"Bye, kids, have a good day at school."

This is a phrase that I say on a regular basis, nowadays. I'm the team soccer mom here in Biloxi, so that means that I drop off the construction kids at 7 am, come back to our housing, take a nap, drop off the education kids at 9 am, clean toilets or mop floors or check e-mails or go grocery shopping for the afternoon, start some dinner, and then pick everybody back up around 5. I can't be a housewife when I grow up. This simply won't work for an extended period of time-- several years of this are certainly out of the question.

There's some bright spots approaching on the horizon, though... I'm going to help paint a mural (cross your fingers) and give some guitar lessons at two of the Boys and Girls Clubs in the area and I'm helping my teammates plan out some arts and crafts activities and possibly a fun cooking activity for the near future.

So, this week is a short one with Friday off for the 4th of July, next week has the possibility of a fun trip out of town over the weekend, and the third week is... the last week!! The end is most certainly in sight.

A trip down memory lane

Once, I dug a very big hole with Kelsey and Emily and then pried a power pole out of it.
Afterwards, we took silly pictures to celebrate.

I've got TV, fluffy pillows, and breakfast brought to me on real china.

What in the world is going on? I feel a mild case of culture shock coming on... I don't know what to do, now that I'm located in the lap of luxury-- I just stare into the TV screen that is tempting even when there's NOTHING on. Americorps' got us camped out in the Mariott in Jackson, Mississippi for the next day and a half and I have to say that it's kind of like being in a parallel universe. I've got this silly uniform on to remind me that I mainly do construction grunt work, but I'm surrounded by tiny bottles of nice-smelling shampoo and plush carpet and big, big TVs.

We've got meetings to go to, sometimes, but mainly, I've got some nice time on my hands to relax, read, watch TV even when I don't mean to, and see the sights around the bustling metropolis of Jackson, MS.

TWO more days.

There are only TWO, count 'em, T W O more days left in my 3rd and penultimate project with Americorps! Things have been fun, I've learned alot, but it's time to start the move to greener pastures. Perhaps I will detail some of my complaints about the bureaucracy that seems to come along with large, government-funded organizations on my blog at some date in the future, but for now, I'll just focus on one really bright spot in the future... SMOE!

SMOE stands for the San Mateo Outdoor Education School and I will be working there as a naturalist in September. It's my job to hang out with groups of 5th and 6th graders, teach them about the environment and various ecosystems, sing songs, lead hikes, supervise, and generally have a great time while not sitting behind a desk. Many banana slugs will be kissed, many adventures will be had.

I went to go visit my college roommate and friend Liane right as I was beginning this blog, as loyal readers like my mom might remember. SMOE seemed like an awesome place to live and work then and I am just as excited about it now.

Meet our 6th (and 7th and 8th and 9th and 10th and 27th) roommate

Photos that encompass all of the grossness and resiliency that belong to the amazing cockroach by Kara Hoffman, roommate number 4.

Apologies for the delay

I've been neglecting this blog for some time now! Sorry about that, folks. We've been working quite a bit and it's rare that I can make it to the library before it closes as of late. So, a quick bulleted list of what's been going on, perhaps?

-We know where we're going for our next project... it's not terribly far away , just down the road in Biloxi. This is a bit of a disappointment to the whole team, especially when we had our hearts set on going to somewhere in the Western region. One team that we're friendly with is going to New Mexico to teach children about caving. We're so very, very jealous.

-I took a little trip up to Baltimore to see the fam, take care of a few job interviews, and sleep in a location without cockroaches. It was great to be home for a little while!

-I now know how to finish drywall. I am a mudding expert.

-I almost adopted a million puppies and kittens when we worked at the local animal shelter. Sugar Bear was my favorite, by far. She was very tolerant throughout her bath and gave good kisses even though we were scrubbing her fur and trying to detangle all of the knots and mats.

-In just a few days, I'm going to see Old Crow Medicine Show play in New Orleans!

