Veterans Green Jobs, Week 5

Home sweet home!  Our last day of work with VGJ was Thursday, and I flew back to Washington early this morning.  I was greeted with a few inches of fresh snow, which makes me realize that Denver really needs some winter lessons from Spokane.

Or not.  It’s cold here.

Our last week with VGJ was great.  We finished our painting projects, and they ordered a bunch of pizza for a really nice send-off lunch.  We also got VGJ bandanas, and stickers and some other sweet swag.  VGJ was a great project sponsor, and I loved working with them the last month.  The weatherizing and the warehouse were both great learning experiences, and alot of fun. (Thanks for this pic, McAdoo)

The last week did have me looking forward to next round though.  Being out with the crews the week before, I hadn’t realized how close we were to finishing the work they had planned for us.  This week was full of random little filler tasks that made the notion of leaving VGJ easier.  I, for example, spent two full days insulating a little doll house.  They plan to use it as a visual aid for what the weatherizing crews do in the field.  Or maybe the dolls were just getting too cold.  I already got loads of shit from my team for it, so you can save your breath.  

Another amazing VGJ parting gift: Nuggets tickets.  They gave us six amazing tickets for Thursday’s game against the Spurs.   

1. Our nosebleed seats the last time we saw the Nuggets play
2. Our kickass seats this time, probably thirty feet back from the court

Unfortunately the Spurs had to go and ruin our good time.  They won on a bullshit offensive foul that negated Melo’s game winner.  Typical, Spurs. Just typical.  On the plus-side, we did get to see JR Smith do this to Gary Neal:

(I didn’t take this.  Our seats were good, but nothing like this)

Thursday was also the day that all the other teams got back from their respective projects, so after the game, we walked downtown to meet our friends.  It was great to have everybody back, and Thursday turned into (euphemism alert!) quite an evening.

We’re on break for the next two weeks.  After that, we’ve got a week of prep before our Habitat project in New Orleans starts up!  In the meantime, Merry Christmas! I hope you all get the Turbo-Man Action figure you've been hoping for. 

Anybody going to the P.I. tonight? Great. Me too.  

Veterans Green Jobs, Week 4

With Christmas two weeks away, here’s a festive picture of Denver City Hall at night. To get you all in the mood for some a-wassailing.

At VGJ this week, I got to go out every day with the weatherizing crews.  A great break from the warehouse and a really interesting job.  All the houses we visited (about six this week) needed more insulation in the attic, so a big part of my week was spent grinding insulation in the back of the truck. (All the other jobs needed some sort of know-how, so I was in the truck).  Step into my office:

1. Bags of insulation.  Basically shredded newspaper, vacuum sealed into 30lb bricks.  Each attic used about 50 bags.
2. The insulation grinder.  You open the bags, and dump ‘em in.  A blower in the bottom of the grinder pushes the insulation fluff through a long hose (#4)
3. Big-ass generator.  (It’s behind the fan).  Powers the grinder.
4. Hose to the attic. 

Since you’re in the confined space of the truck, essentially throwing big blocks of dust into a wood chipper, it gets pretty messy.

We also insulated walls, a ceiling, hot water heaters, doors, air ducts, and crawl-spaces.  I could insulate my way out of a strait-jacket.  (That doesn’t make any sense, but whatever...) Want me to Mastic the roof-to-joist? Want me to collar a flu vent? Want me to Tyzol the swamp cooler?  Want me to run the blower-door?  Well, if you have a truck full of all those things, I totally could. (…En route to a badass strait-jacket escape.)

All the people we met doing the weatherizing were really grateful, and it was a rewarding week being able to see exactly what a great program the warehouse is going to help support.   On one hand, it could be a great job, helping people every day.  On the other hand, one of the guys I worked with had a story about finding 90 dead cats in a crawl-space on his first day of work.  I think my dead-cat-threshold is too low to do weatherizing full-time, no matter how thankful the clients are. (As a side note, I do know where they send those cats’ pelts. Just f.y.i.)

Not a whole lot new or exciting this week, so I’ll end on this.  We had to turn in a “personal reflection” on our first project earlier this week.  Lots of people wrote poems or drew pictures.  Here’s mine.

Our nasty cafeteria is called Machebeuf hall. I ate a lot of Cholula there this round.   It’s pretty deep.

