The Long Sleep

After running on an average 4-7 hours a night of sleep for the last week or so, even though I had a cold for the past few days, finally I somehow slept for almost 12 hours straight, and feel "caught up" at last.

Got back home to the truck at around 1AM last night after working, ate a very late dinner, then fell into bed. Woke up around 8AM (as has been my habit for the past week or so), was awake for maybe 20 minutes, then went back to sleep again and just woke up at.... 1:30PM.

It feels great actually to be rested at last. It's been an incredibly productive and insightful couple weeks.

I'm a Vandweller, and I Vote!

I've been wondering for a while how the homeless can avoid getting disenfranchised by the political system, considering that you have to have a physical address in order to vote. I managed to get around this in the last election by paying a mailboxes place to give me a physical address. I thought I'd solved that problem. But, alas, the modern computer age has made that more difficult; the elections office recently invalidated my registration because it was a "commercial" address, and knew it was a maildrop. Crap. FedEx and UPS have no problem with this address, neither does the DMV, but the County Elections Board does.

The solution is easy though: apparently the homeless are protected by law from being disenfranchised in San Francisco, which is excellent news. It is possible to register to vote with only a streetcorner as an address! So that's what I did. I still needed a valid mailing address for correspondence, voter information packets, etc., but a PO box is fine for that, and so is my mailbox place.

This may be the case in other cities as well. If you're living in a van, on the move, then at least here it's possible to pick a streetcorner and make that your address, and thus maintain your right to vote.