Blitz

From This: (taken early Monday morning)
To this: (taken Friday afternoon)
(be sure to click on the second photo for a blown-up high-res version.)

We all want to run the race to win. Never giving up or giving in ... Comin at you like a BLITZ!!!!!!!!!!

The title of this post is taken from an old song by the band Audio Adrenaline (with guest stars, the O.C. Supertones^^) it's about a church group ("14 kids in an old church van") on a trip, and its about how crazy life can be when you are on a mission. Thats what this place is going to be like all week. That's right. It's a Blitz Build. We have teamed up with Habitat for Humanity to do this awesome project, and are really excited, though somewhat apprehensive. Starting tomorrow morning at 5:30am, a group of over 200 volunteers is building 7 houses from the subfloor up, in 5 days. We are in for a wild ride. I will be working an extra 3-4 hours every day, getting there before the volunteers and leaving after them. There won't be much time for blogging and talking, but I highly recommend checking out the Lagniappe Church blog (link to the right) as it will be updated throughout with pictures and news about the builds. Please keep me, the other interns and staff, and especially the volunteers in your prayers. The weather looks good, not too much rain, not too hot, but the heat is a big concern, especially when you are working against the clock, and statistically the odds of getting injured on the worksite go up by a sizable amount when doing a blitz build. I'm going to bed, 5am is coming a lot quicker than I think.

Eternal Father Strong to Save...

So, the last post was a bit truncated by the sudden loss of internet coupled with a sudden realization that my concrete was about to arrive. More about that later; first let me finish up with last week. George and I managed to get a whole load of projects done and for the last two days we were awarded for our work on the Jensen house by hearing the news that the house had passed its final inspection and that the homeowner had been given a certificate of occupancy. It was a good end to a week of lots of tiny little jobs. Saturday rolled around, and it was time for the KABOOM playground build. In little more than 6 hours, 600+ volunteers helped turn the defunct MLK park into a neat playground/basketball court for the youth of Bay Saint Louis. Check out the Lagniappe Church Blog (link in the right column) for more pictures and a link to the Good Morning America segment about the build. After the build we blew off steam at the Mockingbird with a little party thrown by Americorps, complete with free pizza (or "free-za" as James has dubbed it) and drinks, a nice little get together that happened to coincide with "Second Saturday" a monthly event in town where shops stay open late and offer free food and wine to customers. It provides a nice forum in which one can get to know both other residents and local business-owners, as well enjoy some good food and usually good live music. This time it was a country/bluegrass band from Starkville called "Nash Street". They have a really good sound, which you can check out here. I honestly have no idea what I did on Sunday, but I'm sure it wasn't too much.

I have been hesitant to write about this week, just because I haven't quite figured out how I want to describe it yet. It had a very different feel to it in a lot of ways than the previous weeks. It was odd in that I got closer to the group I was with than I had with any other group, but I still had this inexplicable sort of animosity towards them as well. I'm unsure if this had more to do with them or me... The group was from near Atlanta, and was basically a middle/high school youth group. They were nice kids, and we had a lot of fun on the first day digging holes for the foundation. The problem came when we began working with the 8x8 wooden posts that needed to go in the middle of the holes, be perfectly on the lines and be perfectly plumb in all directions. Once this is achieved they have to be braced in this position until they can be concreted. This is not terribly difficult work, merely very precise work that is difficult to do correctly with a group of middle schoolers. Luckily they took a halfday on Wednesday, so the Intern Dream Team came in and slammed out the rest of the work that afternoon. The next day we were told our concrete would be arriving at 11, but the concrete company failed to tell us that we needed to call and confirm our delivery 30mins beforehand. And thats where I started the last entry.

Our concrete guys arrived right on schedule at 3:30 with more than enough in the trucks to do our job. We were almost entirely finished when our first truck carrying around 7 yards ran dry and so we went through and topped everything off with truck number two using only about a yard of its 6. The drivers were great: nice guys, competent drivers, and helped us figure out the easiest way to do things. We ended up working pretty late that day, but it wasn't a big deal, as we had spent most of the day hanging out and playing games.
Friday was pretty lax, my team was assigned to clean the big room in the church, and I went with Thomas to finish up some framing on the big Seymour house. Clyde wasn't there to oversee anything because he had flown up to his parent's 60th wedding anniversary, so it was just the two of us with the team. We got a bunch done, and since it was the team's last day, they took us out to eat at Los Tres Amigos. (A restaurant right down the street from our job site.)

Sleep, Birthday, Beer, Generosity, KABOOM!!!, and other unimportant events...

So, some blanket statements for the start of this blog.
1)I'm sorry I haven't updated this in a while, I have been very busy doing all sorts of work, and every moment that I haven't been working has been spent either sleeping or blowing off steam.
2)Thanks to everyone who sent me birthday greetings and gifts; it was a little overwhelming to see all of the wall posts on Facebook, and the packages in the mail. Thanks especially to Uncle Ken and Aunt Debbie who sent me a birthday cake!! Unfortunately the USPS didn't take great care of it and it was basically mush by the time it made it down here, but we had a blast dipping pieces of cake into the frosting and eating it with a spoon^^ We will still occasionally have a chuckle about the "birthday cake from Delaware"
3. A big thank you to everyone who contributed money to make this summer possible for me; when I first got here, I had not yet reached my goal, but I have now actually exceeded it and am very grateful for all your support.