Anyway, only ONE week left at VGJ before all the other teams get back to campus and we all go on Christmas break.  Paradise/ Xanadu/ Eden/ Spokane, you never sounded so good…

Veterans Green Jobs, Week 3

Alright, another week down at Veterans Green Jobs.  (Only two left!) This week was mostly painting, which is exciting to write about and even more exciting to read about.  We painted a bathroom, we painted outside, we painted inside, we used different colors of paint,… umm...  This must be a pretty gripping read.  We did get to use the giant stencils that we made a few weeks back:

Pretty sweet huh?

In Americorps news that won’t put you to sleep, we just got our assignments for next round, and I couldn’t be happier.  There are 28 possible projects, one for each team, and projects are assigned as follows:

1:  First, all the possible projects are written on paper and put into a hat

2:  Then, the hat is worn for good luck

3:  Then, each team raises a kitten from birth, and the cats play laser-tag to determine who gets first pick of projects.

None of that is true. 

They actually use a very confusing lottery system, but my team ended up getting our top choice for next round, which rules.  Starting in January, we’ll be working for Habitat for Humanity, building houses.  Where you ask?  I think chris-tracker has the answer…

Yessir, from January through early March, we’ll be building houses in New Orleans, riding on parade floats, trawling for shrimp, and hanging out with Drew Brees!  Who Dat!  I’ve never been to the south before, so I’m real excited.  Even though it’s over a month away, I can’t stop thinking about all the creole food and the Carnival celebrations. (Unfortunately we’re missing Mardi Gras by four days, but there are Carnival parades and parties starting in early January.  That way everybody can get a good base-drunk going for the big day.) Cannot wait!

Lastly, I’ve gotten some postcards the last few weeks that need showing off. 

Bronze medal goes to Miss Kelsey Schill:

 The silver to Katie Bertram for this one:

And this update’s winner, Tanner Lawrence, for this card from the Sedro-Woolley Loggerodeo:

Thanks Tanner. It's like I'm getting a taste of Mardi Gras season early.  Throw them hotties some lumber-themed beads! 

The caption on the back of the card for the Loggerodeo’s “community picnics, firemen’s muster and log show” put it over the top.  What the hell is a "fireman’s muster"?  I’ll have to Ask-Jeeves it later.  

(If you would care to join in...)

Chris Matthews- Class 17
AmeriCorps NCCC
3001 S. Federal Blvd.
Walsh Hall, Room 136
Denver, CO 80236

Somehow Denver is still dry and 45 degrees.  I thought it got winter here, but I guess not. Without the cold, it really doesn’t feel like our Christmas vacation is two weeks away.  Two weeks! See you soon cold, shitty weather!  

Veterans Green Jobs, Week 2

I’m running low on witty ways to intro these updates, so let’s all pretend I just said something really funny.  Like maybe a knock-knock joke.  Those are funny right?  With the holiday it was a short week, but we did go weatherizing, we saw the Nuggets play, and we had a wonderful thanksgiving in Boulder.

More on thanksgiving in a second, but first: our short week at work.  We put our work-hard pants on, and did more moving, painting and cleaning.  On Tuesday though, I got to go out with one of the weatherizing teams.  As I mentioned, the main thing that Veterans Green Jobs actually does is weatherizing for families near the poverty line.  So Tuesday, I saw what all that actually entailed. 

The first house we went to was mostly finished, but there was a crawlspace that needed insulating.  That meant four hours crawling around in a dirty, creepy, little space under the floor.  The biggest challenge was fighting around all the Christmas decorations the guy had stored down there.  (This Grinch had half of Who-ville's Christmas under his house.)  We stapled giant pads of insulation to the underside of the floor, sealed off a trap-door up to the main house, and insulated all the water pipes (so they won't freeze).

After we finished there, we went to another house where a different team had been working, to help them wrap up.  I got to see how they insulate the walls there.  First, they tape off the whole room with plastic sheeting.  Kindof like a boring, environmentally responsible episode of Dexter:

Then they drill a ton of four-inch holes in the wall: one between every vertical stud, and all at knee height.  The trucks they drive all have generators and these big grinders, which they use to pump the walls full of recycled newspaper (treated so it is fire/ rodent retardant).  After the wall is packed, they seal the holes with wooden plugs and spackle.  Like this:

It was really interesting, seeing all this stuff, and a great break from the warehouse.

Up until Tuesday, we all thought we were going to be eating the nasty cafeteria food for the one holiday that is all about food.  Lucky for us, my old high school buddy Kevin Luby saved the day, and volunteered to host us in Boulder.  Thank goodness for friends. We brought six americorps kids, a bunch of sides, and beer.  Lots of beer.  Kevin and his roommates cooked the turkey (up to 55°F Mom, just like you said.) and the stuffing.  

This was my first thanksgiving ever away from Spokane, and I learned a few things.
1. I can’t make any of our family recipe dishes right.  How was I ever a cook?

2. It got down to twenty below in Spokane, so I think I picked a good year to miss.

3. Turns out you can get drunk on Thanksgiving, even if you’re not at the P.I. in Spokane.  The unmarked caraffs of random liquor Kevin had certainly helped:

What a great holiday Thanksgiving is.

Since the holiday, I’ve been busy digesting.  Oh, and we also went to an NBA game downtown on Friday.  We saw the Nuggets play the Bulls. The Nuggets were trailing by one point in the final seconds and Carmelo hit a circus jumper from just inside the three point line to win the game. It was a crazy finish, and the Pepsi-center erupted. (they should call it the Pepsi/Mentos center! Get it!? ...ugh....I immediately regret that joke)  Anyway, it was lots of fun, and we picked an awesome game to go see.  

I think that's all I've got for this week, but more soon. Safe travels to everyone!

Veterans Green Jobs, Week 1

Alright, this week’s update is about me actually doing something, not whining about fire alarms or soliciting postcards, so brace yourselves. 

Work with Veterans Green Jobs started this week.  (If you haven’t been keeping up here, our year with NCCC is split into four work projects, and our first one is with a nonprofit in Denver called Veterans Green Jobs). (Also, Veterans Green Jobs is hard to type, so we’re going to use their acronym VGJ from here on out). (Apparently half of this week’s update will be in the form of sidebars).  (These things are called sidebars right? I took science).

Work has been great so far.  VGJ is a really cool nonprofit.  They’re contracted to weatherize homes for families near the poverty line.  The weatherization is free to the homeowner, and VGJ hires veterans to do the actual work.  (They started the nonprofit because vets returning from service have an 80% harder time getting a job than anybody else.)  (Dammit, I’m doing the sidebar thing again).  In addition to the weatherizing, VGJ is planning on opening a restore, where they’ll sell donated building materials and home furnishings at deep discounts.  They’re also planning on offering installation/building services, once again using vets to do the work.  It’s a pretty great idea.  Right now, for the restore, they just have a big-ass warehouse (see below), and most of our work will to help fix it up for a February opening. 

So far we’ve moved a bunch of office furniture, primed and painted the entry area, and did a bunch of cleaning.  I also used my expertise in intramural sport shirt/ camp kitchen shirt making to make some sweet stencils to use on the walls.  We used excel to scale the measurements of the VGJ logo up to size, and we used a jigsaw to cut the stencils out of particle board. (from left: 7 ft, 4.5 ft, 2.5 ft, the original logo)

If you can’t tell, I’m pretty proud of these. If I married a spreadsheet, and we had kids, these would be our kids, and they just made honor roll.  Suck it, other kids.

(That just got weird. I apologize.  Anyway...)

Next week, we get to go out with the crews to help weatherize some homes, and I’m excited to see what they do in the field.  Are we going to put up chain link fence to keep tornadoes and hurricanes out of people’s yards?  Are we going to set roofs on fire, to melt snow?  Are we going to add insulation to exterior walls, crawlspaces, and attics to make the homes more energy efficient?  Stay tuned.  Whatever the case, I got a respirator, so it’s pretty official.

Outside of work, five of us spent our Saturday in Golden Colorado, home of the Coors brewery. 

Golden is also home to our friend Reese/ Ruckus.  He met up with us for the day and for the brewery tour.  Coors is the largest brewery in the world; it's like Disneyland for alcoholics. We spent the afternoon wandering amongst giant vats of Blue Moon and Coors Light learning about wort, mash, and what it means when the mountains turn blue. I am having a hard time remembering all of what we learned, probably because the tour ends with a bunch of free beer.  I was good and day drunk by the time we left.  Thanks Coors!

After the Coors tour, we joined Reese for some Contra dancing at his school.  And thank god we did.  Contra dancing is alot like square dancing, except it has a way cooler name.  There was a live band, an MC who was missing teeth, and about thirty dancing engineering students.  It was awesome.

Finally, to everyone, HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!  Enjoy your holiday, your families and your friends! Enjoy this clipart too:

Four Weeks

I’d like to start off with a quick shout-out to my six followers.  One more, and I’ll be just as popular as Snow White. Suck it, Disney!