-Up until yesterday, my campmates included 200 older men from various regions in the South and Midwest that were here to help build houses. They were called Men on a Mission and they were a noisy bunch. I wake up early, but in comparison, I looked like a sleeping beauty. Every morning, they were up at 5... banging around, yelling stuff in Southern accents, and not letting me sleep. But overall, they were a very nice bunch and did funny things, like had their local newspaper FedEx-ed to them so they could read it.

-In the near future, my team is taking a road trip back to California! If you live on the road to Cali and would like a visit from me and my 11 friends, please do let me know. We might stop by anyway :)

Love (bugs) are in the air...

Love bugs are stuck together and to many surfaces around Pass Christian. They're too busy with their important work to bite or sting-- they're lovers, not fighters. A few were in my cereal box the other morning. Guess they were looking for a little love shack and found one in the Cheerios box.

JazzFest '08

JazzFest was a muddy, sticky, loud, and crowded blast. At about 9 in the morning, the rain was coming down in sheets in Pass Christian. We had a hour and a half drive to New Orleans and we were keeping our fingers crossed that somewhere between the two places, the rain would let up so we could enjoy the festival without putting on the trash bag ponchos that we snagged from the kitchen. After a stop at a delicious farmer's market in the city, we drove out towards the race track where the festival takes place.
The festival is full of music on several different stages and arts and crafts vendors and friendly, drunk people, and mud. The first group we saw were the Pine Leaf Boys, a group that I'd meant to see when they came to a local bar in Baton Rouge. They play Creole music with a fiddle and an accordian. Some songs were upbeat and dancey and some were sad. If I could understand Creole, I'd guess that they talked about broken hearts and lost love and the like.
Each of the performances that I saw were great, but the set by The Roots was definetly a standout. I'd never seen them before, but had heard that they put on live shows that are amazing and full of energy. Sometimes predictions like that make my expectations too high and therefore, unreachable, but The Roots really lived up to the hype. Most impressive was their sousaphone player (nicknamed Tuba Gooding, Jr.) who bounced around the stage and through the crowd with that giant silver intrument twisted around him. The Roots' music was tight, relevant to current political situations in Washington, and full of energy.

Meet Lee.

Lee's going to be getting a new house built for her. I talked with her a little while this morning and hearing about her story made me think that it's one worth sharing with you all-- very worthwhile. She talked and I wrote and I hope what I came up with does some justice to this wonderfully strong and beautiful woman.




My name is Lee Brignone and I've lived in Mississippi for 16 years. I'm a widow and have one son. I worked as a contractor building houses. Before Hurricane Katrina came, I knew the storm was going to be a bad one. I took every wedding picture, every baby picture I had and packed them up. The night before the storm hit, both my husband and I were busy boarding up houses in Pass Christian until 11 at night. After that, my family and I left straight for Atlanta. I knew
the damage was going to be bad, but didn't know what I'd see when I returned home.

After the storm left, I thought things looked absolutely horrible. My house was gone. We followed a trail of our stuff-- my bathing suit top stuck high up in a tree, a shirt from our closet wrapped around a tree branch-- to try to find our house. I found one small chunk of a
wall, but everything else that made up my house was gone. The first wall of water that hit Pass Christian knocked everything down and then the second wall of water sucked everything back out into the Gulf—my house included. My family had to move into a FEMA camper. As soon as
my husband and I stepped inside, our eyes started burning. We thought that we would air out the trailer and maybe the situation would get better. Then the summer came. We had to close the windows and turn on the air conditioning. Three months in, the air conditioning running all the while, my husband got really sick. We were both tested for formaldehyde and it turns out that we had some of the highest levels of formaldehyde in the state. The government had our
trailer was removed and we were sent hotel after hotel. I said to my husband, 'We've got one choice left—we have to go live with my mom.' He said, 'Do we have to?'

