Catch up

Here are my two e-mails that I origianally sent to everyone since I've moved to Florida.

As many of you know I started working with Habitat forHumanity this past week as an Americorps member. Iwill be here in Jacksonville for the next 11 monthsbuilding houses. I know some of you I have notcommunicated with in several years but I saw youraddresses in my address list and thought I wouldinclude you as well. I hope you are doing well. Hereis a little update for the first three days of mylittle adventure. I checked in on Thursday afternoon and got the key tomy house. The neighborhood is in pretty rough shape. Lots of loitering and condemned houses. The occupiedhouses are lucky that a hurricane doesn’t come throughor they will all be a pile of sticks. My neighbors tothe south are hardcore rednecks who drive a beat upmid-80s Cougar (which must be nice on the inside toosince they never roll up the windows and it has rainedabout 10 times since I’ve been here) and sit on theirporch drinking beer and yelling at each other all day. Not sure if any of them are employed but they seem tobe out there all the time. Overall though, our streetis pretty quiet, especially compared to the two otherAmericorps houses about a mile away. One house isliterally next to a drug house. The house is actuallycondemned and unoccupied so they deal off the side ofthe front porch. Apparently the cops aren’t tooconcerned about it because these guys aren’t trying tohide their business. Hell, they throw shoes over thepower lines to let customers know where they are. There also seems to be a fairly robust prostitutionbusiness going on near the other houses as well. Sogiven these circumstances, I can’t complain too muchabout my location.I have two roommates, Kristen and Nick. They are both31. Kristen and I both got here Thursday and Nick washere last Monday but was out of town when Kristen andI arrived. However, he conveniently showed up at12:45 a.m. Friday night (Sat. morn) while Kristen andI were asleep. He screwed with thelock for 2 minutes and then started moving his bedroomfurniture. Needless to say I thought we were gettingbroken into and almost called the cops. I finallyfigured out that it was him and that we weren’tgetting robbed and that my roommate isn’t too considerate. Kristen is from DC originally but North Carolina forthe past 10 years. Nick is from the Boston area andwent to school just north of NYC. A little more aboutNick, he didn’t bring a TV or a computer but he didbring about 10 different musical instruments(including 2 electric guitars and an accordion) andhis chess board (which he is obviously good at becausehe plays 3 times a week and keeps asking me to play). He played his guitars on and off for 2 hours lastnight so we’ll have to see how we’re going to workthrough that. Also, he looks and talks very much likeHarold Ramis in Ghostbusters. Overall, they both seemto be very nice but one is very clean and neat andquiet while the other seems to have none of thosetraits.We started our first full day on Friday morning at7:45 which was a shock to my system since I’ve beensleeping in a lot since my retirement from theCommission. We got a quick tour of the warehouse andoffice and got our task for the day. Our “teambuilding” task for the whole day was a photo scavengerhunt / road rally / Amazing Race. We split into 2teams of 4 and followed clues to various popularJacksonville locations. It was fun for the first 4hours but became tiresome. We ended at the beach andhad a barbeque. The food was good but the weather wasbad. There was no swimming allowed because the riptides were too strong.On Saturday we were working as normal Habitat dailyvolunteers. We met at the warehouse at 7:30 which wasvery early considering the Nick debacle the nightbefore. Our job was to landscape 2 houses that wereside by side. We had 10 Americorps people, about 6 or7 other volunteers, and 1 team leader. It was fairlyhot, about 85, but it was the humidity that was rough. I don’t know that I’ve ever sweated that much in mylife. It was like playing a tennis match with Willthat went on for 6 hours. We cleaned and raked thesite, staked out and spread 2 feet of mulch around thehouses, laid sod on both lots, planted 35 shrubs and 2trees all by 3:45 in the afternoon. That was prettygood since we didn’t really start working until atleast 9 (these habitat people can waste time likegovernment employees). After that long day I wasfinally able to get a good night’s sleep.Now it’s Sunday morning and our first off day. Ithink I’m going to go shopping and maybe find adriving range. I think a group of people are going tothe beach so I may end up doing that too.

I thought I would write again and give a little updateof what I've been up to since I got down here. A fewdays after I arrived I went to "AmeriCamp" which was a4-H camp ground in very rural Georgia (thinkDeliverance). It wasn't terrible as we had a/c and apool but we did sleep 8 people to a room. While therewe learned more about Americorps and Habitat and gottraining on construction and managing volunteers. Thebus ride home was the most exciting part because oneof the Americorps members, who spent the week at campdrinking and sleeping, yelled profanities at anothermember because the drunk dude was trying to sleepwhile the other hippie dude was talking about thebible. It was quite a heated exchange and it wasright next to the bus driver so I was expecting us toend up in a ditch but they were seperated and wesurvived. The fact that the drunk dude was there mademe wonder about the screening process. In the last 2 weeks I have been working everyday with6 other Americorps people here in Jacksonville. Weare being trained on construction tasks so that inOctober we can start leading groups of constructionvolunteers in the field. So far I have donelandscaping, caulking, priming, painting, a littletrim carpentry, cleaned the warehouse, installedcolumn covers, marble window sills, mini-blinds, anddoor knobs. All good things to know if I ever get areal job again and buy a house. This week I believewe are going to shingle a house, which should be funon a 90 degree sunny day. Speaking of the weather, we had a couple of days ofterrible rain in early September but it has been dryand mid-90s for the past two weeks. My golf game wasshaky my first time out with a 99 but I came back withan 81 and 39 (9 holes). I've been able to play everyMonday so far. I've settled into the house. Theneighborhood isn't really scary at all anymore. Unlike the neighborhood where the rest of theAmericorps members are staying (about 1 mile away). They've had a break-in (the perp only took a laptopand sold it back the next day for $30), a supposedshooting, a high noon beat down of a lady in themiddle of the street (a dude on his bike one nighttoo), and plenty of drug and prostitution activity. I'm quite glad I don't live there. There is actuallya lot of gentification going on in my neighborhood. It is the historic residential area of the city. Ialso get tickets to every Jaguars home game (alreadywent to the opener) and have been to the beach acouple times. I can score extra tickets to the gamefor free if anybody can make it down here for a Sundaywhen the Jags are in town. Almost forgot, I went tothe Budweiser factory today for a tour and they giveaway 2 free beers at the end of the tour (they alsohave pop for people like me). That may get some ofyou to visit.