Laundry Day

Attached to the King Salmon Motel is a laundromat. It isn't big, but it gets the job done. For $2.25 a load and $2.25 a dry. $4.50 for one load of laundry? You have to be fucking kidding me. Of course, everything here is more expensive. We have to go to McDonald's every day to check in the data we gather, because they are the only place with reliable Wi-Fi around here. The hotel has decent ethernet, but it there isn't enough juice to it to stream shows. So when I get home there will be a lot of catching up to do. Anyway, the McDonald's Dollar Menu is called a Value Menu because everything is twice as expensive as back home.

Everything is more expensive here. I get why. We are in the hinterlands of Planet Earth and it takes a little more to get stuff up here. But laundry? These fuckers have more water than they know what to do with. Why does the Speed Wash on Broad St. cost half as much as this place? Although I will say that certain aspects of this laundromat ringed of home. There was a woman talking loudly on the phone while using FAR too many machines, and one of the only machines left was broken. I am used to this. I get laundromats. So I did my wash today and have just enough clean clothes to get me back home. Where I can spend a day in lazy pants being a dirtbag and watching shows on the couch. Hulu has no idea what I am about to do to it.

I don't really know how much the clean clothes are really going to matter in the days upcoming. I mean, I walk around outside all day, and the people I come across clearly gave up on caring about their appearance. I try to at least come off as the professional that I am, so a decent outward facade is important. I'm not saying I am trolling for votes in a suit and tie, but I try to at least wear a shirt with buttons on it every day. Not that I have to troll for votes anymore, anyway. The firm I work for changed up our routine, so we are now just trying to remind people that there is an election upcoming and they should get to their polling station and cast their ballot. We are supposed to nudge them towards a couple specific candidates, but I don't care whom the choose, just as long as they get out there.

People are really really fed up with us. Hell, I'm fed up with us. I think that carpet bombing these people with calls, mailers, ads on TV and radio, and jagoffs like me walking door to door is just too much. Not to mention that, along with the 8 professionals doing this, there is also a team of volunteers doing the same thing. They are not a part of our company, they just do this for the love of it. Why they didn't get hired instead of us is beyond me. They are getting to houses before us, pissing people off, and we are receiving the brunt of their ire for repeatedly harassing these poor folks. I pity them, I really do. I think we should take a day off soon just to give the residents a damn break. Today, someone was so fed up he told me "Yeah, whatever, this fucking election needs to be tomorrow." I had nothing to say back other than "Yup. Me, too, man. Me, too."

It's nasty out there. They are really trying to get every single possible vote. Today, an address we were sent to was literally a graveyard. There was a plot number and everything. I went to investigate, looking at the name a number on my knock list. Sure enough, this guy was fucking dead. In the damn ground. But apparently still a registered voter. I marked him down as a "Refused to Answer." Seemed about right. It wasn't a very nice cemetery. It was down one of the ubiquitous dirt roads in residential areas here. If you aren't in a proper town, you live on a shitty dirt road, and apparently you will be buried on one, too. I guess that's what you sign up for if you make the poor life choices that lead you here on a permanent basis.

There is something to be said about the solitude here. It's very quiet. Not a lot of police action, not a lot of stuff going on. I guess that's okay, though. The sleepy nature of the Kenai Peninsula is saving me some money. I was expecting to struggle with that in Anchorage, but they sent me to the middle of nowhere, and they saved me a lot of cash in the process. I don't eat much, just the shitty breakfast in the shitty diner, and then dinner in the room from groceries I got my first day here. They've lasted! Also, I have curtailed my drinking a lot. Occasionally I'll go out to dinner with some of the guys and tip a few pints, but other than that, I have been behaving myself. It's hard to go out and get weird when you have to be walking around in the cold at 9 in the morning.

I have gotten used to the cold. I don't know if my knees have though. The wonky one started to swell up, but some Aleve has helped, and I think the cold might be acting like a natural cold cuff. Ice helped a lot the last time around, and seeing as though the high temperature in Soldotna (where I am) was 29 degrees, I think the worst of that is over. Whatever, I can tough out one more week. I hope.

I think I am going to miss seeing those mountains everywhere the most. I like those.

SD