The Tweetup & the shooting

Last night Naomi (who I only knew from twitter) told me that she planned to take a group of her friends to the Townhouse for Welfare night.

Naomi saw me tweet and blog about Welfare/$1 Beverage night before, and she decided to see the carnival for herself.

I already agreed to meet Katie (another twitter friend) at the Thursday night drag show, so I wasn’t going to join Naomi for Welfare night. Well, that was until I got into my car and my Beyonce playlist came on.

By the time I got near the Mall of America, I decided that it was time to update my shoe game and get my boomkats on.

So I found myself at Aldo at the Mall of America. I updated my foursquare status and received a tweet from Kristin, who is also a twitter-friend that happens to live in my neighborhood. Kristin said she works at Macy’s and that I should drop by, so I did.

After tweeting about visiting Kristin, I received a tweet from Bria (yet another twitter friend) to the effect of “You should have told me you were at Macy’s! I wanted to meet you!”

I didn’t know Bria and Kristin knew each other, but I told Bria that I was meeting Naomi at Welfare night and that she should come. So she did, and she brought her friend Luann (@LusciousLime).

Alesus and Jack joined us too, so it was one huge spontaneous Tweetup at Welfare night.

There were beverages, Justin-Bieber lookalikes, a guy who dances ballet to everything, clumsy drag queens, and a severely handicapped wheelchair-bound girl doing her thing on the dance floor. Amazing.

We finally leave after copious amounts of dancing and blowing Jill’s cover, (she pretended to be Australian for 30 minutes instead of telling this girl she wasn’t interested.)

I drop Alesus off at his home and wait for him to get his bag from upstairs. I happen to have the dogs in the back of the car¹ and decide to walk them while I wait for Alesus.

I walk the dogs around the block. We are pretty close to an intersection near Alesus’ house when I hear gunfire.

Super close gunfire.

Then a SUV speeds towards the intersection and turns off its lights at the stop sign. What the…

After a long pause, (in which the dogs and I hold our breath) the SUV swerves onto the street, parks, and turns off its lights. A cop car then appears down the block, but turns the wrong way.

I discretely dive into my car and call 911.

After sitting on the phone with the 911 operator for about 5 minutes, I get out of my car, grab the dogs, and walk by the SUV to get its license plate number for the 911 operator.

The SUV starts following me as I continue down the street, and another white SUV turns the corner and drives towards me.

The SUVs stop in the middle of the street and the drivers talk to each other. I keep the 911 operator aware of this, wondering where the hell the cops are.

I then hear a police siren, the white SUV speeds off and the other SUV does a quick 3-point turn, speeds back down the street, and parks by Alesus’ house.

I turn the corner, flag down one of the cop cars (they were searching the wrong side of the parkway) and I explain the situation the bored-looking officer.

Cop cars then swarm the area around Alesus’ house and they find the SUV, but the driver is gone.

I make my way back to my car and as I fiddle with my blackberry, a cop flashes his light into my car and I have to explain that no, I am not the shooter, I’m the one that called you guys, and no I can’t give you a super detailed description of the shooting.

Ugh.

I then book it back to Minneapolis and end the night eating White Castle² with Alesus on the couch, flanked by dogs, watching Bethenny Getting Married.

And to think that we will repeat this craziness again tonight.
Goodness, summer. Goodness.

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¹ Okay, I know that bringing the dogs seems like a completely crazy-dog-owner thing to do, but the dogs sat at home all day while I was at work, so if it’s between sitting in the car while I’m at the bar or more sitting at home, I think they prefer sitting in the car with random mini-walks at pit stops. Just saying.

² For the sake of brevity I left out the extended White Castle hilarity that involved several rough-looking blazer-wearing middle aged men getting out of cabs and urinating on the side of the restaurant. The point is Wednesday night in Minneapolis = class.