It's always sunny somewhere in Alabama

Week 4 = completed, and my weekend officially begins right now. So what's on the weekend agenda you ask? You didn't? Well I will tell you anyways.  One of the church groups that volunteered with us last Saturday invited us to their Baptist church service and a lunch in afterward so we'll be checking that out tomorrow morning/afternoon.  Monday we'll be knocking out some Independent Service Hours (ISP's) at a local shelter for men @ 9:30am.

Today was cut short due to a massive thunderstorm that erupted after lunch, so we left the new construction site around 1:45 and got a few extra hours added to the weekend.  It's sunny and 85 now which is nice; storms usually don't last too long around here and the weather is very temperamental.  Alright weekend time, adios muchachos!

Lastly, couldn't get any new progress pics of the new construction due to the rain... just imagine there's a house with half a roof on it with windows now.

It's hammer time

Day 2 of our new rehab project.  Instead of painting we did demolition in the kitchen (finally got to use a sledgehammer) which was awesome.  Gary, our site supervisor (above) can be seen removing a hose from the washer before we tore it out of the kitchen.  Gary (or "Gair bear" as we call him) usually has some pretty humorous stories to tell us throughout the day to keep us entertained. For example, He informed us he bought multiple birds for the purpose of passing along information he teaches them to his children after he passes away.  His only fear of course is that they will live too long and may out last his children and teach outdated information to his grandchildren... Oh Gair bear!

So tomorrow we all get to work together on the new construction site, and Habitat expects around 45 volunteers from a church group and local high school to show up as well. Aside from getting to work together as a team, we only have to stop at one work site in the morning which is great because a morning commute between 3 work sites is horrific.  Physical training tomorrow 5:15 though, so I'll be up bright and early as per usual.  Looking forward to tomorrow night so I can not set my alarm but wake up at 6 anyways, curse you AmeriCorps!
 

Get 'er done

Another day of serving America is completed! *cue Star Spangled Banner* Today my mini-team (Sarah and Ashlyn) and I started a new adventures in a 1700 square foot rehab house.  We began the day by removing old cruddy carpeting along with the outer wood foundation holding the carpet in.  Here at AmeriCorps we like to pride ourselves on safety being our #1 priority, as you can see Ashlyn and Sarah (above) highly enthused to be sporting dust masks.  Removal of the carpet and foundation was a tedious task that escalated into an all day activity.  Needless to say, we prevailed and had the place spic and span before leaving, prepping us for a day of painting tomorrow. After work I ran with Mac and smoked my previous time of 11:20 coming in with a 10:50 1.5 mile time, Kaboom! 3 more weeks until transition, meaning the next officially timed 1.5 mile back at campus is under a month away.

Also please note my current sleeping arrangement above, not 1 but 2 mattresses; and not only that but the top is an air mattress essentially meaning I sleeping on a cloud every single night. However, there are drawbacks to this heavenly setup.. Last night my air mattress was staggered slight left on top of my bed mattress and when I rolled over at 3am I may have fallen off the bed as the air mattress dipped off to the side of the bed and flipped over onto the ground, sending my cell phone catapulting across the room attacking Cain and Mac.


Still trying to catch up on sleep from Nawlins last weekend so I'm really looking forward to snoozing this weekend away... 2 more days until Sunday...

Halfway through Spike... Already?

So as I arose for another action packed work week with Habitat I realized that we are already 3+ weeks in and it will not be long before we are heading back to campus.  Ironic how training seemed like forever ago yet this initial Spike is flying by.  My life in the Ameri-bubble has truly limited my knowledge about what is going on elsewhere despite checking the news daily I still feel like so much is missing.. Perhaps the lack of T.V for CNN and ESPN could have something to do with it. On a side note I refuse to change my laptop time from east-coast (I'm bad at change what can I say) as it reminds me of home! Today was the first day of fall and you could not tell at all down here, apparently the seasons go from summer to winter without an intermediary which means no leaves changing colors for me this year. On a further side note, I'm pretty sure I could live off of eggs, turkey, peanut butter, and goldfish which I may end up going once our Habitat lunch budget expires and we move onto our next spike.  Anyways today our new rehab house lost electricity so we went back to the previous rehab house to do more touch-ups.  Gary, our site supervisor told me to paint all day which was awesome considering I'm still recouping from  New Orleans.  So I was able to listen to music all day (Played "Life is a highway" by on repeat for about 75% of that) and get into the painting zone!  Tomorrow I'm fortunate enough to sleep until 6:15 (hooray!) as we did physical training martial arts this morning at 5:15am, which means my abs workout/running PT will be on Thursday @ 5:15.  No fun pictures today, sorry folks!  