After things settled down a little, I tried to rebuild my house. Both my husband and I were working very hard to rebuild other peoples' houses so we kept putting off building our own. It was difficult to save a nickel to put away because the prices for materials were going up, but the wages for labor were staying the same. Then my husband died. It was very sudden—he had a massive heart attack and he died in my arms. I gave him CPR for 25 minutes, but there was nothing to be done.

Attempting to rebuild my house has been nearly impossible. But I'm thankful for the help and am looking forward to working with the volunteers on my own house.

I'm a painting machine.

We've been doing a lot of painting recently... a nice worn leathery red-brown, a perky pastel yellow, a brilliant blue, an auto primer-looking grey, all in one turquoise house. Lou's new house was just started at the beginning of the month and it's already starting to look like a great new home. Lou is a character, a bachelor who grew up in New Orleans but has spent time on and off in Pass Christian since his folks had a vacation house here. He told us about how a buddy of his had a warehouse job so on weekends in the '70's, bunches of his friends would all get together for a party and weekend-long bonfire, made out of stacks and stacks of palates. 15 or 20 feet in the air, he said, the palates would be piled up and the conflagration wouldn't go out for days. Who knows if some of these measurements have been exaggerated as the years go by, but I wouldn't doubt that he threw some amazing parties. Since then, Lou's set himself up an auto mechanic business and spends his spare time restoring old cars.

Katrina wiped away both of Lou's houses--the one in New Orleans and the one here in Pass Christian. We've spent the week working on his new place. It's on stilts, like all of the new construction here is required to be--at least 16 feet in the air.

When we first met Lou, he definitely seemed like a nice, chatty guy, but he sort of poured out his whole story and told us that he was in Arkansas during Katrina and told his elderly dad that the storm wasn't going to be so bad and he'd be back soon. He tried to get in touch with his dad as soon as he could, and the cops and firefighters and everyone else told him that they checked the house and there was lots of damage, but that was the extent of it. A few weeks later, he went back to his house and was dragging junk out and found his father's body. Lou was saying that it's taken such a long time for him to finally start getting over these traumas and his friend Michelle (who gave up her day off to help out with the painting) said that she's so glad that Lou can start talking about this. It's so amazing for me to to hear stories like this because it gives me so much motivation to keep painting when I don't feel like painting anymore. For someone that has had so much difficulty in life, Lou is a sweet sweet guy who bought us McDonalds cheeseburgers for lunch. I had forgotten how disgustingly good those fries can be.

Our house, in the middle of the street.

Good morning, all! The sun is shining on another beautiful day here in Pass Christian, Mississippi. There's a little bitty farmer's/craft market set up across the way in the park and I started the day off right with some delicious, delicious bread and cheese. This place is by far the tiniest place I've ever been to, but it's growing on me in leaps and bounds. (Despite what the dates on my blog might imply, I've been done spring break for about a week, and have been here in 'The Pass' for going on four days now.)

Wanted to post my current address here, for your snail mailing pleasure. (But, really, the pleasure is all mine.)

Amy McIntosh
Americorps NCCC
c/o The Grey Hut
328 East 2nd Street
Pass Christian, Mississippi
39571

More details on the latest project to come soon.

And then I discovered how to work my own camera.

Hello, all. It's a fine evening here in Tucson, Arizona, the destination for my spring break activities. The days are warm, the desert is prickly, and the company is wonderful. Thanks for being such wonderful hosts, Fran and Jim!

Thanks to my techie Uncle Jim, I'm finally able to take the pictures off of my camera and put them somewhere useful, the computer. There's a few here of the desert, its flora, the little desert dwellers that end up at the Wilderness Rehabilitation Center in Tucson, and more.

Welcome to the beautiful Sonoran Desert, which is currently in bloom. Things that look scraggly and brown during the rest of the year are green and lush right now. Lush might be slightly misleading, considering that everything in desert is equipped with a coat of armor, but the flowers are beautiful and bring out the softer side of the cactus family.

