry headquarters saying it was actually 7:30. We got there at 7:15, and were glad we did. The line to get in stretched for blocks. Fortunately, after about half an hour or so the line started moving really fast and by 8:00 or so we were in the Union Station parking lot.
Then came the boring part. Until about 10 p.m., nothing happened. They just played crappy music (and even started repeating some songs near the end, argh). But finally, after 3 hours of standing, Kerry and Edwards came out. Edwards gave a good speech - I didn't hear his DNC speech, but apparently it was pretty much a retread. Ditto with Kerry, although he added some new stuff - most notably a new program to help kids pay for school. Basically, once you get a high school diploma or GED, you spend two years working community service - mentoring troubled kids, helping the elderly, picking up trash, working in soup kitchens, etc. - and in return you get four years' paid tuition at your state university. (It's about time someone implemented something like this, and I'm feeling really sold on Kerry at the moment.) Both of them were dynamite speakers, of course, and both made references to KC landmarks - Edwards went to Stroud's, while Kerry went to Hereford House, and I think they'd both gone to Gates for lunch because Kerry said it was the best barbecue EVAR.
The Kansas City Star pegged the audience at 20,000 people, while the New York Times said 25,000. Either way, that's a hell of a lot of people, and their biggest audience since the Democratic National Convention. And really, you could tell...it was a MASSIVE audience, stretching out as far as the eye could see. And personally, I'm glad to see Kansas City doing it up right for Kerry. And I've NEVER seen people volunteer in such copious numbers as they did that day. :D
(But then, of course, after 3 hours of standing, my mom - who has back problems - was in horrible shape and so my stepdad and I had to support her from either side and help her hobble the several blocks to the car, which was less fun.)
For more info, see
pekeana's entry.2) The gangland gunfight
Then on Saturday, we found out that a friend of ours, Trish, had had a close scrape. She and a friend were down at the Ethiopian restaurant (the Blue Nile, I think) and then drove over to the Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea memorial park thingy on Thursday night. Her friend wanted to stay in the car, but Trish wanted to go to the park. So they did, and there were a lot of other people there - families and such.
But then a gang war broke out at that exact site, with automatic weapons and all that. Everyone was fleeing, and Trish ended up jumping off the wall down to the street below in order to avoid gunfire. This was a pretty smart thing to do, except she miscalculated. She was thinking the wall was only about three feet high, but it actually ranges from 6 to 10+ feet high. She landed on her foot, which basically shattered. (She was lucky she didn't land on her head.) Her friend climbed down more slowly and carried Trish on her back to the car, staying down to avoid the shots. By the time they reached the car, the police and ambulances and such were arriving, and the gang members had fled (except for the wounded and dead ones, of course).
The scary thing? Their car had been riddled with gunfire during the shootout. If they'd stayed in the car like her friend wanted, they'd both be dead.
The police said this thing is not uncommon down at that park, so I think I'm going to stay away from it. Sure, it may be pretty, and it's in a section of town that I didn't think was THAT bad, but yeesh, I'd rather not risk being blown away by an AK-47.
Anyway, we went over to her house and took some food (from New York Deli, no less), helped set things up so she could get around easier on crutches, and set up a window air conditioner for her, because her central air had just gone out on Friday.
3) The mysterious lump
And then finally, this week my sister Crystal (who lives in Phoenix) called because she has a tumor. She's going in and they're going to do a biopsy, I think, to see if it's cancerous or not. They're not sure whether the tumor is in her ovary or uterus - I'm hoping the latter, simply because it's more likely to be benign and also because I've known people who died of ovarian cancer, and it's not pretty. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it turns out to be benign and definitely NOT cancer, because one family member with cancer at a time is more than enough.
Wow, I started this post in a pretty good mood...I wonder where it went.
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Shit sucks.
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