Keep On Keepin' On

Since coming back from Chicago, it has taken me a little while to get back into the swing of things but I'm back in good "Adam" form (not "Weiny" or "The Ween" form since that doesn't exist in New Orleans) right now. The past few weekends have been pretty eventful and fun. Thursday nights have turned into burrito and dollar drafts at Felipes nights. I can't get enough of their burritos, I could eat them three times a week at least. The past couple of Fridays, a big group of us from work have gone out to happy hour and stayed out from there. It's nice getting a chance to spend time with people from work and see how they are when they have a few drinks in them. Needless to say, things get much more relaxed and I get a chance to see how people are in a normal situation, as opposed to everyday at work. Also, one of my buddies down here is pretty good at the guitar (not nearly as good as Vamsi for those needing a reference point; but forget Vamsi because I doubt he even reads this). So we've had a couple of good jam and singing sessions. My voice is definitely as good as I think it is. The nightlife has started to pick up as we discover new places to see music and new bars to go to. A couple of weeks ago, I went to a bar called One-Eyed Jakes which I'd never been to before and saw a pretty decent band, Deerhunter. The sound at the venue was better than I thought and it was packed with people. Since it is still pretty warm down here (don't be too mad at me, it did snow down here for about 3 hours and I've had some pretty cold days working outside), friends of mine have been having bonfires, so a bunch of people get together and hang out. This last Friday after happy hour, I went to a bar called Pat Fannies (I don't know why but I love that name; I think it's because I can reverse the P and the F and call it Fat Pannies) where there was some type of holiday party going on. That turned out to be great for me because I was able to get my hands on a couple of brownies and cookies, as well as free beer and Wild Turkey shots. When we left, I was craving pizza so badly but there is just nowhere good to get it down here late night (very disappointing). So if anybody wants to send me a couple of frozen deep dish sausage pizzas from Lou Malanatis, send them to 5836 Willow St. New Orleans, LA 70115. I would greatly appreciate them. Anyways, my time outside of work the past few weeks has been a lot of fun as I discover new places and hang out with people that I wasn't before.

Work has been very intense over the past few weeks. I have been the House Captain (in charge) of a house, 2601 Arts St, for about the past month. I had a group of AmeriCorps members from another non-profit group called City Year, for one day. As part of their program, they are required to do training or service every Friday. Since this is a normal part of the work schedule, they were not really into doing much. The fact that most of them just wanted to get done with the day and move on made it difficult to really accomplish anything. I had them working on fixing and priming windows and they ended up making a huge mess which pretty much negated any good work they did for the day. It was an extremely frustrating day. The next week, a group of us worked on installing baseboards around the entire house. For those of you that don't know what baseboard is, it's the inch (or so) piece of wood that goes along the bottom of the entire interior house. Baseboards are mainly just meant for aesthetic purposes to cover up any rough edges in the floor. Most people don't even notice them, but we spent a week installing them. Putting them in and making them fit given the pieces of wood we had felt a little bit like piecing together a puzzle.

To give you a little background on how our organization is structured, we work in five neighborhoods, with each having a professional construction manager (CM) that guides us on the work to be performed. Along with many other of their own things to complete, they also help us if we run into issues with the actual work itself. Over the past couple of weeks, two of our construction managers have left the organization which has left things pretty chaotic for the other three CMs and stretched the organization as a whole pretty thin. I had a group of 8 Georgia Tech students for the entire week last week and a lot of the work they were going to do was contingent on other things getting done in the house. However, those things required the assistance of the CM and since he really didn't have much time to come by the house and finish, I was left scrambling to find things for my volunteers to do. It wasn't his fault because he just had so many other things to do to cover for the other CMs leaving but it made for a very frustrating week. I could kind of tell that the volunteers weren't enjoying the work they were doing and became less motivated as the week went on, and I couldn't really blame them. It was definitely hard because Rebuilding Together has been working on this house for almost seven months now and we want to get the homeowner back in his house. But at the same time, we want our volunteers to have a good experience so that they keep coming back down and donating money. So, it was a very stressful week that I couldn't wait to end. We didn't get as much accomplished as I would have liked, but my CM for this house was pretty understanding about the whole situation. The situation was a good learning experience and what a being a House Captain is all about. I think I will be better prepared to handle a similar situation the next time it occurs.

Life has been moving along pretty nicely since coming back from Chicago and I'm looking forward to a four day weekend this week and next week. A few of us are looking into going to Baton Rouge this Friday or Saturday just to check out the city. It's not ,too far away which is nice, so I'm hoping to make a day trip out of it this weekend. Almost all of my co-workers went home for the holidays so it's nice that things are relatively quiet right now. I figured that I just visited a month ago and am not really ready to come back home just yet. I had a good time with y'all but I thought it would be better for me to stay down here for the holidays and New Years Eve. I'm not really sure what I'm doing for New Years Eve yet but there are a couple of ideas that arer being thrown around. Anyways, I'll be posting a "Year in Review" type entry before the end of the year. Since it has been such a crazy year for me, I thought it would be a good chance to look back at the year as a whole. Well that's it for now, and seriously will someone send me down some decent pizza? I'm not kidding, I'm dying without it.