Another view of the desert, with a view of the mountains in the distance. The saguaro cacti everywhere make the landscape look very alien. These ones are relative babies. In order to look like the cacti that are commonly drawn in Pictionary, the saguaro needs to grow arms. This process is a long one, and only after about 70 years will baby arms begin to sprout.

'Tis the season for baby bunnies at the Wildlife Rescue Center. Baby cottontails and jackrabbits fill up the shelf space at the center and makes the room seem like a little bunny apartment complex.

There's a big immigration dilemma/discussion/argument/conundrum in Arizona, so I thought I'd see if I couldn't get to the heart of the matter and make the trip across the border myself. Just kidding. It rather looks like I did from this picture, but this is the sorry current state of one of Fran's favorite hiking trails on the outskirts of Tucson. Private property is nibbling away at public land and the little 'trails' that are left are narrow, nearly vertical, and fenced in by barbed wire.

Ooh, ooh, ooh, stuck in McClellan again...

Good morning, West Coast. It's good to be back, drinking your soy milk and eating your food that doesn't consist of meat and more meat. Just a few days here at the good old base, taking care of some meetings and the like, and then it's time for Spring Break!

I thought I would make a tradition of a little photo recap of the project and post a few more pictures for you all to enjoy. There'll be more added soon, once I mooch them off my teammates.


We felt pretty dumb when we ended up in Eunice. And despite what the sign tells you, this is not a city. Well, it IS a city in the sense that St. Mary's City is a city... tiny, full of old stuff, and not much else. One Monday, one of our days off, a few of us decided to drive up to this really scenic hiking spot called Tunica Hills. We got some directions, packed some lunches, and were so excited about going. We unfortunately never made it there... we go stuck in the not-so-spectacular towns of Eunice and Ville Platte instead. There were some highlights however... we saw one fantastically old cash register, walked around a state park for a while, and were reminded that everything in Louisiana is closed on Mondays.


This is beautiful University Presbyterian, the church where our team lived for two months. This picture just barely shows the beginnings of the azalea bushes blooming like crazy and filling the front of the church with beautiful pinks and reds and whites. Big live oaks grow all around the property and make the whole place look very lovely.

Next Stop....

...Pass Christian, Mississippi!




View Larger Map


Here it is. It's tiny, not too many people live there... partially because it was mostly wiped off the map by Katrina. And from what I hear, you pronounce the name Pass Chriss-chi-ann or Pass Chris-CHAN. Or, when in Rome, just shorten it to "The Pass", and do as the Romans do.

We're going to be working with a rebuilding organization called the Grey Hut. We don't know too much about what we'll be doing or where we'll be living, but I do know that coordinating volunteers and living in tents are both involved in the equation.

More to come when I know about it...

From a coffeeshop on Chimes Street

Apologies for the lapse in updates, faithful readers. Work has been keeping us all rather busy, these days. So, let me provide you with a little recap on the events of the past 2 weeks or so...

Things I have made/moved/done...
-played with one super cute stray puppy and convinced one volunteer to bring her home and adopt her
-painted one house 'Wild Falcon' brown... covering over one perfectly good coat of pastel yellow paint. Not a very fun job to replace a pretty, spring color with a layer of boring, old khaki brown.
-installed sheathing and roof decking material with spring breakers from Oklahoma and Iowa... was called ma'am once.
-moved tons and tons of heavy shingles, tools, boards, pre-build components, trash, and teammates
-saw Beach House and The Papercuts live
-lead volunteers, including one group of super-cute but not so bright LSU gymnasts. (Funny story... one of my teammates was leading a group of gymnasts in framing the walls of a new house and told them to lay out the studs between the top plate and the bottom plate, gesturing and explaining to make sure her directions were clear. [We, after all, also had no clue what we were doing when this construction project started.] One girl picks up a nail and says, 'So, this is a stud?')
-framed one house on LSU's campus, right between the tiger and the baseball field and the big, big stadium. Clearly, no family is going to be moving into a house situated in this location, so we get to break down the frames on Tuesday and move it a few miles to its final location. (Sounds like moving holes, huh Dad?)
-asked by one eight-year-old if I was in the army
-found that my nose contained a plethora of black boogers after working in the ReStore, Habitat's recycled and new building materials store
-chatted with numerous sweet, Southern people who tell me that I sure don't have a Southern accent