Training is officially over, and this morning the vans hit the road.  We’re staying local, but all the teams start working Monday, so we saw off an epic cavalcade of groups that have to travel.  Not only are we continuing on in the same city, but we’re continuing on in our same dorm.  With everybody else gone, there’s no more waiting for laundry, hot water, bandwidth, or use of the community TVs (all huge perks).  It’s also kinda weird living in such a big, empty building.  I’m hoping that it’s going to be more “Blank Check” and less “The Shining,” but who knows.     

Thursday was Veteran’s day, and about fifty of us Americorps kids went downtown to volunteer picking up trash. 

Downtown Denver has some scary trash.  Jessica and I found golf balls, a broken set of handcuffs, a dildo, a silk tie, and six or seven used rubbers.  I’m sure there’s a really funny Tiger Woods joke in there somewhere, but it’s hard to make jokes after all the malt liquor cans and used needles we found by blankets in the bushes. It’s pretty unsettling to see where and how some people live. Plus, Tiger Woods jokes are SO last year.   

Last week I mentioned that we had a 5 AM fire drill.  Since then, the fire alarm has gone off four more times. I hate the fire alarm. It sounds like a pack of angry howler monkeys on PCP. One of those times kept us outside for an hour at 3:45AM, and with our team living here until Christmas,…well, shit. 

Possible explanations for the up-tick in fire alarms:

1.  Someone is sleep-walking to the marijuana dispensary across the street in the middle of the night.  Then they’re sleep-getting-really-high.

2.  My electric blanket collection is too close to my oil lantern, and my Ford Pinto, and my smoke machine.

3.  Our campus has really really shitty smoke detectors.

Whatever the reason, the fire alarms are having a real “boy who cried wolf” effect on me.  For the first one, I woke with a start and jumped out of bed yelling.  I ran outside without thinking to grab my glasses or a warm coat. Cut to Wednesday, four fire alarms later.  I grabbed a snack out of the vending machine and climbed two flights of stairs to get my computer so I’d have something to do until they let us back in. Safety first!

Also, thanks to those of you who have gotten back to me with your addresses. By now you should have received a postcard, and with it, the ugly postcard challenge.  Of the postcards I’ve gotten back so far, the early frontrunner comes from Ben Weiser:

Thanks Ben.  

If you’d like to join in, or if you would like a firm (yet oh so tender) back massage from the man in the postcard, please send me your addresses. 

 Work starts this week, so my next update should touch on that more.  Veterans Green Jobs, here we come!

Three Weeks

Alright, update time, and today’s a juicy one.  It features fire drills AND karaoke.  We leave for our first project in a little over a week. More importantly, we just found out where we will be going, and what our teams for the year are going to be.  More on that in a bit, but I gotta start with Halloween!  This year I was bender from Futurama.  2 pizza boxes + 2 rolls of duct tape + one grey sweatsuit = the best costume I’ve had since mom stopped picking them out for me. 

Saturday, we all went downtown in costume to celebrate.  I met up with fellow LCHS alum Kevin Luby to start the night off right with some karaoke.  The lady who was running the karaoke loved my costume so much that she cut me to the front of the list, and I sang a spirited/ really shitty version of “Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto” by STYX.  For those not familiar with the song, it features such classic lyrics as: “You're wondering who I am/ Machine or mannequin/ With parts made in Japan/ I am the Modern Man” and “I'm not a robot/ Without emotions/ I'm not what you see” which sound pretty funny coming from a drunk robot.  It then concludes in this weird/ really shitty bit where you just sing “I’m Kilroy!” over and over.  After I finished, Kevin promptly showed me up with some Bon Jovi.  

After karaoke, we left to meet up with a bunch of americorps folks.  I think these pictures speak for themselves.

Not much new during training this week.  We did have a 5 AM fire drill, one of the many perks of dorm life.  Denver is cold at 5AM in November.  We also got our teams this week, and I got placed in Water # 4 (This designation probably means nothing to any of you, but this is my blog, so I write what I want. deal with it!).  We also found out where our first project is going to be, so I think it’s time to introduce the chris-tracker.  How it works is this:  Through a series of space lasers, NASAs, and robot satellites, the chris-tracker triangulates my exact position and projects it onto a map.  Right now I’m in Denver, so the chris-tracker looks like this:

For our first project, we’re going to be working with a non-profit called Veterans Green Jobs  to help ready a re-sale warehouse for a January opening.  The project will be in Denver, so the chris-tracker will look something like this:

I kid. I’m actually pretty excited to stay local and see more of Denver, it really is an amazing place.  As for the team, I don’t quite know what to expect.  I’m with several folks that I got to know through training, who are all great.  But I’m one of only three guys on our team, and I really don’t know what to expect from the other two.  Seven girls is a lot of estrogen, so if I start talking about “Eat Pray Love,” fall colors, or frozen yogurt, please, someone stop me. We have one more week between now and the start of the first project, so we’re almost to the gooey center of this pastry that is NCCC. Woot woot!

