Stealth Shower

It occurred to me last Sunday one of the things that make this place seem odd to me:

No one understands college football. No one.

The universities, including MSU (and boy, do I have a hard time remembering this is “Minot” State University and not the Sparty kind), have football teams, but people just aren’t fans of the college game.

Or maybe there are, but not like in the South. Football in the South is life, and people here just don’t comprehend it.

Last week, in church, where plenty of people wear Green Bay jerseys, it hit me: no one talks about college football. They don’t really even talk about pro football, either, but it’s really weird, coming from Florida, that the preacher doesn’t reference a single play from the games the day before.

I am wearing a Noles sweatshirt and my supervisor actually asked what it meant. No, really. I can’t keep him straight on why there is a difference between “Florida State” and “Florida,” either.

[Aside here: Thank you, Bulldogs.]

Once in awhile we get a group in that does somewhat appreciate college football. We had one of those in this past weekend, which was cool. But by and large, this area is just devoid of college football.

This past week, we shut off the water to Hope Village, which has made life even more adventuresome here. Now, I have to wake up in the morning and come into the church to use the bathroom, wash my face, eat breakfast, etc.

It’s kind of depressing because that means I pretty much eat three meals a day at my desk.

And I had to change 10 rolls of toilet paper in seven days.

But the most depressing part is now I have to get in a car and drive to the Y to take a shower. This is a PITA, if just because I have to load up everything and drive. It’s only down the block, but still, I have to remember to bring everything. Considering I lug the little basket to two different places to clean up and both require different stuff, it’s not really that easy. I totally forgot my shampoo – something that I normally kept in the other shower permanently and therefore didn’t carry in the basket in the first place.

The Y also closes early on Sunday, so I’m pretty much going to not sweat on Saturday. And Friday was brutal, because I had to go pick up some people at the airport late and therefore couldn’t get to the Y.

That night, I also wound up cooking for the volunteers. They’re staying offsite, so I headed down to one of the local churches to cook. Well, really, “heat up” is a more proper description. Although I can cook, we kind of had short notice that it’d be me cooking – there was a little mixup, but no harm, no foul.

Anyway, the volunteers weren’t staying at this particular church, but last week we had another group there, so the food was still there.

And they had a shower, so I took my little bag of stuff and, once the lasagna was in the oven, ran down to the basement and sneaked in a shower. Shampoo and all!

Felt kind of bad sneaking it in, but it was nice to be clean, especially since I had to skip it on Friday to pick up those folks.

Two more weeks of living like a nomad before I get to move into the house. The evening of Nov. 11 (Happy birthday, Dorothy), I should be good to go.