Day Five and Six

9-29-10

          Yesterday was my first day of class while being homeless. I had a presentation which kept me up a little later than I was hoping and so I only got six hours of sleep, which compounded my somewhat sleep deprived brain. I must admit it was really funny giving the presentation because I tend to be far loser when it comes to those things. My two partners had 39 slides for their twenty minutes of the presentation, while I had two for the last ten minutes. My first, much more organized partner asked me what I was doing for the activity (something else I was in charge of) and what I was doing for my part of the presentation, and a few other things my sleep deprived brain didn’t quite understand and so I just said “let’s just play it by ear” her response was one of those priceless looks and “no lets know what we are going to say.” The other partner has worked with me a couple of times in the past and is also more organized than me, but has learned to not worry about my lack of notes.  But she did smile at one point and say “o Dustin, you stress me out sometimes.” It’s kind of funny though, I always want to say “no lets plan it out less,” because they both read off their near verbatim notes. I didn’t have any at all, so I just walked around the room talking about what I thought were the most interesting points of my section of the chapter, showed a few short YouTube clips (“Who You Gonna Call?” from Improve Everywhere was my favorite), and then had the class go skipping around the school to feel the internal tension of breaking even a minor social norm (I joined in – o how fun :), and then we ended by talking about the power of norms in regulating groups. Overall I think it went really well. I still don’t understand though why people think “knowing what we’re going to say” is ever better than just talking with the audience and trying to share something useful.

            By the end of day (6pm), I seriously considered curling up on the grass and just going to sleep there.  Instead I drove to “my” parking garage, where two nice trucks were parked near the spot I normally park (Luckily I had an extra key in my backpack because I had accidentally locked my main key in the car - opps.) I parked at the other side of the parking lot, and ate dinner while enjoying the view, hoping they would soon leave. While I was eating my dinner, the two guys came up, and then left again. I thought; “great, well I better not go to bed yet.” Sure enough a cop car showed up about 15 minutes later to check me out. The second time around it was easier to assure him I was not some axe murder and I was then free to go to bed.  For the first time I got a great night’s sleep which is good because I have quite a bit of work to do today.


9-28-10

           I am amazed how fast the sense of ownership creeps into a person’s mind. Last night I drove to the top of “my” marking garage and found three high school boys just hanging out. My first thought was something along the lines of “scram, I’m tired and you’re keeping me from going to sleep.” It was good though because it forced me to go workout which is not something I want to do. Once again the elliptical machine kicked my butt, but not as badly the second time around. By the time I was done the high school kids were gone, but I now understand why homeless people get so grumpy when “their” space is trespassed.