Things that I am looking forward to...
-Spring break and a trip to Arizona!
-learning where my next project will take me to and what we'll be doing there (we're leaving in one week and don't know where we're going next... I'm getting antsy.)
-job interviews
-planning a little mini trip back to lovely Maryland, once it defrosts.

If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning...

Just a little pictorial evidence of my hard work....

Presenting...the Habitat houses!

This is the latest house that we've built. The house is being built in honor of a very nice man with a very funny comb-over. His name is Ron and he volunteers for the Habitat ReStore, a recycled building materials store.

Three houses that are all finished! They're just waiting for grass and trees and the last few finishing touches. There's a tree foundation that's planning on planting three or four trees per Habitat house yard. It'll be so nice for the new families to move in to a home with some soon-to-be big and shady trees sprucing up the yard...


The framing and trusses and OSB are put up on this house already. I'm not sure, but I think this is the house that Crystal and her 3 kids are going to move into soon. We worked with the homeowner on Saturday and got to hear about her babies, how she has been eagerly awaiting her house for 2 years, and has the colors picked out already.






Check out our fancy shades. Mike, who's standing behind me, and I are big fans. The Louisiana sun gets going quite well, even for February and March.

Laissez les bons temps rouler

Tuesdays are usually spent working with Habitat, building, painting, or drilling away at the houses we build at a break-neck pace. But today, there's a big, staff-wide meeting that will take up all of the time of our kind supervisors. Since there's no one to make sure that we don't get into trouble playing with the tools, we've got the day off!

It's the perfect day for relaxing, too. The team and I spent the weekend in New Orleans, seeing some sights, listening to the awesome live music that seems to be everywhere, and spending our normal off-day working for an organization called the St. Bernard Project. Both this organization and Habitat for Humanity have a similar mission-- to provide simple, decent housing for the community. But the St. Bernard Project is different in that it renovates the homes that were inundated by the hurricanes' wind and rain. Most of the houses in and around New Orleans that sustained flooding and other damage have been gutted by now. All that's left are these empty shells that have tell-tale spray paint on them, showing who searched the houses after the storm, how many people (both dead and alive) were found inside the structure, as well as noting other hazards that might have been found. On this house, the markings are on the second story, right above the steps.





The mission of the St. Bernard Project is to fix up houses like these and get the homeowners living in their neighborhoods again. Mold has to be abated, new chunks of framing has to be installed, flooring and drywall have to be put in, and oftentimes, exterior work needs to be completed too. Two NCCC teams work with the Project right now, and Silver 6 spent our Monday teamed up with some of our NCCC peers. We got to help them out and see how another community based organization works to help the Gulf Coast area and its residents get back to normal.

Saturday night and Sunday were an opportunity for me to see other sides of New Orleans with the very capable guides, Jesse and Caitlin. These two lovely folks went to school with me and have spent the last year and a half running a women's shelter in the 9th Ward. Round of applause for them. We listened to some fantastic live music and spent a good portion of Sunday afternoon navigating the bayous outside of New Orleans in a great, big canoe. We saw a copperhead up close and personal, several small-ish alligators, a beautiful owl, and hilarious little frogs that made tiny screamy noises when startled. The bayou is one of the most beautiful places that I've had the chance to explore. Tall, tall cypress trees, with beards of Spanish moss clinging to them punctuate the swamps and waterways that are full of life. It's pretty easy to forget about the devastation that the area went through and is continuing to recover from when you're surrounded by the expensive, mostly white and touristy French Quarter or the beautiful wildlife out in the bayou. The different sides of the city can seem very incongruous at times and it would be easy for to think that the city is entirely back on its feet, if you saw it with an untrained eye.

