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: