Last night John and I participated in the annual Reggie's Sleepout fundraiser. For those of you who are not familiar, it is a fundraiser for homeless youth and involves kind-hearted individuals like John and myself raising money and then sleeping outside for a night. Now, before I proceed, I would just like to point out the fact that the raising money portion of the event is the part that actually makes a difference; the sleeping outside part is merely for raising awareness (which, as social workers, we are very aware of homelessness). And on a side note, I would also like to mention that John and I have both been fighting what appears to be the flu all week and I had a fever all day yesterday prior to the event. And thus, John and I did not actually sleep outside all night, though we did stay until about midnight...

On the drive to the Drake stadium, it began to rain. The news never mentioned rain. The news never mentioned constant rain until about 11:00pm. And so, we were wet. But, at least we were in cahoots with people with tents; everyone that made cardboard box structures were scrambling for tarps and trying to keep their homes from disintigrating. The rain put a damper on time-passing activities though, since we couldn't do much but play Uno with 12 people crammed in a tent.

I should also mention, for those of you who don't know, that the Hawyeke's played a night game last night, against Michigan State. And to give credit where it is due, John did an excellent job of socializing with others and only sneaking peeks at the score on his phone, although he would have much rather been watching the game. He found a friend in fellow Hawkeye fan, Karen, and had someone to celebrate with when the Hawks pulled off a win in the last 2 seconds! (Though, Karen at least put her shoes back on before running outside of the tent to celebrate the win!)

So, technically we did not sleep in the cold and rain all night, but we did have a good time with our friends and with our team raised nearly $800!