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.)