Day 27 – Saturday March 6, 2010
I had a very long ISP today. We were working down in Baltimore (we being myself, Jordanna, Jamie, a couple of Jamie’s teammates, a few Ravens, and some Badgers – 22 CMs in total) for an organization called The Loading Dock. The Loading Dock is a resale center for pre-loved household items, whether furniture, toilets, doors, tiles, or moulding. It has pretty much everything you would need to outfit a house – washers and dryers, stoves, windows, cabinets, anything and everything. It’s the oldest (“and first successful”, according to our tour guide Katie, a former NCCCer in Classes VIII and XIII in Sacramento) such resale center in the nation. It has thus far saved clients $1.5 million in expenses and apparently saved companies and individuals making donations about the same amount in tax deductions. It has some cool stuff going for it.
The Village people heading to the Loading Dock walked up to B-15 at 7:10 to meet the Ravens going at Sadie’s van. We arrived at 7:25; they arrived at 7:45. (There had been a slight miscommunication.) Fortunately, we had the keys since Sadie is Jamie’s TL so we were able to sit in the warm van listening to wake-up music as we waited.
We arrived at the Loading Dock shortly before 9 and jumped right into things. Four of the eleven people in my van had been there on an ISP before and headed back to their previous jobs. The rest of us got a tour of the 45,000-square-foot warehouse with Katie, who’s the volunteer coordinator, and her fellow LD staffer Charles. We got to see all the artistic signs Sadie’s team had made which now hang above every section of the warehouse labeling what’s where: appliances, lighting, etc. It was nice to learn about what the Loading Dock does and what impact the warehouse has – most things in it would end up in a dumpster then landfill otherwise – before we got down to the nitty-gritty of moving and sorting items.
After the tour, I was assigned, along with Meghan (one of Jamie’s teammates on Wolf Five) and a Raven named John, to work for Duffy, one of the staffers who deals with the behind-the-scenes sorting of goods (i.e. before they hit the warehouse floor). We ended up doing all kinds of tasks for him. We transported moulding to the carpet section of the warehouse on carts, spent two hours stripping the cloth off office cubicle partitions to expose the recyclable metal frames, and picked up trash and swept up glass fragments and such in the parking lot, among other things. We breaked for half an hour for lunch, but otherwise worked straight through the day. It was quite the busy seven hours.
The rest of the day was fairly uneventful in a good way. We wrapped up at 4 when the Loading Dock closed for the day, taking a group picture for Katie on our way out (in the toilet section by group members’ request). We drove back to the Point from Baltimore; I had a quite enjoyable sleep for much of the ride. Jamie and I proceeded to go for a jog together then make cookies to bring to Moveable Feast tomorrow (another tasty in-kind donation). We finished fairly late, but just in time to welcome Marissa back from her mini-spike. (She started and ended a day after the rest of us because her team was helping out at a robotics conference.) I’ve been relaxing for the past while, avoiding the great outdoors because it’s cold tonight. Hopefully, tomorrow will be warmer.
The highlight of my day occurred at the Loading Dock. One of the Raven guys was assigned to deal with windows, breaking the glass in a dumpster then removing the remaining shards from the frame and throwing away the component parts. I got to try my hand at it, using a metal pipe to shatter the glass in both halves of a standard window. Though I have no plans ever to use that skill again, I’ll admit that it was fun.
Day 28 – Sunday March 7, 2010
My major accomplishment of the day was crossing the 50-ISP-hours-completed mark. We had a very relaxed and enjoyable four hours at Moveable Feast – I learned how frozen dinners are made as we prepared freezer meals for clients – during which I made it up to fifty-three hours. Some people have been competitive about getting their 80 required hours out of the way, but I’ve just been lucky to find an organization I love and settle into a routine of doing great hours there every weekend. Unfortunately, we can only do 40 countable hours at any one organization so I’ll probably wait to go back there until I’ve done hours elsewhere. Fortunately, my teammate Sabrina has found some other amazing ISP options for when we head to Baltimore next weekend and has agreed to try to get us hours both days this weekend. I’m psyched to go to some new places and discover as-yet-unknown amazingness of programs out there in the city.
My morning started on the earlier end (7 AM) with baking time with Jamie. We’d made chocolate chip cookies last night for Moveable Feast and made some oatmeal-chocolate chip ones this morning. I also made pancakes with the pancake mix we’d had sitting unopened in our pantry for multiple weeks and the dark chocolate chips Jordanna and I had picked up at the grocery store. They were delicious.
