Finally catching up!

And again, picking up where I left off. I'm sorry if this seems a little scattered. I'm just trying to write fast. And again, no proofreading has happened here.

Monday was good too. There was a nice trip to the YMCA (there have been a few trips a week – I just don’t usually write about it. I’m really glad we found a gym here), then just hanging around the house for a while. Tomm had been gone since Saturday with some friends he has in the area, Christina had been in Baton Rouge with her cousin all weekend, and TK, Rob, and Marquis didn’t feel like going out. So it was just the six of the girls on Monday night. We walked down to the Quarter yet again and met up with some people from Dani’s team. We stood at the parade route for a while. Did I mention the parades? There have been parades for like the last three weekends, and every day last Thursday through the Tuesday of Mardi Gras. So on Monday night, we went to a parade for a while. Earlier, on our way home from the YMCA, Heather was telling us about how she was reading a People Magazine while she worked out, and there was a story about how Steven Segal (the action movie star) never really liked acting. He only did it for the money. So now, he’s a cop in New Orleans. Interestingly enough, while we were standing at the parade, there was a group of cops near us. We looked over, and there was Steven Segal. Jess got a decent picture of him. Also, all the parade floats have signs on the front with the name or theme of the float. We were watching a parade, and someone mentioned that a person on a float looked like Harry Connick, Jr. We looked at the float’s sign, and it said something about Harry Connick, Jr. So there was celebrity sighting number two. The next float that went by had Steve Zahn. (You probably don’t know that name. Google him. I bet you recognize his face.) So we saw three celebrities in a span of like 15 or 20 minutes. (Random story: After the Super Bowl, when I was in the crushing mob of people on Bourbon Street, I saw someone who looked really familiar. I thought he just looked like someone I know, but then I realized that I had seen him in a movie but couldn’t remember his name. I later looked up the name, and guess who it was? Steve Zahn.)

When we got bored at the parade, we went over to Bourbon. It actually wasn’t as scary as I would have thought. There were miraculously fewer people on the night before Mardi Gras than there were after the Super Bowl. We caught a few beads (no, not in the stereotypical way), then didn’t like it anymore. The people on balconies were throwing them kind of hard sometimes, and they were big heavy beads. Either you catch it and hurt your hand, or you don’t see it and it hits you, or you get pushed by someone who REALLY wants those beads. It was also getting a little hard to stay together, especially when the group grew after we met up with Forrest (I just realized I’ve been spelling his name Forest. Usually when it’s a person’s name, it’s Forrest. Oops.), Katie, Mike, and Pete, some of the AmeriCorps Direct people. One time Lindsey and I somehow got separated, and it was pretty hard to find people when it was loud and hard to hear anyone on the phone. (Don’t worry, we found them.) The whole giant group of us went over to Frenchman Street, which as I’ve said, is a pretty cool area. We went to Café Negrille, a place we had been to before and always has live music and lots of people dancing. It was a really fun night.

Tuesday, Mardi Gras, was also enjoyable. Lindsey, Heather, and Becky walked to the Quarter in the late morning, and Michala, TK, Jess and I walked down in the early afternoon. We all ended up at the same parade, but on different sides of the street so we couldn’t cross and meet up. We walked down Royal Street on our way to the parade, which we hadn’t spent much time on. None of us were wearing costumes of any kind, and we were in the vast minority. (One of my favorites: A guy wearing a nametag that said “Dat.” After all this time of asking Who dat?, we finally know!) It was really entertaining. Everyone around us was drinking, but not in an obnoxious way. We actually stayed at this parade until the end. Turns out parades are much more pleasant when you’re not super cold. After the parade was over and we could meet up with the others, we grabbed some food at a taco place and ate out on the sidewalk and people watched. This was also very pleasant. We started to walk back home, stopping in a few stores along the way. We passed an area on Decatur near Jackson Square that was kind of like a small amphitheatre. There was a very charismatic guy that seemed to be doing something interesting, and there were already people sitting in the amphitheatre seats. TK, Heather, and I stopped to watch what he was doing, and the others kept walking. It looked like it would be good, so we found seats. It turned out to be a group of four guys doing a breakdancing show, but there was also a lot of comedy. Lindsey ended up coming back and caught the last 15 minutes or so, but I think the others missed out. They just walked back home. When it was over we walked back home via Frenchman Street and ran into a dance party in the street. The music was coming from some kind of speaker that was dressed as a robot. We stayed for a while then kept walking. While we walked away we were all talking about how fun it would be to stay for a while, but we had to work on Wednesday. We actually stood on a corner for a good five minutes debating staying for a while. We ended up being responsible and going home. I was a little sad, but I was still really happy with the day.

