leftovers

We got up early and went to pick up my co-worker, Sarah, to head downtown for Homewalk. This is the 2nd year Dylan and I have done the Homewalk, but the first time we've raised money for it. We both had a fundraising goal of $500 and although he was a little short of his personal goal, together we did raise over $1000, with very generous assistance from friends, families, coworkers, and in particular, Aileen Getty, who is simply an angel. It was a really sunny day and I regretted not wearing sunscreen or bringing a hat - I couldn't believe how sunny it was at 9am! The walk itself was pretty easy, but it was great seeing so many people out that early on a Saturday working to end homelessness. Later at home, I finished mixes on a couple songs for my album, "Ventriloquist" and "A Modern Life," which is a new version from the one I did with Mary White a couple years ago. My friends Mark and Aaron picked me up to go with them and Aaron's cousin Tig to Casi...

Since Dylan and I are doing the Homewalk tomorrow and I hadn't yet reached my fundraising goal of $500, I posted a plea on Facebook and within a few minutes I had met my goal! The real surprise was that one person donated enough money to get me there, and it's someone I haven't seen in many years. My friend Brad from back in Kansas who I used to work with at McDonald's and before that we were in band together at Hays High School. Brad was one of the first openly gay people I knew and as I came out, he was one of the first people I could talk to about things. I tried to hide it from him at first, but since we lived in such a small town, it was difficult. One morning when I was driving back to Hays from spending the night at Dustin's place in Russell (my first boyfriend), his friend had seen me on the interstate and somehow or another he put two and two together! Anyway, it's been a long time, but his extremely kind donation is very much appreciated. After w...

Well, this day will forever live on in my memory as it was today, just short of 10 years after I moved to Los Angeles, that I finally made it into the LA Times, the main local newspaper here! While doing our Homeless Registry last month, a photographer and reporter accompanied my team so I was hoping that I would be included, but I didn't want to get my hopes up. First off, I was just honored that those in charge of the registry chose to have the Times people go out with me team. But the fact that there, in print, was a photo of me - sitting on the sidewalk interviewing a homeless person - I was just dumbfounded and completely honored. I got the e-mail from Kerry Morrison, Director of the Hollywood Property Owner's Alliance (and one of the driving forces behind Hollywood 4RWD, who organized the Registry) with a link to the article. There were a few pictures of me on the online slideshow, but it was my friend Josep who commented on my Facebook Page that I was also in the pri...

Today was our Community Brief-Back for the Homeless Registry. It was at the Brain Lobby of the Los Angeles Film School, on Sunset Blvd. near Amoeba Records, so I just walked up from my office, and talked to Dylan on the phone while I walked. There were a lot of people there, including many of us volunteers who had done the registry. After briefly explaining what the registry was, and what we hope to accomplish, they played a movie of clips from interviews with the volunteers. Then, they showed a slideshow of the most vulnerable homeless individuals and they asked for $1,000 donations towards move-in costs for each person, and for housing subsides from the various agencies and organizations in the room. I had the two $1,000 checks I got from my stakeholders (Circus Disco and Hollywood Vaults) so I stood up when they showed a photo of Viper, who is a good acquaintance of mine. It was really awesome because in the end we raised money and found housing for the 61 most vulnerable home...

After Karaoke for Tristan last night, I came home and watched TV since I only had a couple hours until I had to get up for our last day of the Homeless Registry. This was the roughest morning out of them all, not just because I had gone out last night and didn't get any sleep. First, it was sprinkling/on the verge of raining so it was moist out and probably meant that the folks on the street took longer to get situated and sleeping than usual, so they were really grumpy when we tried to wake them up. Secondly, we had gone back to all the people who had previously told us they didn't want to do it when we first met them, but that they might do it later. Apparently, they were most likely just saying that to get us to leave them alone, and didn't actually expect that we would be coming back and waking them up again. In all, we only got three surveys done this morning. A lady that I had talked to on Monday named Stanley had said the other day that she didn't want to do...