I headed out the door at 9:30 to walk to B-15 with Sabrina, who was our ISP driver today now that CMs are finally starting to become certified as drivers, to pick up Jamie’s red van. We drove back to the Village and picked up the other four members of our ISP crew (Jamie, Jordanna, Rachel, and Rachel’s teammate Matt) before heading down to Baltimore. I had directional issues with navigating for Sabrina from Jamie’s iPhone (in my defense, it was the first time I read directions from an iPhone rather than paper and the shift took some adjustment), but we made it to Moveable Feast by 11 and headed in to work.
Our big project for the morning was making frozen meals. There were 12 Ravens and an assortment of non-AmeriCorps volunteers at the site and some cleaned, some made sandwiches, some cut meatloaf for the meals, and a group of us actually assembled the meals. I scooped frozen green beans into one small compartment of a frozen-dinner plastic tray while some people added potatoes to the other small section. We then put two still-warm slices of meatloaf (which smelled yummy) into the big section and some spooned gravy on top. Finally, two girls fed the completed trays into the cool wrapping machine which automatically seals the trays with plastic wrap for freezer storage and Jamie and I removed the now-sealed trays from the machine and stacked them in a set pattern on trays, 33 to a tray. It was lots of fun both to work with food that will go directly to clients (people in and far around Baltimore who are homebound with HIV/AIDS or breast cancer) and to learn how freezer meals are actually produced. I enjoyed myself.
In the afternoon, I went with Kenny, the CM coordinator of the Raven group who happened to graduate in my class at Brown, to deal with paperwork for the day. That ended up taking quite a while, but we had a great talk with the volunteer coordinator Tom as we sorted out the letters of recognition and such. Tom is super-nice and I loved hearing his passion come through as he talked about various fundraisers and such conducted by Moveable Feast (especially the organization’s biggest one, Divapalooza, which will be in early April). We returned in time to move lots of cardboard and trash to the loading dock down the hall from the kitchen then headed out quite satisfied with an excellent project day.
I managed to have directional issues again on the way back (very rare for me) but we still reached campus around 4 so had plenty of time left in the day. Sabrina (along with Jamie, Jordanna, and one representative from each other team in the Corps) had a Community Council meeting at 5 – the reps plan all-Corps activities for every transition to build Esprit de Corps; I hear word of a glow-in-the-dark dance for first transition – so she and I went to find Melissa to get our schedules for the next week and get confirmation that PT pick-up is at 5:40 AM. I proceeded to tell Melissa that I plan to run to PT every day this week, since I need to leave at the same time to jog with Jamie as to head to the van for a ride to the gymnasium.
The rest of the evening was most excellent. I walked back to the house and had another delicious pancake – Jordanna had added almonds to the remaining batter from the morning and was making perfectly golden ones. I went for a run for awhile then color-coded my schedule for the week since it’s completely filled so I was having trouble sorting through what’s what. Jamie and I went for a walk in the later evening then I tried some of the lentil soup that Maria and Rene had made as I sat and chatted with Marissa and Jamie. It was all very chill and a wonderful way to spend our last weekend night together before spike.
Tomorrow, we have an all-Corps training day. Since I missed the last all-Corps session for the Congressional delegation visit (which I loved), I’m rather looking forward to another one. They’re often a bit less than thrilling, but we’ll be talking about service learning and having a big CM meeting so I’m guessing these will be good sessions. Before that, though, we get our first of three early-morning PT sessions of the week. That’ll be a good way to start the day.
Day 29 – Monday March 8, 2010
Today began good, got a bit itchy for some time, then proceeded on to great.
I started the morning at the lovely hour of 5 AM because we had PT with the Badger Unit. Since only two units fit in the gym together for PT, we rotate through which units do PT together. Two weeks ago, we had Wolf-only PT on Tuesday and Thursday. Last week, we were with the Ravens on Monday before heading out for mini-spike. It’s us and the Badgers this week.
Jamie and I headed out of the house shortly after 5:30 to power walk to the gymnasium. We’d been planning to jog as we had last PT, but we’d been told last night (via text from our TLs, a standard mode of information dispersal) that part of the session would be outdoors so we’d saved some running energy just in case. This turned out to be an excellent decision because we ended up doing one abbreviated set of exercises then heading outside for a thirty-minute run or walk. I ran with buddies the entire time, mostly Jamie then a Badger (I think) named Melissa. It was fun to set a very chill pace and chat with friends as we jogged along the path by the bay.
