days 3 and 4
I haven't forgotten about the blog, but I'm finally feeling like I have enough energy that I can go out at night and I have found a bunch of entertaining people to do it with.
It's 1am and in theory I have to be up at 6:45 tomorrow but enh, I'll write.
day 3: They didn't learn from how quickly we painted the first place (it's a three-day job and we did it in two) and assigned us another house for which we just had to paint the attic. It wasn't nearly as hot as the last one and I spent most of the time in the rafters, some of which was lying down across a couple beams and painting behind my head. We were done by lunch. Went to lunch at a little fresh seafood place where I had a hot sausage and a crab-stuffed artichoke and some people had some huge crabs. Then they didn't have another job for us that wouldn't either involve teaching us a new task (which would take a while) or that we could complete without running way over our normal stopping time, so we went home and showered and headed out to be tourists. We drove around New Orleans a bit and visited the Musician's Village, which is a housing development being built by Habitat for Humanity along with Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis to house some of the displaced musicians who would weaken the culture of the city if they left. It's very pretty. Then we walked around a shopping area and chatted and eventually went to dinner at a bar that had mediocre food and apparently good drinks. We talked a lot (people think my stories are amusing, which is nice) and then seven of us went across the street and jumped the fence into the cemetery and walked around for a while. Charlotte cleverly noticed that there was an open gate much farther down, which was useful.
In other news, right about the time that Mom sent me an email warning me that I was allergic to mold, I noticed an allergic outbreak across my upper back. It doesn't seem to have spread and it's not that annoying -- it looks like a bunch of pimples or water blisters or something, and they don't really hurt -- but it was bad enough that on day 4 when we were supposed to do actual mold removal, I begged off.
day 4: I originally got switched to the team that was collecting trash from various houses and taking it to the dump, but then I got moved to one of the teams doing "mudding", which is putting some sort of mud-like spackle (I think) on drywall. Rather than teaching me a lot of new technique, they had me covering screws, which was tedious. And for some reason, this was the first time I got really tired. I kind of slacked. Many other people did, it turns out, although not at my site. At lunch we met up with most of the rest of the crew and two of the other teams campaigned to get me switched to theirs, and I ended up going to the other team that was theoretically doing mudding, but again I got a different job. I re-set a handful of screws that were done poorly, and then I gutted a bathroom with a crowbar. Good times. I felt very powerful and covered in drywall dust. Then I cleaned a lot. Afterward, we went home and showered and got dressed up all pretty and the cool kids went off to New Orleans to a fancy restaurant. We went to a restaurant called "Cochon" and I had fried alligator and ham hock and champagne and they were all good. Then we went to Cafe Du Monde and had coffee and beignets. On the way home, our driver did a poor job of noticing that her lights weren't on and was distracted by the GPS that apparently sent her the wrong way down a one-way street, and at the end of that street (which fortunately nobody else came down) a cop was waiting. We threw enough stuff at the wall (lost, rental car, rebuilding, etc) that the cop actually let us go with a warning. And now I am home and I am going to be very tired tomorrow.
It was an amusing look into my childhood/early adult insecurities that my primary thoughts about dinner were (a) "This was a lot of fun" and (b) "I'm out with the cool kids! This never happens!" and I'm not sure which was stronger. But it was really fun. Three of them live in SF and I will see them again.
I'm sure I am overlooking stuff but tired. Night!
It's 1am and in theory I have to be up at 6:45 tomorrow but enh, I'll write.
day 3: They didn't learn from how quickly we painted the first place (it's a three-day job and we did it in two) and assigned us another house for which we just had to paint the attic. It wasn't nearly as hot as the last one and I spent most of the time in the rafters, some of which was lying down across a couple beams and painting behind my head. We were done by lunch. Went to lunch at a little fresh seafood place where I had a hot sausage and a crab-stuffed artichoke and some people had some huge crabs. Then they didn't have another job for us that wouldn't either involve teaching us a new task (which would take a while) or that we could complete without running way over our normal stopping time, so we went home and showered and headed out to be tourists. We drove around New Orleans a bit and visited the Musician's Village, which is a housing development being built by Habitat for Humanity along with Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis to house some of the displaced musicians who would weaken the culture of the city if they left. It's very pretty. Then we walked around a shopping area and chatted and eventually went to dinner at a bar that had mediocre food and apparently good drinks. We talked a lot (people think my stories are amusing, which is nice) and then seven of us went across the street and jumped the fence into the cemetery and walked around for a while. Charlotte cleverly noticed that there was an open gate much farther down, which was useful.
In other news, right about the time that Mom sent me an email warning me that I was allergic to mold, I noticed an allergic outbreak across my upper back. It doesn't seem to have spread and it's not that annoying -- it looks like a bunch of pimples or water blisters or something, and they don't really hurt -- but it was bad enough that on day 4 when we were supposed to do actual mold removal, I begged off.
day 4: I originally got switched to the team that was collecting trash from various houses and taking it to the dump, but then I got moved to one of the teams doing "mudding", which is putting some sort of mud-like spackle (I think) on drywall. Rather than teaching me a lot of new technique, they had me covering screws, which was tedious. And for some reason, this was the first time I got really tired. I kind of slacked. Many other people did, it turns out, although not at my site. At lunch we met up with most of the rest of the crew and two of the other teams campaigned to get me switched to theirs, and I ended up going to the other team that was theoretically doing mudding, but again I got a different job. I re-set a handful of screws that were done poorly, and then I gutted a bathroom with a crowbar. Good times. I felt very powerful and covered in drywall dust. Then I cleaned a lot. Afterward, we went home and showered and got dressed up all pretty and the cool kids went off to New Orleans to a fancy restaurant. We went to a restaurant called "Cochon" and I had fried alligator and ham hock and champagne and they were all good. Then we went to Cafe Du Monde and had coffee and beignets. On the way home, our driver did a poor job of noticing that her lights weren't on and was distracted by the GPS that apparently sent her the wrong way down a one-way street, and at the end of that street (which fortunately nobody else came down) a cop was waiting. We threw enough stuff at the wall (lost, rental car, rebuilding, etc) that the cop actually let us go with a warning. And now I am home and I am going to be very tired tomorrow.
It was an amusing look into my childhood/early adult insecurities that my primary thoughts about dinner were (a) "This was a lot of fun" and (b) "I'm out with the cool kids! This never happens!" and I'm not sure which was stronger. But it was really fun. Three of them live in SF and I will see them again.
I'm sure I am overlooking stuff but tired. Night!