Two Weeks

So, what’s the normal amount of time between blog updates? Is a week good?  It’s been a busy one, so a quick update can’t hurt. 

Training has been much the same; slow.  Today we learned how to use a hammer.  Like the kind with nails. So... thanks to that, I finally understand that “hit the nail on the head” metaphor.  Maybe tomorrow we’ll learn rulers and scissors so I can finally get some insight on “measure twice, cut once.” 

We have started doing service projects though, which has been great.  Friday, we piled into the vans and spent the day picking Mullen weeds with a bunch of sixth graders.

The day started off great, with a pretty funny group of sixth grade boys, and a ton of weeds that needed to be pulled.  By the end of the day, they were spitting on each other and stealing each other’s lunches.  I wish I was twelve again, cause one of the kids brought a bunch of fruit snacks, and I would stolen that shit in a heartbeat.

I spent Saturday morning picking up trash with a group at a park near our campus and learned the following two things:

1.    Whoever designed the grabber claw things we were using to pick up trash was a genius. They are the perfect size to pick up 40oz malt liquor bottles.  40 bottles account for about 70% of the trash in Denver.

2.    After finding a crack pipe (weird) and a whole watermelon (weirder) I made the logical conclusion that Gallagher is living in Denver, and too strung out on crack to do his job right.

That afternoon, Erik and I went back to Royal Arch in Boulder, but this time we brought some friends...

... And made some new ones...

 Sunday, we woke up at 5 AM to work a fun run, and Monday we re-did a garden at an elementary school.  So in all, the work projects are a great break from training, but I still can’t wait for our first spike. (Our big work projects are called spikes.  We have lots of cool lingo.)

Tuesday night I went to a Dr. Dog show with Erik, Katie, Sam and Ethan.  They had a crazy light show, and played forever.  Sounded great too.  The show was at the boulder theater, which was a great venue, really pretty and great beer on tap. We all had a blast.

As a sidenote, I just bought a bunch of postcards, so if anybody would like a penpal let me know, or send me a postcard (I need some more love at mail call)

Chris Matthews- Class 17
AmeriCorps NCCC
3001 S. Federal Blvd.
Walsh Hall, Room 136
Denver, CO 80236

One week in

Alright, we're a week in, so it's probably time to get this thing up and running. For those of you who don't know, I left Seattle two weeks ago to take a position with Americorps NCCC, and i moved to Denver, which looks like this:

I feel pretty ignorant, I was half expecting snow when we got here, but the weather has been balmy so far. Like this:

As for the program itself, we train for a month, and then spend the rest of the year on a series of work projects (by van) around the southern US (specifically AZ,CO, NM, TX, KS, OK, MO, and AR).  Lots of you have been curious what those projects will be, but at this point, I have no idea. I'm envisioning that it'll be like that ATT/ Toms shoes commercial, where I give shoes to a bunch of happy kids. But then I remember that they gave us steel toed boots.  Do little kids like steel toed boots? That's probably not it at all.

So far training has been pretty slow, and I have to keep reminding myself that this program is for 18-24 year olds, so I'm toward the top end of that spectrum.  It's been a bit of a throwback living in a dorm again, and today a lady from planned parenthood came to show us how to put on condoms. Basically, I'm feeling a bit like a freshman, I just can't decide if its a college freshman or the high school kind.

This last weekend was lots of fun, my roommate Erik and I went up to Boulder on Sunday and went to Chautaqua National Park to hike to a rock formation called Royal Arch.

And the view (boulder on the left, Boulder on the right. get it? heh heh):

That night, we stuck around to see the Walkmen play at the Fox theater, which was a fun show. Erik and I were super beat from the hike or we would have enjoyed it more.  They played The Rat as part of the encore, which was great

The next day Erik, Katie and I were back in boulder for Blitzen Trapper, which was awesome.  They sounded great, and the main guy can play. First concert I can remember with an extended banjo solo, or where the band smoked weed out of an apple on stage.  They played Furr and we played the "Penis!" yelling  game.

I'm planning on putting the rest of the pictures up on facebook soon-ish, so if you're interested, check in there.  I'll try to keep the entries here shorter. Here's a picture from Red Rocks amphitheater, which we saw during our van training. (RR is a close second to the Gorge in places that could make me tolerate hearing Phish.):