Holy Mackalaney

Before I get started with this post, I just wanted to let you know that I considered a number of different options for the title of this post. These options include the following:

“You better shut your mouth…”
15 Buh
He’s Still Got It
DotCom.com
Big Bad Boone and Pais Monster in the NOLA
Who is Staz Dawson?
Ride That Bull, Bourbon Cowboy-Style
Mad Cow Disease Was Here For Awhile and Then Went Away. Your Thoughts?

These were just a couple of the names that I considered before choosing “Holy Makalaney.” Anyways, sorry it has been so long since I’ve posted, I have a lot of ground to cover. I’ll start with the last few weeks of work, move on to some other things that have been going on, and finish it up with details of this last weekend in which Matt Brash and Matt Pais came to visit the NOLA. So here it goes…

Since my last posting, I’ve had three weeks of work go by (I know it has been too long). Currently, our office is located about 15 minutes away from our warehouse and we share our office with another organization. To become more centrally located, Rebuilding Together recently purchased a building that is across the street from our warehouse that we are hoping to turn into our new offices, volunteer housing, and another warehouse. The building has been abandoned for almost ten years and used to be a funeral parlor on the first floor and a dance club on the second. So during the first week since my last posting, I had my second set of spring breakers come down to help gut out (deconstruct) the building. Before we can renovate the building to our liking, we need to strip it down. Myself and two other AmeriCorps led over 30 volunteers in taking down the ceiling, removing some older parts of the structure we no longer are going to need, removing old pipes from the ceiling, and salvaging as much of the materials inside of the building as possible. The group that came down worked really hard and we had a lot of fun and were able to accomplish quite a bit over the course of the week. I had never done any type of deconstruction project and learned a lot as the week went along. However, I think I like doing the rebuilding more as opposed to taking things down. Deconstruction has become a big part of our organization and is necessary as the city continues to try and rebuild.

For the second week since my last posting, and the last week of spring break, I was the House Captain Support Staff on house that Rebuilding Together has been working for almost six months now. When we first got to this house, it hadn’t been touched since the hurricane. The refrigerator and freezer were still inside, there was garbage everywhere, and termites had eaten through a significant portion of the house. Over the last six months, over 100 volunteers and AmeriCorps have worked on the house, including myself (meaning I worked on this house prior to this week). We recently found out that the homeowner is getting kicked out of her FEMA residence on April 18th. So we are scrambling to finish the house. Dave, a fellow AmeriCorps, has been the primary house captain on the house since we started working on it. So Dave, myself, three other AmeriCorps, and 15 volunteers worked on this house over the course of the week. The volunteers were in charge of flooring the house (which is pretty big) and touching up the paint anywhere that was needed. I was in charge of tiling the shower and sink area in the bathroom. I had tiled a floor before but never the shower and sink before. I had never had to figure out the layout either, which proved to be a challenge. We recently received a huge donation of all different kinds of tile. The tile that the Construction Manager chose for the bathroom was from the donated tile. The problem with it was that since this tile was hand-cut, all of the pieces, specifically the edges, were all a little bit different. These made tiling the shower and sink much more difficult. The Construction Manager assigned to the house isn’t as much of an expert on tiling as the other two. So he pretty much just left it up to me to figure out how I wanted to do it. Not really knowing where to go, I came up with a normal pattern of just putting them in rows and columns. After tiling about 10 rows, I came to the conclusion that with the tiles all being a bit different in shapes, it just didn’t look good. So after spending four days on this, another Construction Manager came out on that Friday and helped me rip down all of the tile that was on the wall and come up with a new pattern. He came up with the idea of staggering the tiles so that they weren’t right on top and next to another tile. This helped hide the fact that the tiles were all a little bit different. By the end of that week, I had a good idea of how I was going to do it the following week. Last week we didn’t have any volunteers (to give us a little breather after spring break), so myself and Leo, another AmeriCorps, finished the tiling by Wednesday. I must say it turned out pretty nice and I definitely felt it was worth it to start over, even though I had spent almost four days working on it. So that’s pretty much what has been happening on the work front. I was off Thursday, Friday and today which has been nice. It was a nice little break and I’m looking forward to getting back to work and finishing up this house.

