Yep, Still Tired

Wow, I haven't been on a computer since Friday. Internet here goes out a lot. So here's what we've been up to this week:

Saturday: All day Saturday, my team did an ISP in Denver. The county was giving away free H1N1 vaccines at a local high school for anyone, not just people in the "risk groups." My team went down to help run it. My job was to stand for hours in the auditorium, where people were sent to fill out their forms. At the end of the form, it said "STOP! Do not write below this line." Under that line, the date needed to be filled in, but obviously no one did it because they were following directions. So I had to check over the forms, make sure it was all filled in, then I would just write the date for them because it was easier than asking them to do it and having them be confused. 11/21/09. 11/21/09. 11/21/09. 11/21/09. 11/21/09. Over and over and over. In case you were wondering, the date last Saturday was 11/21/09.

After we were done there, we drove over to the AmeriMansion in Boulder, where that other Sun Unit team is living. It's much less mansion-like than we were expecting, but still pretty nice. My team had all brought a change of clothes (we have to wear uniforms to do ISPs), then both teams hopped back in our vans to go out in Boulder. It was pretty fun to get to hang out with people from another team. Even though it had only been a week, it seemed like it had been forever since we've seen anyone outside of our team. We weren't there for very long, because the rule with the AmeriVans is that they have to be parked at our housing site from midnight till 6am every night. Since it takes so long to get up the mountain, we had to leave Boulder at about 11 to get back in time. It was still pretty fun though.

Sunday: Nick, a guy from the other Boulder team, had set up a tour for us at the Celestial Seasonings Tea factory. Did you know that ALL Celestial Seasonings tea in the entire world is made here in Boulder, CO? I didn't either. The tour wasn't until 2:30, so some of us went to Boulder early to have more time in civilization. A few of us went to a place called Foolish Craig's for lunch, and it was really cool. I think it's mainly a crepe place, but they had really good sandwiches and stuff too. There was also a lot of really good art all over the walls. After lunch, I got in some phone time, which was really nice.

*Begin tangent*
So I found out why we don't get cell phone reception up here on the snowy, icy, potentially very dangerous mountain. The rich people who live down in Boulder decided that putting cell phone towers around here would mess up their view of the mountains, so they voted not to have them. Who cares about the people who live in the mountains, and could possibly get hurt on the drive up and not be able to call anyone?
*End tangent*

Monday: The high on Monday was only like 18 degrees, so the morning was all inside projects. A few people painted the classroom in the lodge, while the rest of us oiled more logs in the lodge. There were a few rooms we hadn't gotten to when we did it last week. In the afternoon, Tomm and I were scheduled to split wood. It usually starts getting cold at about 3pm, so Christina had told us to only go till 2:30 at the latest then come inside. It seems to be warmer down by the wood splitter, because it's in a valley surrounded by tall things (barn, giant wood pile, etc.). It was 2:30 before we even realized it, but then we were told to come inside anyway.

Monday night was the invention of a new game. A few of us have been playing chess at night sometimes, which I really enjoy. We spend all day doing hard physical work that's usually really mindless. It's kind of nice to do something after that where you sit still and think a lot. Anyway, we invented 4-person chess. Two dark chess sets and two light sets. You set up the back row just like normal on all four sides, but everyone only gets one rook and two pawns. You're only playing against the person across from you, so your pieces can't be taken by the people on the sides, but they can get in the way. Which happened a lot. I lost a lot of pieces by mixing up Lindsey's pieces, who was my opponent, and TK's pieces, who was on the side. Their sets looked really similar. TK beat Heather, who was across from him, then I beat Lindsey. It was really difficult with so many pieces on the board. We're thinking of trying again with the same idea, but with teams. Should be interesting.

Tuesday: My Tuesday morning was spent at Urgent Care. On Saturday during our ISP, my left middle finger was hurting over by the nail, but I didn't know why. It hurt a lot less on Sunday, so I didn't even think about it. Monday when I woke up, it was red with a little yellowish spot by the nail and it hurt much more. Tuesday when I woke up, it was more red, swollen, the yellowish spot was bigger and more yellow, and it hurt A LOT. So I told Christina, and she took me to the doctor. After lots of waiting at Urgent Care (there was really nothing urgent about this place), I finally got in to a room. After more waiting, in walks my doctor who had to be at least 70 years old. She looked at my finger and told me it was infected (which I knew). She said she would go get a scalpel to drain the pus. She came back with one of those contraptions that I think surgeons use, with the magnifying glasses that go over your head. This concerned me, because the yellow spot seemed plenty large enough that it could be seen with regular eyes. Then, she took the scalpel out of the package and didn't know how to get the cap off. She had to go ask a nurse how to do it. Now I was really concerned. But she cut the spot open, and I barely even felt it. It was actually pretty gross, with all that pus coming out. Then she glopped some antibacterial stuff on it and put a band-aid about half an inch lower than where the scalpel cut was. I said "Um, the band-aid isn't actually covering the cut," and she said "Oh, I'll go get another one." She came back with an ENORMOUS band-aid. I'm pretty sure I could have just poked it myself without a trip to the doctor, but at least it didn't hurt as much anymore.

Christina and I got back up the mountain pretty much right at lunch time. After lunch, I helped continue what everyone else had been doing all morning. Rick, the maintenance guy, had dumped a bunch of trail mix, and there were a lot of trails around the lodge and cabins that needed filling in. Some people shovel the mix (which is a lot like gravel, but it absorbs water better) into buckets and wheelbarrows, some people haul the buckets and barrows to the trail and dump it, and some people rake the mix evenly across the trail. I spent some time with a shovel, barrow, and rake.

Today (Wednesday): This morning, we finished the trail we had been working on yesterday. After lunch, two people went to go attack more barbed wire somewhere, and the rest of us went with Angie to build a bridge. We took Angie's truck and our cargo truck, which I drove. We had to drive close to where we were on that first day, when we fixed the burn piles and hauled logs down the slippery slippery hill. It was actually pretty fun driving the truck through the woods on a (mostly) dirt road. We parked the trucks, grabbed our shovel, ax, 2x6 boards, drills, and screws, and hiked about half a mile across rugged terrain, most of which was covered by about a foot of snow. It was pretty difficult. When we got there, Angie chainsawed a tree down and cut it in half to be the supports to put the boards across. The bridge went across a frozen stream. I got to screw half the boards down, which was fun. I haven't used a drill since May in the Elmhurst theatre - I'd been missing them. By the time we got back to the lodge, it was about 2:45, and Angie let us be done for the day.

So the plan used to be that we were going to go down to the AmeriMansion tonight for Thanksgiving, but after seeing their house, it was decided that it was much more practical to do Thanksgiving here. We have much more space for sleeping, and an industrial size kitchen. They'll be here sometime tonight, then leave...sometime.

Oh! And yesterday we found out that for our next project, we'll be in the Gulf! Projects are split up into categories of local, regional, and Gulf. Since we had a local project this time, we get to go to the Gulf next! The next step is that our team ranked the available Gulf projects by our preferences, then which preference we get depends on a lottery system. We're number 8 out of the 20 teams in the whole Corps, so I think we'll get one of our top choices. All Gulf projects are in Louisiana. 7 projects in New Orleans, one in Lafayette. I'm not sure when we'll find out our exact project, but we know we'll be in Louisiana.