After the run, we headed back to the gym for final stretching to end the day’s PT. At this point, I began experiencing immense physical discomfort, mostly itchiness all over my head. By the time we’d made it back to the Village (I went in the van rather than jogging because I was so uncomfortable), the itchiness had spread to my stomach. I had initially thought it was because I hadn’t showered in
a couple of days, but realized when I did go to shower that I had the telltale generalized redness and bumps of an allergic reaction. Mmm, fun. I immediately asked Marissa to call Melissa and tell her I needed to go on sick call (Marissa was going for her hip and Jamie for her toe so it was becoming quite the house trip) while I got into my uniform and prepared for the trip. Marissa was super-nice in making an extra scrambled egg for me as I tried to keep focus in spite of intense discomfort. Fortunately, the “peak” (as the doctor later called it) of my allergic reaction had already begun to subside by the time we reached the pick-up, so I was able to be more engaged in life once we started for the clinic.
We ended up with a Wolf-dominated sick call day, which was lots of fun. We had nine Wolves at sick call, one Badger (whom we befriended), and no Ravens. I don’t know how it worked out like that, but almost all the sick call claims were entirely legitimate issues and most were specialized, non-contagious things, so I guess we just got lucky to all go together surrounded by friends.
Sick call was long, but also incredibly relaxing. STL Gretchen drove the ten of us down to Edgewood, a town about halfway between the Point and Baltimore, at 9:30 AM. Upon arrival at the small clinic, tucked into a corner of a business complex, we all filled out paperwork with insurance information (our NCCC insurance plan guaranteed that we’d all have a $5 copay for non-preexisting conditions) then sat down to wait. I took a wonderful 15-minute nap leaning my head into a corner where the walls met, waking up only when my name was called to give my copay and head in to see the doctor. I got my pulse and blood pressure taken (100/62 was remarked on as “very good”, always nice to hear when visiting the doctor because you’re unwell) then met and was checked by both the doctor and a physician’s assistant. Eventually, I was given a handout about hives (titled with their medical name, which currently escapes me and has since about five seconds after I read it) and a prescription for Benadryl and another drug with similar properties but minimal side effects. I confirmed that both prescriptions were optional, available to ease symptoms but by no means necessary for recovery if I was feeling okay, and promptly decided not to fill either. The redness had already gone way down and I was feeling much better.
After my check-up, I sat outside in the warm sun in front of the clinic, eating lunch and chatting with my fellow CMs. By around 2, we were all ready to go and headed back to the van. We stopped at a pizza and sub place for a late lunch for those who hadn’t brought anything then headed back to the Point, swinging by the Perryville Walgreen’s to drop off prescriptions to be filled. Training was supposed to go until 3:45, but it had ended well before we rolled into campus just past 3:30. As a result, we got to head straight back to the Village, where Jamie, Marissa, and I found Rene and Maria already out of uniform and outside hula-hooping in the sun with an assortment of neighbors. Marissa had a team meeting to attend for spike project preparation, but Jamie and I had free time so we changed and headed outside. We spent a wonderful next two hours hanging out with friends, watching people play guitar and do tricks on a scooter and hopscotch down the sidewalk, and going for a leisurely walk down to the bay and around the block. It only added to the feeling that this was the most relaxing day I’d had in three weeks.
The evening was a bit more active, but no more stressful. I went to the Wolf Den at 6:30 for team cleaning (every team cleans it one night a week) and got a certificate from Melissa. As Jamie and I had walked from the pick-up point back home via Third Street after our clinic run, we’d chatted with friends enjoying the spring weather on their porches. It turned out, as I found out when a couple of them congratulated me, that I’d been recognized with a leadership award this afternoon, one of a few awards given during today’s training to acknowledge individual CMs. It’s an amazing honor to receive such an award; I feel incredibly privileged to have been able to offer enough energy and support to my fellow NCCCers to be considered worthy of such an honor.
Melissa gave me the certificate before cleaning and announced our spike housing after we had cleaned. She mentioned during cleaning (I was sweeping the Wolf Den interior steps) that I’d be especially excited about the housing because we’d be living with an organization with which I’d worked before. She was right! We’re living on the second floor of some sort of building in Baltimore which apparently had a rather creative architect responsible for its design. Outward Bound instructors live on the third floor of the space. In my experience, Outward Bound instructors tend to be phenomenal people with amazing life experiences. I’m psyched.
I spent the rest of the evening with my housemates and various other friends who, as always, wandered in and out as the night progressed. Marissa made Jamie and I breakfast burritos, which all three of us enjoyed immensely. Afterwards, Jamie and I sat on the couch talking for hours. It was most excellent.
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