Other than work, I haven’t had too much going on lately. I’ve started to think a little bit about what I’m going to do when my program is over, but it’s going to be a long process. The only other big event we had was a fundraiser a few Fridays ago (March 20). To give you a little background about the fundraiser, Rebuilding Together is a program of the Preservation Resource Center (PRC). Every year the PRC has a fundraiser called the “Julia Jump.” This year, the Julia Jump was at the Bienville Club in the New Orleans Superdome. Tickets for the Julia Jump are pretty expensive and the items they auction off go for a considerable amount of money. The fundraiser had little tables set up all around the room that had food from all of the local restaurants. Also, there was an open bar which was great. The AmeriCorps were allowed to attend for free, as long as we volunteered for one shift. The event was five hours long, so volunteering for an hour was no big deal. I had to work the ticket table at the end of the night. And since nobody was coming at that point, I only had to work for thirty minutes. Other than that, I was able to walk around and enjoy the event. I ate a lot, not too much though. There was some amazing food, including mini steak sandwiches from this place called Mother’s. Those were probably my favorite. The open bar was great too. There were probably about 30 of us from Rebuilding Together and another 20 or so from the PRC that worked the event. It was a really good time. Our Executive Director pulled me on the dance floor for a song which was pretty funny. At the end of the night, everyone was dancing, or attempting to dance, which was pretty embarrassing. But everyone seemed to have a good time. The night was a lot of fun and a good way to unwind. Also, it was nice to see everyone dress up. We never really get a chance to see everyone dressed up too often. I must say that some people need some work on what they consider business casual and looking nice. Some people have a little bit of a ways to go on their fashion. I, on the other hand, am very well dressed and looked pretty damn good. Ha. Other than that, I’ve gone to a couple of BBQs over the past few weeks and just been hanging out with friends. I really don’t have anything else too interesting to report.

This past weekend, my friends Matt Brash and Matt Pais came down to New Orleans to visit me. Brash got here around noon on Thursday. We went to Stein’s Deli for lunch and had a delicious corned beef sandwich (like I’d get back at home in Chicago). After digesting, we went to Tulane to work-out and play some basketball. I haven’t played competitive basketball in a really long time and had no idea how long I’d be able to play full court for. We played two games of half court and two games of full court games. I was pretty happy with myself that I was able to play for so long without getting too tired. We both had a really good time playing and it brought us back to our college days. Later that night, we went to see a free comedy improv show at the La Nuit Theater (which I’ve mentioned in my last post). The show was very funny, as usual. We thought that Pais was going to be coming in around 11, but his flight was delayed and arrived around 1:30 a.m. Brash and I hung out at my friend Pat’s house for awhile and waited for Pais’s flight to arrive. We went and picked up Pais and called it a night.

The goal was to be up and out of the house by 11 a.m. the next day, which we surprisingly managed to accomplish. I took them to the house I had been working at for the past week and a half. Since it was a Friday, there were people working on the house but I was able to take them through. I think they were able to get a good sense of the type of work I have been doing and were pretty impressed with how the house looked overall. After that, I took them to some of the houses I’ve worked on in the neighborhood of Hollygrove. From there, we went to our warehouse for a few minutes. The warehouse has come a long way since the beginning of the year and is much more organized and clean from the time we started. After the warehouse, went to VooDoo BBQ for lunch, which was delicious. It’s one of those spots that you have to go to when you visit. We spent the rest of the afternoon driving around the different neighborhoods, including the Lower 9th Ward. I think Matt and Matt were pretty shocked at what it looked like. There were a lot of open lots where houses used to be. It was pretty desolate. We ended up driving around for a pretty long time before coming back to my house to chill. At around 7:30, we went to a party that my organization was having. The event was called “Party to the Corps” and was meant to raise awareness about AmeriCorps and Rebuilding Together for students and people right out of college. Additionally, it was an event that was also meant to thank our local volunteers that have come to work with us over the past year. The event was at the Maple Leaf Bar and there were two good local bands that performed. It was a very good turnout. I think the Matts enjoyed meeting all of the people that I work with. It was really nice having them there too. I felt very comfortable and like I was going out back into Chicago. We were talking to anyone and everyone which made it a great time. At one point, I walked outside, looked across the street at this little store, and saw Pais jamming on the drums with a guy playing the guitar. The party was a huge success and we all had a great time. Also, Pais was in love with his camera and took a ton of great pictures of the party. For some reason, he liked getting half of everyone’s face in the picture. And as for himself, he decided that he needed to open his mouth for every picture that he was in. After the party, we decided that we weren’t done yet for the night and decided to go to the French Quarter. We met my friend Meredith at the Bourbon Cowboy on Bourbon Street. This place has a mechanical bull that people were riding throughout the night. At one point, a girl got on there and decided to ride the bull without her top on for a good 10 minutes, which was awesome. I feel like only in New Orleans does stuff like that happen. After awhile, we continued walking down Bourbon Street before heading home. Overall, I think we were all in agreement that Friday night was our craziest night out of the weekend. We were out from 7:30 until almost 3 in the morning.

