Another Week Down

Although it was a short week, it was tough. On Thursday we got 60 sales people from Dun & Bradstreet who were in town from all over the country for a sales conference. It was a "team building" event for them. They weren't even told that they were working with Habitat until they showed up on the site that morning. And since we don't have enough normal work for 60 volunteers, we had to come up with something new. So they had us dig foundations for 5 houses by hand with shovels. It was crazy. Each foundation was 20 inches wide by 18 inches deep. That's a lot of dirt. And to make things worse, it took about 15 minutes into the day before the skies opened up and we got drenched. Not only were we soaked but, of course, so was the dirt which made it twice as heavy and messy. It proceeded to pour for 5 or 10 minutes pretty much every hour for the rest of the day. The volunteers didn't complain too much though, especially for a bunch of sales people. However, it got to me because about 10 minutes before we wrapped up for the day my back gave out when I jumped into one of the trenches. Luckily we were about done and I was assigned to painting the next day with another Americorps so I could rest my back. On Saturday I had to push a wheel barrel around all day and my back held up so I think I might be in the clear. I'm going to give it the real test today on the golf course. I found a new 9-hole muni course that, like the First Tee course, has been converted from an old 18 hole country club. It is part of a city park that I went walking at last night. From the parking lot it looked a little nicer than the First Tee course.

The parents are going to be down here next weekend and then I'm going to the west side of the state to hang out with them the following weekend so I'm pretty excited about that. And I'm not just saying that because I know they read this.

Have a great week.

Go Blue.

I thought Michigan's big win tonight against the Fightin' Illini was worthy of a post. This win breaks an 11 game losing streak versus the Illini with the last win coming in the first month that I lived in Chicago. Hopefully this win will be enough to lock up a bid to the big dance for the Wolverines for the first time in since they stopped paying their players many years ago. I think we are in for sure if we can win one of our last 3 games. It would be nice to see them do some damage in the Big Ten tourney too.

Kristen and I had a meeting today with a little cutie at the Boys and Girls Club down the street regarding our "Community Developement Project." The CDP is a requirement of all HFHI Americorps members across the country. Apparently devoting 1700 hours isn't enough so we have to due this project as well, which doesn't count toward our 1700 hours. The idea of the CDP is to find a project in the neighborhood in which you live or work, round up volunteers, educate them as to why the project is important, complete the project, and write up a silly summary on how it went, what you learned, yada, yada, yada. So Kristen and I decided to stop at the local Boys and Girls club to see if they had anything for us. I'll be damned if they don't have an old, beaten up putt putt course in need of repair. Based on the meeting today, it looks like they will have a few projects for us so we are going to split into 3 groups of 3 Americorps and each take a project. Our volunteers for the projects will be the kids at the Boys and Girls Club. Now we'll get to see who are the better workers, the kids or their parents that we work with at Habijax. I have to tell you now that we will probably be soliciting funds for this project so look forward to an email or fundraising post in the future. Kristen and I will likely start volunteering at the club once or twice a week after work to run the gameroom so the kids can have pool or fooseball tourneys and lead them in any other games. Maybe we will have karate and I can dominate the dojo.

Dragan complained that I didn't put an aligator picture up from Gatorland so now he got his wish.

Universal

So I met Dragan in Orlando last Saturday night. We bought two day twoi-park (Universal and Islands of Adventure) passes. We went to the Universal City Walk for dinner on Saturday night and it was raining and around 50 degrees. It was pretty chilly. Then we went to the parks on Sunday morning. It was sunny but windy and only in the low 50s (normal is 75). Well, it must have kept the people away because the place was empty. We rode every ride at Universal by 1 pm and headed over to Islands. We were done there by 5, but we skipped the 3 or 4 water rides because it was too cold. The new Mummy ride at Universal was awesome as was the Spiderman ride at Islands. The two real roaller coasters, both at Islands, were cool but the Hulk ride banged the hell out of my head. The Hulk was unique because instead of going slowly up the first hill and dropping, it shoots you up the hill so you are at full speed at the top and go straight into a 360 twist. It goes upsidedown 6 or 7 times. It was a great time and I would trade the warm weather for the incredibly short lines any day. Since we saw both parks in one day and our second day ticket is non-expiring, I have two one-day multi-park passes left. So maybe that will be an incentive for somebody out there to come visit me.

