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!