What happens when you're not paying attention...

I went to "The Fred" (Fred Myers) after swimming with Heidi and Olga (Andrea) tonight. It took me a long time to get into a rhythm (I ate dinner right after work because I was freaking starving) and swimming with turkey dinner in my belly made it a bit hard. The Fred was super quiet comparatively - for any week night. The after Thanksgiving folks weren't there and the regular shoppers were probably home having spent all of their money. Nothing was on sale that had been on sale before. There were some things that made me laugh in this empty - like this woman was in the sock section and her boyfriend was trying to find the watch whose alarm was beeping. As soon as he identified it and turned it off another one went off in a different section of the jewelry section. When I was in the cheese/dairy area, an older man walked by and said "The socks make the outfit" which made me laugh because I was dressed utterly ridiculously.

The Fred is located in the more industrial section of Ballard - down in the docks area - where small industries reside. In this area there are a lot of RVs. People live in these RVs year round. One guy's RV looked like it had been broken into and trashed the other day but looked more or less put back together by tonight. I see a lot of "vehicle homes" in Ballard - vans, trucks, RVs, Winnebago, etc. And you can easily tell that they're homes - stuff to the gills with people's possessions - flags, towels, cardboard - covering the windows. And they all stay in the general area - very rarely moving. I think people can more easily live in cars in more temperate areas like Seattle. There are a lot of "vehicle homes" by the Safeway. (Maybe the police leave people alone in the more industrial section.) But if you're not paying attention, you'd never notice them because they just look like cars parked on the sides of the road...

Today was the 20th Anniversary of "World AIDS Day". And if you weren't paying attention, you would have missed it. It didn't make the front pages of any of my papers. It didn't show up on CNN.com. I was told NRP spoke of it - but I saw no ribbons - or heard any conversation about it. AIDS itself is much older than the day created to foster awareness around it. But what is there to talk about? The news is pretty bleak - though there have been some improvement in antiretroviral drugs - no one is any closer to vaccines or cures. The disease is ranging out of control in some parts of the world, creating orphans, economic stress, and dispair. Are people tired of hearing about it? Is there nothing to be done - besides to keep trying, keep supporting, keep creating awareness? Today was World AIDS Day but even if you were paying attention, you might have missed it.