Day 70 – Sunday April 18, 2010
I had my first full free day at the mansion today; it was fantastic. I had had other days off since we arrived in Baltimore, but we went up to the Point for one and the rest were over spring break. I’m not sure how I’d do with too many in a row, but this one was certainly quite relaxing.
My day was nice and slow-paced. I made my own muesli this morning, Australia style, by adding oats and raisins to my breakfast yogurt. I spent the morning reading about politics and writing AmeriMail. In the afternoon, I made spinach-and-black-bean enchiladas for lunch then watched The Hangover with Chris, Traci, Roy, and Outward Bound intern Sierra, who just moved into the mansion for the first three weeks of her two-month post-college-graduation internship. Afterwards, Roy, Traci, Sierra, and I went for an awesome hour-plus hike on the trails behind the mansion for personal PT, which had been bumped by the long service hours of the last two days. Traci and Roy had been out on a couple of the Leakin Park trails before so were able to direct us to such gems as a five-foot-tall statue of a squirrel in the course of our wanderings.
We returned at dinnertime then proceeded to do very little for the rest of the evening. While some people settled in to watch movies in the lounge, I got a lovely phone call from Jen and enjoyed spending over an hour catching up with her. I also checked in with multiple friends online and read the first of the happy celebratory emails congratulating the fabulous Brown Women’s Rugby team on advancing to a third straight final four with a win today.
Day 71 – Monday April 19, 2010
Today involved lots of van time and hours of Moveable Feast fun time. And our weekly team meeting. Not all that much else.
I woke up earlier than perhaps desirable for a day off, 9:05 AM, to hop in the van so Sabrina would have the requisite three people to get her to her chiropractic appointment. (Melissa is allowed to take the van alone as a TL, but she was in DC for the night.) We headed out at 9:30 and Amanda, Roy, and I were back by 10:30, but we had to leave again at 11- ‘we’ now being Traci, Chris, Amanda, Kathy, and I – to pick Sabrina up and drive over to Moveable Feast.
Due to a GPS mix-up, it took over an hour to get to Moveable Feast from the office rather than 15 minutes, but we did eventually make it. Fortunately, Tom was super-understanding and agreed to have us stay a bit late so we could still get in four full hours of ISP time. We spent our afternoon making frozen meals. I doled out ladlefuls of gravy and gloved handfuls of pasta, helped stack finished meals as they came out of the sealer, then helped lay out, stack, and bag sets of five different meals to go out to individuals. Many people associated with Moveable Feast will have groceries for 16 meals delivered for the week along with 5 pre-prepared frozen meals available for times when they’ve just gotten back from an appointment or a long day at the hospital and are too tired to cook. It’s an awesome organization.
Our return trip was happily much smoother than the trip there direction-wise. We stopped at Target on the way back for a Melissa-approved (in spite of the Vanimal being grounded) health and wellness run, during which I picked up such necessary items as face wash and Kashi cereal. We arrived at the mansion at a few minutes to 6, just in time for a team meeting. We discussed the plan for tomorrow (cleaning out garden beds at a school and canvassing), talked a bit about canvassing in general, and went over upcoming ISP opportunities and how the weekly disaster list is generated. All in all, very informative.
Day 72 – Tuesday April 20, 2010
Mmm, morning PT testing in the ballroom. What better way is there to start the day?
Much as I don’t always love rolling out of bed to start PT a full two hours before we need to leave for work, we did the non-run part of our monthly PT assessment – namely one minute each of sit-ups and push-ups – this morning and it went quite well. I upped my sit-ups from 17 to 26 (thanks, core work during circuits) and met in about 50 seconds my target of 24 push-ups (since I did 23, the top mark for my age range, last time). Our total PT for the morning was rotations, stretching, assessment, more stretching so it was a nice easy start to the day.
We had lots of time to make lunch, get into uniform, and the like before heading to the Parks & People office at 10:30. We met up with Abby and learned that we’d be spending the morning at Franklin Square Elementary/Middle School, which has the distinct honor of being the school across the street from the park in which we first learned to mulch (donuts not volcanoes!). Once at the school, we split into two groups to finish the two tasks set forth. The other group went dumpster diving in a paper-only recycling bin, removing all the cardboard and flattening it. Apparently, the bin smelled weird.
My group – Roy, Amanda, and I – worked in a small garden bed. It had been used to grow bay grass in the past, which grass was then transplanted down by the shore. As of this morning, it was completely filled with unwanted everyday grass. We used shovels to dig out the root systems then pulled out the grass so the bed can be returned to planting use. We were happy to find when we began (awesome news) that the bed was filled with a sand mixture, not dirt. This made our task much easier than it would otherwise have been since it meant that the grass, once broken up with the shovel, came right out during weeding. While Roy and I shoveled and Amanda weeded, we all shared stories about favorite teachers and crazy class times growing up. It seemed appropriate since we were right outside the school cafeteria listening to the announcements being made inside. Apparently, from one of Roy’s stories, I’m not the only one with English-questionable math teachers as a young one. Better analytic calculus than algebra, I suppose.
We headed back to the P&P office from the school and enjoyed lunch outside in the shade of trees. Roy and I (finally) called to start scheduling CAP events, which was much easier than we had thought it might be in our month-long anticipation and procrastination of said calls.
After lunch, we all labeled tools with P&P stickers and clear protective tape for a solid 15 minutes before heading over to the Herring Run Watershed Association building for afternoon fun time with Darin. We spent much of an hour putting Free Tree Distribution & Planting Days stickers on door tags then headed out into a new neighborhood for canvassing. My canvassing buddies for the day were Traci, Roy, and Chris. Traci and Roy would take one side of a street while Chris and I took the other. We focused on hanging tags, only promoting the program to people already out on their porches rather than knocking on doors. This was a good type of canvassing.
This evening, Team RIO had its first complete night together in Baltimore. Buck (aka Brandon) returned from composite! He got back around 8 tonight after a month in NOLA and a couple of days back at the Point for debrief. Lindsay and Jeff had made tacos and Amanda had baked a cake (the basic mix made fancy with chocolate chips and M&Ms which Dad sent in a recent excellent package); we enjoyed our second team dinner in our time here at the mansion. It was wonderful.
The rest of the night went by quite smoothly. We arrived home from our service day at nearly 7 PM and didn’t finish dinner until well past 9 so it was already quite late, but I still got to talk to both Jamie (YAY!) and Jordanna after Traci and I did all the dinner dishes. It was most fantastic (Kate).
Hope all is well outside the AmeriBubble!
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