Dear Gentle Readers

Some updates on my time here in Baton Rouge...

-I can use a variety of tools with ever-increasing proficiency, know a good bit more about construction, and have gotten very good at moving heavy stuff from point A to Point B. The patient and funny Habitat construction staff has taught us how to use nail guns, staple guns, the air compressors, a chop saw, the good old-fashioned hammer, and chalk lines, among other things. I can read a tape measure better than a former NFL pro-football player. I am learning how to lay out plans on a concrete slab, find the crown in a 2x4, frame walls, pre-build all kinds of pieces for a house, demolish a slab mold, toe nail in a board, attach OSB to the roof of a house, and many of ther useful little skills.

-I shower considerably less often than I used to. We have one shower here at University Presbyterian Church to accomodate 13 stinky, hard-working, frequently dirty and gross people. On average, we clean up once every 3 days. My theory is that if we're all stinky, we won't be able to pinpoint any offending funk, and therefore glide under the non-showering radar.

-I have been in close proximity to several other illustrious figures. I have to admit that I was certainly the most excited about meeting the honorable Governor Arnold "My Muscles have their own Zip Code" Schwartzennegger, but these other people were nice, too. CNN was taping a special episode while I was at Camp Hope, so I got to see Anderson Cooper. (Camp Hope is a former middle school that has been converted into a living space for Katrina relief volunteers by Habitat for Humanity. It's located in a particularly desolate spot in the St. Bernard Parish, outside of New Orleans. From the little that I saw, it appears that the rebuilding process continues to be a slow one.) Other famous people included NBA players Dwayne Wade and Allen Iverson. I really couldn't tell you a whole lot about them, vexcept that Dwayne Wade had a posse with them that wore matching, customized tee-shirts.

-I have come to an even greater appreciation of the word, "y'all." It's so very useful when talking to a group of people. I haven't come to embrace "fixin'" yet, as in, "When I finish eating lunch, I'm fixin' to walk over to the lake," but there's still time.

"There's no place like college..."

...unless you take a quick look at this picture of our front yard and imagine that you're back on the beautiful St. Mary's River, swimming with the jellyfish.

Raising the walls

When we started work this morning at 6:15, there was only a concrete slab where Talia's house would soon stand. But by the time the work day was over, 35 or so volunteers had framed, raised and added plywood to the walls of the house! Quite an accomplishment for us... especially since a large majority of us have never done construction before. We Americorps, as the grey-shirted herd are referred to by most everyone in Louisiana, learned a lot. We took the pre-build doors and windows and added studs and learned how to drill into the cement slab and nail things together and measure and cut and the importance of measuring twice and cutting once and the additional importance of cutting one's nails short. It's a grueling workschedule for us, currently speaking, since we aren't used to the early mornings yet. 8:30 in the evening rolls around and I am ready to fall into bed, but feeling unwilling to do so because of all of the fun, college-y activities that are going on just a few blocks away. Most of the time, I've just given into the sleepiness and appreciated my good judgement in the morning. I'll just have to go to grad school for that college fix that I've been craving/

Baton Rouge!

We're here, we're in one piece, we're all quite sleepy.

More about our upcoming adventures soon!

"I used to live next door to a sewage plant..."

So said our project supervisor this afternoon. He thought the lovely smell eminating from our rain gear smelled almost as sweet as the odors near his old house.

We had a great day working out in the rain.

As promised, more pictures!

A group shot of Silver 6 at our farewell dinner. The Food Bank took all of us corpsmembers and staff out to eat to celebrate us leaving... I mean, a successful project well done :) All of our project supervisors were a little shocked to see us in our normal clothes.


Do you have tickets for the gun show?? Because Emily and I do! We worked in the warehouse and proved that girls are just as good at moving around heavy stuff. Steve, one of the drivers and kind donor of ice cream, got to liking us after a while and was eventually convinced of our fantastic girl-power.


I work in the warehouse alot, it seems. Joe and I try on some of the costumes that have come in the latest shipment of clothes to the Saca Center.


We wore our hardhats for the first time when we helped move the beautiful and very heavy Mother-Baby mural! Frankie, one of the teachers in the Women's Wisdom program, made this beautiful mural with the help of the ladies in the program. It's such a beautiful addition to the exterior of the building and will hopefully encourage the daddies to come in, too.

Sacramento Food Bank-- A Spike in Pictures

Friday was our last day working at the Food Bank and I can honestly say that I will miss working there. There are so many smiling faces, good people, generous donors, gracious recipients, and strong, helpful efforts aimed at improving people's lives at the Food Bank. It's a unique place and I'm glad that my team and I got to be a part of it.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, as they say, I thought I'd post a few pictures for you all to take a little peek into Sacramento and see some of the faces I hang out with on a daily basis.

Welcome to the Food Locker! We have plenty of staples here... maybe you can see the pallets stacked high with peanut butter and the white plastic bins filled with canned goods. Depending on what comes in the day's shipment from the local supermarkets' gleaning of the shelves, we also have dairy, eggs, fresh produce and other assorted items to give out to the clients who come for groceries.

Meet the kids of the After School program. On our last day, we made the kids a card and took a few quick snapshots with them. The girls that I tutor are looking uncharacteristically non-smiley in this shot. Alot of the kids who come to the After School program also live in the Food Bank's Havens Housing-- a program that helps homeless families prepare for home ownership by providing job training and affordable housing.

More pictures to come when the internet's not quite so slow...

Next stop...

Baton Rouge!

Beginning in early February, Silver 6 and I are headed down to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to work for Habitat for Humanity! We're going to be learning construction skills and building houses. Accommodations are going to be at a local church (with hot showers and a kitchen!) that's located near the downtown area.

Before a sponsoring organization can have a NCCC team assigned to them, they need to fill out a rather lengthy application. Here's a snippet from our the Habitat for Humanity Baton Rouge application... sounds like we'll have a lot of great work to do.

3. How will the degree of success of the project be measured? Please list direct and demonstrable results of the project. This section should describe not only the system of measurement, but what approximate number must be achieved to describe the project as complete. For instance, miles of fence built, percent increase in reading comprehension tests, number of children immunized, square feet of walls painted, number of volunteers recruited.

To build a house with Habitat for Humanity in Baton Rouge requires the completion of 267 tasks. Of those, 147 tasks are designated to be completed by NCCC members and Habitat for Humanity volunteers.

To complete 30 houses in 2008, there are 4410 tasks to be completed by NCCC members. Among those tasks are:

• Meet 30 Habitat partner families and participate in 30 blessings of the build.
• Prebuild the headers for 672 windows and doors.
• Move 7,000 pounds of nails.
• Carry and use 5600 studs to frame walls.
• Raise over 1,400 walls.
• Raise over 1,120 trusses.
• Move and install 3360 pieces of roof and wall sheathing.
• Hammer 104 nails into each piece of sheathing for a total of over 340,000 nails into sheathing alone.
• Paint 46,800 square feet of exterior walls; and paint them twice!
• Paint 134,400 square feet of interior walls; and paint those three times!
• Install over 24,000 linear feet of interior trim and molding; and paint those too.
• Hang 392 doors.
• Move 30 sets, or 330 cabinets, into place and install.
• Lay 33,600 pieces of floor tile.
• Wreck the forms for 30 driveways.
• Pull, palletize, and deliver 30 electrical fixtures to each site; that’s 900 fixtures and the 1316 bulbs to go with them.
• Lay 70,000 square feet of sod on the front yards of each lot.
• Dedicate 30 homes and congratulate 30 new homeowners.

