Thanksgiving

Let's pick up where we left off, shall we?

Wednesday night: Half of the other team in Boulder came up to Calwood to spend the night. I don't know if I had mentioned it, but we were planning on having Thanksgiving with the other team at their house, the AmeriMansion. That was before we all saw our living sites and discovered that Calwood has about 4 times as much space and an industrial kitchen. So we decided to have it here. Half of their team came up Wednesday night, and we took them to the Merc. The tiny little 200-person town at the bottom of the mountain is called Jamestown, and the Jamestown Mercantile Cafe is the local restaurant/bar/general store. They have free live music every Thursday and Saturday, and a few of us went down on Thursday of last week. It was pretty fun. The music was a husband and wife who said they were from "a few canyons over." The locals all stared at us when we walked in because we were obviously new. The bar had no liquor, only wine and beer. When the music was over and we were thinking about leaving because we had to be up early to work the next day, the dreadlocked waiter came over and said "The gentleman in the cowboy hat over there would like to buy you guys a pitcher if you want it." (Yes, we were over 21.) It's just a cute little place. Anyway, we took the other team there on Wednesday night because there was another band. This band was really pretty good. They did a lot of really good covers, and a lot of people were dancing in the tiny space available. Angie and Rick, our Calwood site supervisors, were there, and they said that even without the 18 (or however many) of us, that was still the most people they've ever seen at the Merc before. Jamestown was a pretty exciting place to be on Wednesday.

Thursday: The rest of the other team was coming on Thursday. Their project sponsors had decided to be awesome and buy them two turkeys, a ham, several pies, and a bunch of ingredients for them to make other food, so the team was bringing it all here. A few people on my team wanted to make things also, so we got that done before they got here. (I made oatmeal cookies, which turned out better than I've ever made them.) After they got here, they finished making their stuff, I made mashed potatoes since apparently no one else was, and we ate. There were 21 of us around 4 tables pushed together, which a few people had set and decorated. It was pretty much an amazing Thanksgiving.

After we ate (and sat around for a while), the other team left. Several people on my team wanted to call our families, so we decided to drive down the mountain. There's a Target near the bottom, which someone wanted to go to anyway, so we were going to go there to make our calls. Turns out Target is closed on Thanksgiving, along with pretty much everywhere else. We ended up finding a Wal-Mart that was open like 10 miles away. I called my house, and no one answered. How sad is that? I make a special trip down the stupid mountain to call my parents, and they're not home. I called my mom's cell phone, and she answered! I asked where they were, and she said in Louisiana at my brother's apartment. I had no idea they were doing that. It ended up being nice though, since I got to talk to both parents and Carl all at once.

Friday: A few of us went down to Boulder again to walk around and try to get some shopping done. I managed to find two Christmas presents! I don't think I've ever done any Christmas shopping this early before. And no, I didn't do any of that scary Black Friday type shopping. We were there in the afternoon, and not at a mall or anything.

We went back up to Calwood to eat some Thanksgiving leftovers (the other team had left almost all the food with us - I think it was because they just have a regular size refrigerator and didn't have the space for a lot of extra food), then we went back to Boulder to hang out that night.

Saturday (today): Again, back to Boulder. A couple people needed to go there today (one to meet up with her cousin, another to pick up his car from the AmeriMansion and take it back to Denver), and most of the rest of my team came down just for something to do. We went to the Boulder library and got library cards. When this project is over and I don't have internet restrictions, I think I'll probably post a picture of the card. It's actually pretty amusing. Anyway, more walking around, then back up to Calwood for more leftovers.

It wasn't a terribly eventful weekend, but it's been nice and relaxing. It's weird to have this much time off. This coming week is our only full week of work. The first week was 4 days, and this past week was only 3. Since we're supposed to work this Saturday for a fundraiser Calwood is having, we get next Monday off. So next week will only be 4 days again. It's weird to think that this project is already almost half over.

Oh! And we find out on Monday what exactly our next project will be. We know we're in the Gulf next round. Out of the 8 Gulf projects next round, 7 are in New Orleans, and 1 is in Lafayette, Louisiana. They mostly all seem like good projects, but some are definitely better than others. I think we have a good chance of getting one of our top few project choices. We'll see!