Saturday, January 05, 2008

Long day, good day!

This will have to be a short one. Not only is it late and I am tired, but my wireless card is not working at all. No idea why, but the computer will not even recognize it. So here goes...

Let's see where to start today? We had three teams that went out. A tree team, a roofing team, and an insulation team. All seemed to have good days.

From our meeting tonight we all learned that the insulation team completely insulated the walls of the Whavers' future home. They also saved me a trip to Bay St. Louis by getting the ceiling insulation as well. I did not get over to see it today, but by all reports they had a very successful day!

The second team did a portion of a roof. The roof was enormous. Jerry and crew did a great job of first taking some shingles off and then starting to putting the new shingles on. Did I mention the roof is on top of a house that is build on stilts? Great job!

The tree team was saddled with me, so they only got four trees cut down and carted off (for a bonfire--see below). They did a great job using less than stellar equipment and with a bumbling team leader.

Jen, Ariel, and Katie made dinner tonight. It was baked potatoes with various toppings from chili to cheddar.

Starting tomorrow we will also change the way post dinner clean-ups are done. We are assigning a team per day. For instance, the tree team does it one day, the roofing team the next etc. That way everyone "gets to" do it

In other news we got three new people today :) Christina, Rick, and Sean flew in and Tim performed admirably in the role we used to cal Ira at Handson of going to pick everyone up.

The tree team helped out Lois (not real name) who prior to the storm ran a bed and breakfast. She surviced the storm by hanging onto a large tree. She was such a joy to help. She served us tea, offered her car to us, and even asked all the females is they wanted to stay in her new home where they could "even get a bubble bath." She also offered us her lot to have a bonfire at night. Ironically, Henry (again not real name) who helps Lois a self proclaimed fire bug, agreed to help us start the fire.

And so a large fire was started out of one of the four large piles of wood the tree team helped make today.

Katie and I then went to pick up some groceries. Upon our return I was more than surprised by the two large infernos that were burning. But it was already late so we began to put it out.

Uh, yeah. How? no running water, no shovels etc. But somehow (with the help of a few shovels and a few pots found in the neighborhood), we got fire out just moments before the fire dept showed up at the bar across the street worried there was a fire.

What did I learn today? That with some team work and perseverance, volunteers can do pretty much everything!

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