So it's been a good while since I posted, I know. So I will try to play catch-up a bit. So, birthday first: my birthday was not a terribly exciting day. I was working all last week with a team from First Presbyterian of Jackson, Mississippi. George Holman (our cook Elizabeth's father) and I were working to fix up several houses Lagniappe built and make sure they were ready for final inspection. This involved connecting sewage drainage lines, and well pump supply lines, as well as getting power run and connected to the grinder pumps and well pumps. Cosmetic jobs like removing dripped paint, attaching outlet/switch plates, moving improperly installed mirrors etc. On Tuesday, however, we were working on fixing a plumbing leak that was ruining the ceiling drywall and rewiring the grinder pump and well pump on another house, one of the first homes Lagniappe had built. Jordan told me all the details of what needed to be done and as we were about to pull out yelled after me, "By the way, the mother and one of her children is deaf!" We actually didn't have too much trouble communicating with the homeowner, as her other children were basically able to translate for us, and by the end of the second day we got to see the photo album of the history of the house, what it looked like before and after Katrina, and throughout the various stages of building. Jordan's awesome birthday present to me was not telling me that the "house on stilts" was only 3 feet off of the concrete slab, which was wet from HVAC condensation and covered in some godforsaken mix of algae, water, bugs, spiderwebs, and who knows what else. After a few hours of hornet attacks, fishing, stapling, and splicing wires, I finally emerged from the slimy pit, got cleaned up and ate, and went out with several of the other over-21 interns to a little bar down the road called Clyde's. Thomas tried to be nice and buy me my first legal beer, but the bartender wouldn't stand for it and saved that honor for herself^^ We were all pretty tired and didn't really stay all that long, but I'm sure I would never have heard the end of it from some if I didn't go out on my birthday. In a funny twist, I haven't been carded yet at any store or restaurant. (Last night at dinner, Thomas and I had beer with our BBQ, and the waiter looks at us and says "Are y'all old enough?")Well, the only reason this post happened, was that our concrete truck was delayed by several hours. With nothing for my team to do, we returned to Lagniappe to chill until the concrete came at 3:30, and I set out to blog. I had planned to post this before I left to finish up that job, but of course the internet connection decided to cut out just then and erased half of my post.

If I come up with a witty title for this entry, it will be a miracle...

So another Lagniappe week is coming to an end. I've done a lot this week, especially as I was working all day yesterday as well. On Thursday I was assigned to work with Clyde and the British group instead of working with Dick and the rest of the interns. I did, however, join that crew for lunch, as we had been invited by a friend of Dick and Maggie's to lunch up in Kiln, MS (for all those who aren't familiar with southern Mississippi, this town is called "The Kill" by everyone around, don't ask me why) We had some of the best roast beef that has ever seen the inside of a po-boy roll, and an invitation to come back anytime. On the way up to "the Kill" Dick asked me if I knew why I had been assigned to work with Clyde, and after I had jokingly guessed that it was because he wanted me as far away from his worksite as possible, he told me it was because Jordan had asked him specifically who would be able to handle the job. I guess I must be doing something right. Throughout the day working with the English, I got to know them pretty well and went out to the Mockingbird (yes, it pretty much IS the hang-out of Bay St. Louis, and with Lazy Magnolia beer (from the Kill) on tap, and live music on Thursday nights, it pretty much IS the nightlife as well^^ check out the website at www.mockingbirdcafe.com) I was back on the Moran house on Friday, and although almost 40 minutes late, Mike showed up with about 50 pounds of crawfish for us for lunch, which we tore through a bit more than half of before throwing in the towel. ("we" at this point was not just the 5 construction interns and Dick, we had about 12 volunteers from Germantown Academy there along with the homeowner (Mike) and several of his friends. We wrapped up what we were doing and looked back to realize what we had accomplished: taken the house from being empty of anything but framing, electric wire and plumbing and insulated and drywalled pretty much the entire house. We realized of course that a professional team would have done the same work in a day or two, whereas we took a week and a half and aren't quite done, but most of us started out the process as complete amateurs and by Friday we were teaching others faster than Dick taught us.
Saturday rolled around, and so did we, in this: A Ford F-350 Flatbed "dualie" truck
James and I were moving things off a construction site that was almost finished and getting them squared away in the tool crib. After lunch we ran out of things to do, so we decided to go around and check on a group building a fence around the property that will eventually house the new Bay St. Louis Little Theater. The property has a very interesting history which is explained quite well on their website. They invited us to come back on the 14th to a fundraising picnic, which promises to not only be a good time with good food, but a neat cultural event as well, as a group of students will be performing the Tennessee Williams one-act play, "This Property is Condemned", the movie version (starring Robert Redford and Natalie Wood, as well as Charles Bronson and Robert Blake) of which was filmed in Bay St. Louis.
As you can see, a few changes have been made to the blog, font, color scheme, etc. This, like everything around me, is a work-in-progress and will continue to change as the summer goes on. New features include: the ability to post comments without a Google, OpenID, or LiveJournal account. If you would like to comment on a post, you just hit the comment link below the post, type your comment in the box and select "Name/URL" as your Identity. You will also need to pass the robot test (i.e. type the word that you see in the box) but any and everyone should be able to comment now. Please do comment to let me know who is reading this, what I can do to make the blog better, and tell me how awesome I am ... well everything except that last part^^ Also, I have hyperlinked interesting article pertaining to things mentioned in the post so that you all know what I am talking about.