Since we got in so late on Friday night, we got off to a late start on Saturday. We went to Buffa’s in the Marigny for lunch, which is another staple of New Orleans (it’s been open for 70 years). Afterwards, we walked through the French Quarter and Jackson Square. We stopped to get beignets at Café du Monde, which is a must for all visitors. We hung out by the river for awhile after that and just relaxed and chatted for awhile. It was good to catch up with the guys and it really made me feel at home. We went back to my house and watched the first Final Four game and napped since we were pretty wiped out. The three of us went out for a late dinner at The Praline Connection on Frenchman Street which has great southern/creole food. Once we finished eating, we walked down Frenchman Street to the Spotted Cat where a band was playing inside. We spent the next hour or so drinking, listening to the band from outside, talking and reminiscing. I think we could have hung out there for hours but there were a few other places I wanted to go. Mimi’s, which is a bar I’ve gone to a few times, was our next stop. It was pretty empty, which turned out to be fine. The guys wanted to go back down to Bourbon Street one more time, so we headed over there. We went back to the Bourbon Cowboy (ha) but it wasn’t nearly as good as the first night. We were all pretty wiped out by 2:30-3 and headed back. I slept for a couple of hours and then we drove Brash to the airport at 5:30 a.m. I was dead at this point. It was nice that Pais came with me to keep me awake since I was so tired.

With Brash back in Chicago, it was just Pais and myself on Sunday. Around noon, we went to this Earth Day Festival on the bayou. It turned out to be pretty stupid but we walked around outside for a bit. We ate lunch at The Bulldog, which is a bar I go to often but had never eaten at. The food was pretty good, nothing special though. During the day yesterday, New Orleans held a half-ironman race that a few of my friends participated in the relay event. The race ended in the French Quarter, so Pais and I met them there after the race was over to hang out for a bit. We went to the after party at Republic and had a few beers there with the participants and their friends. I was glad Pais was able to meet some of my friends that he didn’t get a chance to meet earlier in the weekend. The after party was a nice way to spend the afternoon. To wind up the night and the trip, we went to Cooter Browns (where I went to watch football every Sunday) and watched the opening baseball game. I drove Pais to the airport at 4:30 a.m., and that was the end of the Brash and Pais visit.

The weekend was absolutely a great time. It really meant a lot to me that they came down to visit. Along with Ben and Evan who came down in February, they could have done anything with their vacations but chose to come down and visit and see what I’ve been up to here in New Orleans. It was great to catch up with them and some of the conversations we had were absolutely ridiculous and insane. It hasn’t always been easy to be away from home and go through this experience, but knowing I have good friends back at home has made it a lot easier. It also was important to me to show them the work I’ve been doing and the houses we’ve fixed. I think they really enjoyed that part as well as getting a chance to see the whole city. We did pretty much everything you can do in three days. I think we are all pretty wiped out and I’m glad I’ve been able to hang out today and catch up on sleep. Well I’m exhausted from the weekend and writing this post. Hope you all enjoy and I’ll write another one soon. Later y’all.