Back to Bama

What a weekend.  Always a good time in New Orleans and finally getting to see my fellow Corps members again! Also we found out what the next round spike projects consist of (Click to download - excel document) so looks like I will end up somewhere in Mississippi, New Orleans, or in Alabama.  I'm just glad there's no camping projects for next round, whew.  We're driving back in our rental car now back to Mobile which is a nice 2 hour drive.  Yes I am blogging while Cain is driving, isn't technology amazing these days?  Ended up going to the Mall instead of site seeing but I got some pretty sweet pics which I'm going to throw up. Alright I'm way too tired to write anymore so I'll let the pics do all the talking.

Weekend Vaca

Good morning from the Best Western hotel on Magazine street in New Orleans.  After a long week of new construction and gutting/revamping rehab houses, 8 members of my team including myself rented 2 compact cars from the local hertz and booked it to New Orleans for the weekend.  Here of course is River 5, 2, and some delta corps members of whom I was reunited with for the first time in weeks!  New Orleans is awesome. I cannot stress that enough, the city is beautiful and there is so much to do.  Today I plan on checking out the local scenery and doing a little site seeing in the French Quarter (hopefully some awesome pics to come).  It's been a few days since the last post so i'll recap the end of the week for "y'all"... Friday Sarah, Ashlyn, and myself finished up our habitat rehab project at an older house which felt pretty rewarding, and it looked pretty good after cleaning it up which was pretty sweet.  Saturday (which is my new favorite work day) we worked at the new construction site... see above picture for progress pic.  Saturday's are enjoyable because we work with local volunteers which generally consist of church groups, college kids, and local community members.  Working with church groups I have learned to look forward to because 9 times out of 10 they will supply us with sandwiches and snacks for lunch, and what better way is there to end the week than that? Another amazing way to end the week was listening to the Alabama football game on the radio which came on @ 2:30, they rolled over Duke pretty easily (surprise, surprise) and our site supervisor was loving every minute of it.

Roll Tide Roll

Just got back from walmart (sorry ma) and bought some sweet Alabama gear! As most of you all know I am an avid collector of college sweatshirts/sweatpants/shirts/shorts and this AmeriCorps experience should certainly enable me to expand my vastly growing assortment of college attire.  My choices were between Alabama and Auburn so it was really a no brainer... *hops on Bama bandwagon*. Prices down here are so cheap I decided to pick up a long sleeve Alabama Crimson Tide shirt as well, I'm such a baller.  Already thinking of picking up some Ole Miss gear when I head back to Mississippi on transition, Miss State still sucks at football right? Anyways, what I did today to serve America... well simply put I primed, painted, spackled, and sanded.  The rehab house I'm working in is getting finished tomorrow so when Sarah, Ashlyn and I head there tomorrow we will probably have to just do a lot of cleaning and make the house look all fresh and clean before we vacate it. 1.5 mile time is down to 11:30 (steven I want a rematch in tennis asap) and hopefully will continue to steadily decline throughout the spike.  Ideally I would like to get under 10 minutes by the end of the year but one day at a time...  Here's an idea of what my teams nightly activities include... 3 of the guys (Mac, Taylor, Cain) are playing magic cards with the team leader (C-Money) See photo above, the girls are scattered throughout the house, some on the phone, some on their Kindle's, and some are crocheting.  We are a bunch of nerds.