That night we found a nice little neighborhood bar and grill restaurant in the residential area of downtown Orlando. The next day we went to Gatorland and saw about a thousand gators (literally), some snakes (see above), goats, turkeys, yada, yada, yada. It was too cold for the gators to come out and play but we still had a good time. Next was the dog track. For the second time in as many trips since I've been down here I walked away a winner. I hit a $58 quinella thanks to the number 2 dog pictured above (and number 5 not pictured). After the track we played mini-golf, some air hockey, had some dinner, and headed home. It was an enjoyable weekend.

This week at work was good again. I haven't done punch in over 3 weeks now. Today I primed a house with a group from a Baptist church. Earlier this week we finished the ceramic tile and it doesn't look too bad. We even put the shoe mold trim in around the edges of the ceramic. I also spent time cutting studs in our panel plant for house walls. We are going to Dallas either the week before or after Mother's Day for a "Blitzbuild" with other Americorps around the country. The Blitzbuild is the name they give for building like a million houses in a week. It should be crazy.

The weather here has been great this week. I bring this up because I've seen the artic blast on the news that has hit my friends back up north. We were in the upper 70s yesterday and over 80 today. It feels like Spring here already. Ha ha.

I'm watching a profile on Chicago's own Shawni Davis, the long track US speed skater. He's doing the interview from the Howard platform of the L. I spent many nights freezing my ass off out there waiting for a transfer. Hey, they just said he moved from the Southside to my old stomping grounds in Evanston.

Take care.

-ME

Happy V-Day

For those of you who believe in such silly holidays.

I've had an exciting week. Last Thursday night I attended Habijax's monthly homeowner orientation meeting. This is where anyone who is interested in becoming a Habitat homeowner shows up and applies. I was not required to go as part of my work here but decided to go in order to better understand the program. The meeting started at 6 but when I arrived at 5:30 the people were already lined down the street. I passed out applications and pens to applicants as they filtered in. We had 136 applicants that night plus a few straglers all jammed into half of the middle school cafeteria next door to our office. Probably 70% single female, 20% couples, and 10% single men. The presentation basically consisted of our financial planner dude walking everyone through the application line-by-line on Powerpoint and our family services lady describing the program. We had one disabled guy ask if he is allowed to let a lady move into his house if he meets one and he emphasized when he gets his house not if. Then 5 minutes later as they got to the minimum and maximum income limits for homeownership he found out the minimum was $1013 per month (gross) and he said his disability income was only $990 so our dude told him sorry and he got up and left. It was sad to see such a swing of emotion in 5 minutes. We had another lady get up and leave in the middle of the program and refused to give back her application until she ripped it into a thousand pieces. But overall the meeting ran very smooth with people asking good questions. I'm hoping to go to some other homeowner meetings and classes in the next few months.

Work is going well. I haven't been assigned punch in over 2 weeks. We hit a lull in construction due to permit problems with the city so we have been getting new assignments and training. Last week we learned to lay ceramic tile. It is much tougher than it looks. Actually laying the tile is easy, it is the layout and cutting that is difficult. We are working on a house with ceramic connecting the kitchen, utility room, and bathroom. Trying to layout that large a space and making it look good (straight and symmetrical) is very tricky. Our leader told us to just eye it up and make adjustments at the end. Two days later we tore 75% of it up with floor scrappers and started over. It's physically demanding too with all the squating and kneeling. But it is a great thing to learn and has been a nice change of pace. I have also been spending a lot of time in the warehouse building panels, which are the house walls that are shipped out to the site. My hand got bruised from using the nail gun so much. That thing kicks more than a real gun. Today I worked on putting blue board (like Tyvek) on a house with 4 girls from Enterprise Rent a Car. Not a bad Valentine's Day present. One girl was flirting with/hitting on me shamelessly. It was quite flattering. Unfortunately she isn't really what I'm looking for but we still had a good time. Today was also notable because I suffered my worst self-inflicted hammer wound so far. I was nailing a roofing nail through some metal flashing, which can be tough, and slammed my thumb pretty good. Normally when I hit my finger (thumb in this case) it hurts for about 15 seconds and fades. Not this time. It hurt for the rest of the day, including now. I even have a purple bruise under my thumbnail. It didn't prevent from winning a game of racquetball after work though.

I also went to Universal Studios with Dragan over the weekend but I'll write about that tomorrow because I'm tired.

Also, I'm happily surprised to find that an unknown person is reading my blog and actually made a post last time. Boy, that politics stuff really gets people going. Thanks for reading and have a good day/night.

PS - The picture shows what our subdivision McNair Park Villas looked like a month ago. We are building 94 houses there. I will try to post the same vantage point in July for comparison.

