1 day

Yesterday was a very interesting day…so I wanted to share it with you all.

It began as a nice, normal day. I made rice pudding for breakfast, which was a delicious treat.
Soon I headed out to work, meeting a colleague to do some trafficking outreach together. He wanted to go check on an 18-year-old Central American he’d met before the holidays who had said that he just wants to go back home. He had got into the US illegally and is finding that work is hard to come by. The worker center at Home Depot said only about 5% of the guys who show up get work these days. Some guys show up every day, all day and don’t get work for weeks.

This young Central American led us to an appointment at the his consulate, where we actually got a meeting with the Consulate General. I had no idea we were meeting with someone of her position, and was fumbling around to use my Spanish properly. She was a lovely woman however, and I think possibly may be able to help our young friend somehow. It was very interesting to hear her viewpoints on things such as immigration and human trafficking.

From there we dropped our young friend off and began making some rounds of lofts around downtown. Over the past 5 or so years, downtown has been going under mass revitalization and is now quite the place to be. In fact, there’s a huge Ritz-Carlton residence building going in right now (that looks quite odd if you ask me.) From the neighborhoods I dwell in, the world of luxury loft buildings is quite an odd one. For the most part, concierges seemed quite interested that we wanted to offer training on human trafficking to their occupants. I say give me the color of my neighborhood over the fabricated hipness of luxury loft living any day.

Some more errands and work occupied the rest of the afternoon until it was time to run out to Little Tokyo to pick up some miso paste. I’m planning on making miso soup from scratch tonight – something I’ve always wanted to do. Going into a Japanese grocery is such a shock! I know there’s every little ethnic neighborhood in this town – and I’m in them often – but there’s just something about going into the Japanese and Korean grocery stores that gives me the jeebies. I’m the only non-Asian person in there, everything is so clean and stark, labeling is all in letters I can’t read, and people look at me weird! Globetrotting all within 5 miles of my house!

Anyhow – I found the miso, which was very exciting. And I also enjoyed taking out the Stude. The transmission is going awry and I haven’t driven her since Christmas. It felt very nice to chug down the road again makin some noise!

To end the night off, Kacie, an in-town friend who lives out-of-town currently was in-town. She’s one of the few swing dancers I’m friends with – so of course, we went out dancing together. We drove the Stude up to Joe’s, a little pub sort of place with a live band and swing night on Tuesdays. This place has one of the most interesting mix of characters. From the older guy, who looks very Irish and must be a bar regular, walking in a sitting down at a table alone all night, with no drink, just taking in the sights. To David, a theatre writer who is very…theatrical. To a host of different swing dance characters, old skool and not, good and not, funny and not. The music was good, the people were good, the dancing was good. Great.

The day isn’t over quite yet. After Joes we hear Skinny’s is the place to go. Skinny’s has a West Coast Swing lesson earlier in the evening and people dance there until 2am. (For those who aren’t hep to swing…I dance East Coast/Lindy Hop which is very different then West Coast. Technically Lindy is the same steps as West Coast, but just arranged very differently). So we pull up to Skinnys, the Stude get’s a front door parking spot (which I love…and even more so when I glide on in parallel parking like a pro!) Skinny’s is an upscale, club-ish atmosphere. Club music is thumping through their fancy sound system. There are West Coast dancers on the floor getting their groove on. Same steps as I dance…completely different vibe. Kacie and I likened it to what “parents did in the early 90s when they went out.” It was like they were out dancing at a club but were doing crazy complex dance steps. As sexy as Salsa but with a different vibe.

Very interesting. That was my day. One interesting of many. I’m rarely in want of wonder, which I’m thankful for.