On Wednesday all of us except TK and Heather got sent to a new house with a Habitat staff person we hadn’t worked with before named Corbin. This was a house that hadn’t even been started yet. All that was already there was the concrete foundation and the three or four foot concrete pillars that Habitat houses in New Orleans get built on. Our job was to start building the floor system. There were pieces of six inch by six inch lumber that were about twelve feet long (PS, they are freaking heavy) that would have to go across the pillars around the whole perimeter of the house. We had to crown them all, and we became experts. You have to get down at eye level with the piece and look down the length. Most pieces have some kind of warping where it curves in one direction. Either it dips, or it arches. (Jessi, Corbin’s AmeriCorps Direct assistant, tried to tell us they were rainbows and smiley faces. We made up our own lingo.) When you put the 6x6 on the pillars, it is supposed to arch up, like a rainbow. So we had to look at it and mark with a pencil which side should be up. Then we had to install the really freaking heavy 6x6s. It usually took three of us to carry it and lift it up onto the pillars. (Side note: Corbin, the Habitat staff person who is in charge of building this house, is 19 years old. I repeat – he is 19, and he is in charge of building a house. Also, at one point, I turned around and saw him carrying a 6x6 on his shoulder, by himself. He set it down from his shoulder onto the pillars, by himself. Ridiculous!) Then they had to be cut with a circular saw. Since they’re so thick, you would have to make three or four cuts on different sides to get all the way through it. Then, we had to nail them down with the metal straps that were already attached to the pillars. Then we got to move on to the 2x10s. A piece of 2x10 lumber that is about 16 feet long (and also pretty freaking heavy) has to stand up on its 2 inch side and go around the perimeter on top of the 6x6. These also had to be crowned. So we ended up crowning at least 100 pieces of lumber. I think we also got the 2x10s installed around the perimeter. Actually, I think I’m running into Thursday now. It is currently Sunday as I am writing this and sometimes days run together in my mind.

So obviously, on Thursday morning we were back with Corbin. I guess this is when we crowned and installed the 2x10s. Lots of hammering Wednesday and Thursday. The 2x10s needed a 16 penny galvanized nail (they’re big and have a rough chemical coating on them so they don’t disintegrate in the chemicals of the pressure treated wood) every 6 inches, around the whole house. We were only here until lunch. Another side note: We liked Corbin’s house because it was about 50 feet from a park with a playground. Wednesday and Thursday, we ate lunch and then got to swing the rest of our lunch hour. Fabulous.

After lunch, we got sent to another site with Habitat staff person Pete and AmeriCorps Direct person Brittney. This was another site that had only the concrete pillars. None of us liked working with Pete. He didn’t introduce himself when we got there and didn’t ask our names. He and Brittney did all the interesting work while all we got to do was crown more 2x10s. Occasionally he would ask someone to help him lift or hold something, but we didn’t really get to do anything. We estimated that between Wednesday and Thursday, we crowned about 200 pieces of lumber. Let me tell you, this gets old after a while. It was just Becky, Rob, Michala, and I for most of the afternoon and none of us were in very good moods. Not the greatest day ever. We all decided that we greatly prefer working with Corbin. He talks really quietly and does not explain things very clearly sometimes, but he’s friendly and jokes around with us and lets us do work. Pete doesn’t talk to us at all and doesn’t let us do anything.

On Friday, we were at yet another new site with only the concrete pillars, led by Brian (the one who yells and curses, yet we love him) and his Direct assistant Katie. I did not get to be there in the morning because I had to write a press release that day. Sunday the 21st we had an event that I’ll write about later that we wanted to alert the press about. It was already really short notice, so I really had to do it on Friday. Christina always goes to a coffee shop on Friday mornings because there’s paperwork she has to email in and we don’t have internet at our house. She also has to go to the Habitat office on Fridays to fax or make copies or something. Since I had to write that release and email it that day, she took me with her. Also, Becky decided she wanted to go to the doctor because she had been sick for so long, so she came too. We all went to the coffee shop and Christina and I did what we had to then went to the Habitat office. While we were in the little room with the copy machine a Habitat guy came in and said they had gumbo leftover if we wanted some. He even heated it up for us. It was actually really good and not too spicy for me. Then we took Becky to the doctor and found out it would be a super long wait, so she took me back to the worksite with Brian. There were four other guys working on the house who apparently used to work for Habitat. They were like hardcore construction guys and they were INTENSE. In a day and a half of work with just a few of us with Corbin and Jessi, all we got done was putting up the 6x6s and 2x10s around the perimeter. In a day on this house with those guys, we did all of that plus ran more 2x10s across the whole house every 16 inches to go under the floor, plus started nailing in the plywood sheets for the floor. It was insane. I wish I had been there in the morning.

