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!