We get all kinds at the Food Bank

We turned away four small customers at the Food Bank on Tuesday. They'd been living in a cardboard box, were pink from the cold, but generally looked well-fed. Three were minors who showed up to the Food Bank with their mother, but as soon as we laid eyes on her, the mother scampered away. I don't know what that has to say about us, but we snapped a picture of the customers before they escaped too...

Who is your governor and what does he do?!

Look! Looklooklook! We met AHHNOLD! We met the Governator! We SHOOK hands with the Terminator and lived to tell the tale! The man is very friendly and understanding of star-struck kids swarming around him and asking for a photo op.

(You might not be able to see me so well, but trust me... I'm there. Look in the top left hand corner. )

He's also a good bit shorter than I had imagined. He also glows with an orange tinge that I hadn't expected, either. Either someone takes long weekend trips to San Diego or hits that bottle of self-tanner pretty hard...

So here's the story that surrounds the fateful evening when I shook hands with Arnold. Our team leader, Morgan, told us about a documentary screening that was taking place after work at a theatre downtown. This theatre is beautiful... it's big and old and has velvet curtains and these gaudily beautiful golden curlicue decorations all over the wall and overpriced popcorn in the lobby. (But vegan cookies were also for sale!) That night, the Crest had been rented out for the screening of a documentary about Sargent Shriver. "Sarge," as I feel comfortable calling him now, is the dad of Maria Shriver, and Maria Shriver is the wife of the illustrious Mr. Schwarzenegger. As a good husband should, he was in attendance at the screening, supporting his wife and her endeavors.

Sarge Shriver was a very interesting character. He was the man who got the Peace Corps up and running, started "The War Against Poverty," began a lot of community-based programs to help people hold their government accountable, and instituted numerous programs that gave people the tools and education to lift themselves and their children out of poverty. Some small setbacks like the Vietnam War made plans derail, but he was a very interesting man who had a serious, idealistic passion for creating change. The documentary took a look at his life, the politics that surrounded it, and the accomplishments that he made in a way that definitely made him the hero, but it was also very interesting to learn about some eras in American history that I know embarrassingly little about.

I don't think the Peace Corps is in the cards for my future, but I'd like to share some of the passion that Shriver had for making positive change in the world with others and make sure it is present in my own life, even when it sounds like a daunting task. There are opportunities all around us.

Happy 2008

It's my hope that along with flossing regularly, I'll be updating this blog more frequently in the new year. I'm not always successful with keeping my resolutions, but you dear reader, will probably see this blog more often than my teeth, so here goes...

We're back in McClellan, finishing up the last 3 weeks of our project at the Food Bank. It's such a wonderful place to work... I'm going to miss it when we are assigned another project. I've been getting a little antsy, since we are kept in suspense about our next assignment nearly up until a week before we leave. Even though I would love to go to Hawaii, I'll have to wait until 4th phase (or roughly the beginning of June) if there's there's a small chance of us being sent to the islands. More likely, we'll be going to the Gulf Coast, or staying in the Western region, which would be my first choice. I'd love to have a project somewhere in Washington State or Oregon... I wouldn't mind sunny San Diego.

But until we leave, I've been assigned to the warehouse in the mornings and the After School club in the afternoon. I've been doing some chatting with teammates and think that my warehouse assignment might be short-lived. Brad was asked to work in Playcare (0-5 year olds running around and being cute while causing trouble) in the mornings, and working with children is not his thing. I'm not sure how a full day of kiddies will be, but I think it would be a better fit than the warehouse. We'll see. Brad and I may end up switching jobs. I'd like to give the warehouse a shot though... my teammate Mike says that they'll let me drive the forklift if I'm persistent in my asking and bothering.

Today was a day for recovery, however. Some cold germs laid me pretty low over the weekend, so I thought I'd spend one more day resting and ensure that they were gone for good. Thanks to a gallon of apple juice, some homeopathic cold meds, and a bunch of sleep, I'm feeling much better.