We were back with Brian on Saturday. Those intense guys weren’t back. There was a group of about 15 or 20 volunteers from Maryland who seemed to be pretty nice. They shared their soda and snacks with us, which is of course always appreciated. Most of the ones I came into contact with had never done construction before, so while they were nice and pleasant to talk to, they weren’t terribly useful. There were several very nice ladies who weren’t comfortable working on the floor because they’re afraid of heights (in their defense, it was about four feet off the ground and had nothing stopping you from falling off) so they became “helpers.” I was working on king studs with Rob and Heather for a while in the morning. This is where you have one full-length 2x4 and one that has been cut. They need to be nailed together just one on top of the other, as flush as possible. We needed 44 of these. After we had done about 18 and been frustrated about how the boards would move as you’re hammering so they weren’t flush anymore, I discovered a trick. Just angle the first nail in sideways. (I realize that made no sense to anyone who isn’t me. I apologize.) After a while of this, Brian told me to teach a volunteer how to do the king studs and then go cut. There was pretty much just a giant list of various kinds of lumber that needed to be cut that Tomm and I were both supposed to be working on. We each had a volunteer “helper.” It wasn’t bad. I like cutting, it just gets monotonous after a while. Sometime in the afternoon, Christina appeared out of nowhere. (She and a few others were working on another site. Tomm, Heather, Rob and I were the only ones with Brian.) She told Tomm and me to come help her on another house, then we’d be back. There was a bunch of stuff that had been delivered to three different Habitat houses and we needed to load them into the storage containers on each site. We first went to the one on Music Street. There were three rolls of chain link fencing, a bunch of fence posts, and a pallet with 30 bags of concrete that were 80 pounds each. We loaded it all into the container then set off for St. Roch Street where we had a bit of an adventure. Becky, who stayed home sick in the morning but now felt better, was waiting for us there. We couldn’t get the stupid container unlocked. Christina went to pick up TK and Marquis, who were doing the same thing on another house, then came back. We all sat down to wait for a Habitat person to come open the container. While waiting, we suddenly heard several gunshots. It sounded like it was within a couple blocks of us. We ran to the van and Christina started driving away. She wanted to go back to Painters Street, the site where Brian was working only a few blocks away, to pick up the others. She was also trying to call our Habitat boss to tell him what happened and was getting a little freaked out. We suggested she let someone else drive so she pulled over. She got out and started walking around the back of the van to the passenger side, and TK slid over into the driver’s seat. Right at the moment that she was facing the street behind the van, she saw a white car run into an SUV at the corner nearest the house where we live, and the SUV flipped twice. She got in the van and we went to Painters to get Heather and Rob. We went home. (I know you don’t know the street names, but these streets are all very close to each other.) By the time we got back to our house, the police were there. Christina did the right thing and went out to talk to them because she saw the actual accident. It was determined by the police that the accident was related to the gunshots and that drugs were somehow involved. And this all happened just blocks from where we live. (Mom and Dad, I just want you to know that none of us ever go anywhere alone and I have never felt unsafe in our house.) It was an interesting afternoon.

Today, Sunday, was that event I mentioned. During the second and fourth projects, each team has to have a Day of Service. We’re supposed to set it up ourselves and recruit volunteers to work with us. We decided to join up with Dani’s team to work in a community garden. We didn’t actually get any volunteers despite our flyers that we posted, but we still got a lot of work done. It was mostly weeding. The garden people really seemed to appreciate it. I think there are only two people trying to keep the whole thing maintained. It was supposed to be over at 3:00, but they let us leave at 2:30 which gave us just enough time to go home, change, and get to the YMCA in time for a workout before it closed.

And now I’m caught up! I hope you didn’t miss the entry I just posted on Friday. I’ve been writing like mad to catch up with myself here. Whew!