Ladies and gentlemen, we currently have 11 degrees outside. Only 11...not even enough to fill up a whole egg carton, unless it's one of those egg cartons that's been cut in half to make it so you don't have to buy a whole dozen eggs at once. If we had one of those egg cartons, we'd have extra degrees left over, and it could get even colder.

What the heck is up with that? My driveway had almost melted, and then it went and got way cold again. Grr.

So anyway, this past Tuesday, my friend Jessica and I went to go volunteer at a community kitchen over lunch. We fed probably close to 250 homeless people in a 2-hour period, and it was a very eye-opening experience. We got there a little early, and were told we could eat first if we wanted to, and as it was a taco-salad day, and it all smelled WONDERFUL, I helped myself to some meat and salad and some sort of a cauliflower/cheese thing, and had a seat across from an older gentleman who ended up being the dishwasher. As I ate, we made some small talk about the different kinds of foods they served there during a given month, and he asked me if I'd ever had bison before. No, said I, but I've had venison and alligator. I found out later, that I had been eating bison at the time he asked me that. Hah! It was really good...never would have guessed it wasn't beef that I was munching on at the time. The cauliflower thing was really good as well, and when we finally got rolling and serving the people, I kept trying to get people to eat it. Kind of became a joke after awhile.

What surprised me about that whole experience is how clean the people looked. I guess I was expecting them to look like homeless people...you know? I thought they'd all be really dirty and pitiful looking, but most of them looked like they'd recently taken a shower, and really just looked like the average crowd you might see at WalMart on any given day. We laughed and joked around with a lot of them, and when lunchtime was over, they open it up to anyone there who has a container...in an effort to get rid of the leftover food, they let us give the people stuff to take home. So we were piling meat and stuff into butter containers, etc, for the people to eat later.

It was a tiring experience, but one that I thought was really fun. I had always thought that an experience like that would make me feel good about myself, or something...if that makes sense...I don't know if that sounds snobby or not...I don't mean for it to...but after helping do that, I really just had a better sense that it could be ME out on the streets, and God Bless those people for having such great attitudes of thankfulness, and honestly, I think I'd like to get to know some of them and even hang out with them from time to time. The lady there said that we'd have to plan it months in advance if we wanted to come on any sort of a regular basis, so I don't know that being there regularly is something that's do-able, but I think it'd be fun to do, if it ever worked out.

Anyway, enough rambling...work calls. Bleh.