Nailed it!

Good morning, good morning, Sunday is upon us alas! The last two days have been pure craziness with working at the construction site. I'll throw some pics up top to show you the progress we've made so far. The first one is essentially what we started with, just a basic structure with a whole lot of dirt/clay around it.  Now this is not my main service site for during the week, I usually only work here Fridays and Saturdays however a few of my team members (Malcom, C-Money, Ruth) do work here regularly.  Construction days are pretty awesome because we get to work outside and everything that is done is what we accomplished so you can really take some pride in that. Also the rehabilitated house I'm working on during the week is frustrating at times because so many measurements were not correct when the house was built to begin with which makes our "Habitat Home Makeover" that much more challenging.  Fortunately my site project director at the rehab house is a really really mellow and chill southern guy who just makes you feel at ease about anything (Mike). I told you about the upside down hammering in the last post which he is pro at, and his advice to me about it was "Slow down... you're from the north aint ya?"  Oh Mike you can read me like a book! He said he's been to New York once and it was way to fast paced for him. But I digress, Friday when we went to the construction site I was basically hammering nails in all day and commenting "nailed it!" everything I saw somebody successfully hammer a nail in... needless to say it got funnier and funnier to everybody as the day went on... well not really, but to me anyways. As much fun as nailing in plywood was, the real fun didn't start until later in the day when we got to the put up the trusses on the house. The pics where you see me standing on the wood planks up top on the house is when the trusses were coming up. Basically myself, Kari, Justin, and Gary (Justin and Gary work for Habitat and are the build masters who tell everybody what to do) were standing on the roof type structure while others were lifting the trusses up to us where we would put them into place and hammer them in. Shout out to Kari who did not want to be up there at all however I'm glad she stayed up there and conquered her fear of unstable wood beams and heights! By the next day when we had to finish putting the rest of the trusses up she was so eager to get back on the roof! Which nicely transitions me into construction day 2... which was yesterday. Saturday was September 11th and a National Service day so we had some volunteers from church groups and other local organizations help us out.  It was more nailing and putting up trusses which I cannot get enough of.  Being scared of heights and roller coasters for most of my life really makes me enjoy them that much more now ironically. The church group we worked with was mighty kind to us and offered us their lunch sandwiches (mmmm turkey) and then gave us their number to come by their place next week to eat lunch and swim in their pool! I've gotta say I'm still pretty taken back by the southern hospitality it's amazing. After working hard all day we had a delicious sheppards pie type dinner made by Kari (she's just awesome) and then a few of us went downtown Mobile to check out the nightlife. Alabama was playing Penn state who they slaughtered and Oregon massacred Tennessee as well.. Alright time to make some eggs and start the day, miss everybody!! Oh and I was astounded that JMU beat VT at home yesterday being a 33 point underdog!! I had to text Scott I was in utter disbelief.