This morning I got up at 3am and then my team and I headed out to do our second day of homeless surveys. This time, I wanted to get down to the southern half of our area, which included a lot of the Media District BID area. The first people we came across were in a parking lot on Vine Street, and out of the three of them, only two wanted to participate. The third, a lady, was very upset with us for waking her up and she even told the other two people not to talk to us, and that the questions on the survey were "none of our business." Then we proceeded to Santa Monica Blvd. and throughout the entire BID area, we actually only found one homeless person and it was a guy I've known for a long time, named Lewis. I've had many run-in's with Lewis through my job, as at one point I was asked to circulate a petition to ask Lewis to 'stay away' from the businesses in the BID as he was known for harassing people. However, I had talked to him a couple times when...

So, I didn't sleep last night. I got back from Erotic City around 1:30am and just had a couple hours to kill before having to head in to Hollywood City Hall for our first morning of the Homeless Registry. The area my team and I are covering extends from Romaine Street up to Sunset Blvd., and from Seward Street over to Vine Street, so it includes a chunk of the Media District - they were nice enough to assign me that area as I requested. This morning, we started by going up to Sunset Blvd. and we found the highest concentration of people sleeping on Cahuenga Blvd. just south of Amoeba Records, and near the Staples parking lot on Wilcox. I only ended up doing one interview, a guy named Chad, who had been homeless for a couple years. My team members all did at least a couple of surveys each so we were pretty happy. Several people told us they didn't want to take the survey today but that maybe they would do it if we came back tomorrow. We had a reported and photographer from ...

I got up before Dylan for a change, started a pot of coffee (I only drink coffee on Sunday, usually) and made some breakfast burritos with eggs, cheese, and bell peppers - orange, yellow and red. I had a training session at 2pm at the Hollywood City Hall for the Hollywood Homeless Registry, also known as 100,000 Homes - Hollywood. At the training, we got into our teams and the folks from Common Ground walked us through the registry process we'll be doing the next few mornings out on the streets of Hollywood, surveying homeless people on their health and housing needs. My team members are Amanda, Jake and Jenna, and I am the team leader. I'm really looking forward to working with them. After the training, I went home and made dinner, which was Mandarin (fake/veggie) chicken sandwiches. I've been doing pretty good still following my pescetarian diet; no slip ups for quite some time now. After dinner, I tried to go get some sleep, but it just didn't happen. The reason...

I was very tired and worn out today after the party last night, but it was worth it. Very late last night I realized I hadn't moved my car yet, as I had parked it a block away in case anyone needed a parking spot. However, I parked on the street cleaning side so I had to go out after midnight and move my car to the only spot I could find, which was 3 blocks away on Crescent Heights. Dylan's mom came over in the morning as she was meeting with her social worker, so she was on the couch in the living room when I got up and went to work. I thought we were having a meeting about Connect Day today, but when I got to the Taft building, Joe told me they had canceled the meeting. Kerry asked me to stay, though, because they were meeting about the Homeless Registry, which will be three days later in the month where we go out and interview homeless people to create a database. Sy from Naked Highway sent me a more final version of his remix of "The Apple Falls" which is sound...

Spirituality is something I think about often and is sort of a mystery to me in many ways, but I do believe that it is supposed to be mysterious. Today I was watching this series on homelessness in LA, specifically Skid Row downtown. I have done a lot of volunteering for homeless causes, mainly PATH, because of how much I am affected by it through my job and just by living in LA. One segment of the series was really interesting and frustrating for me; the one that dealt with God and spirituality. Part of the reason I started volunteering was because I get so upset that so many service organizations are faith based or religion based. Sometimes it's hard for an atheist to convince people that we are still caring, compassionate people who like to do good. I don't pray, and sometimes people who are religious don't really seem to understand that they are excluding me when they talk about praying for this or praying for that. I don't pray for people, but that doesn't ...