I hate politics.

But sometimes I get moved to write my boy Barack a letter. I wrote once about Amtrak and below is what I wrote today. You might want to check out these letters first: http://obama.senate.gov/letter/060206-sen_obama_and_sen_mccain_exchange_letters_on_ethics_reform/index.html

Here's the letter:

Sen. Obama-

I'm sure you are getting a lot of letters today with regard to campaign finance reform and your exchange of letters with Sen. McCain. Ever since the Abramoff situation broke I've wanted to write you with my two cents on the issue and today's letter from Sen. McCain reminded me to do so.

I was formerly employed as a compliance examiner with the SEC conducting regulatory examinations of investment advisers and mutual funds. (I resigned last August in order to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity for a year in the Americorps program.) In my nearly six years at the Commission I conducted approximately 100 examinations at the offices of our registrants throughout the Midwest. During these examinations my colleagues and I were responsible for determining each firm's compliance with SEC regulations. As part of my employment at the Commission I was required to take part in annual ethics training. This training is something the SEC and its employees took very seriously. These ethics guidelines strictly prohibited taking any type of gift from a registrant. Our saying was, if you can't get it through a straw you couldn't take it. These restrictions may have seemed excessive to some but the Commission ethics department always spoke of avoiding even the appearance of impropriety when dealing with registrants. Obviously, no examiner was going to look the other way on a violation because he got a free doughnut, lunch, or other de minimis gratuity but if you never take it there is never a question of your loyalty. Furthermore, none of us had to except these things because we were well paid and even received a per diem when on the road.

This brings me to the lobbyist issue and campaign finance reform. Why is a 23-year old recent college graduate held to a higher ethical standard than a U.S. senator who earns four times as much money? Why is the Commission more worried about its appearance when dealing with registrants than Congress is when dealing with much, much, larger and important issues? It just upsets me to see Congressmen, Senators in particular, receive such ridiculously extravagant gifts, which basically translate into receiving cash since the gifts represent items they no longer have to pay for. I mean, I sure would have loved a free all inclusive trip to play at St. Andrews while working for the government. I know you and the other senators all have offices in the capitol so I'm not exactly sure why they have to meet with the lobbyist all over DC, and the world for that matter, on the lobbyist's dime. My point is that there is no reason a Congressman should accept anything of any value from anyone representing any special interest. Let the lobbyists talk until their heart's content but talk should be the only form of persuasion involved. I hope that I’m just preaching to the choir when I write you on this issue but I wanted to make my feelings known. It takes a lot to get me to write my Senator and this did it.

I would also like to comment on the exchange of letters between you and Sen. McCain. I always thought highly of Sen. McCain based on what I’ve seen of him on TV but was very disappointed with the tone of his letter. It was excessively sarcastic and tacky. I was glad to see that you showed you were above such tired behavior with an honest and sincere response. I’m also glad to see that, unlike Sen. McCain, you adhere to another favorite issue of the Commission, plain English.

Finally, I don't understand the need for writing letters between Senators. Don't you guys work in the same building and even have phones? I never wrote a letter to one of my co-workers at the Commission, I just walked over and spoke to him or her. But, to me, that just illustrates the lack of a teamwork that exists in the Capitol today.

Thank you for your time.

-Jonathan Pxxxxx

PS - Although I currently live in Florida, I'm still an Illinois resident and plan to return to Illinois at the conclusion of my one year term in the Americorps.

Back by Popular Demand.

My fans were starting to get restless so I better post something.

I went back to Michigan last weekend to attend my older brother's commencement ceremony. It was a big day as the last of the Phelan boys got his bachelor's degree. It was a nice ceremony but I particularly enjoyed the chocolate chip cookies and punch served afterward. He now has a BBA with a major in Marketing so if anyone knows of employment opportunities for recent marketing grads please let me know. :-)

I also got quite a bit of business taken care of while I was up north. I helped the folks with some retirement stuff, did some investment banking work for TPG, had a meeting with my second largest client, and talked with my friend about the condo investment we are no longer going to make. I even got the Firm to reimburse me for my plane ticket, which may represent the first direct payment I've ever received for providing investment advice. Well, at least the first cash payment. I have been very busy lately with the pro-bono PAM (Phelan Asset Management) work. It sure beats writing exam reports. Also of note on the trip was the heavy turbulance on the flight back down. It may have been the worst I've experienced. I had to hold onto my laptop so it wouldn't fly off the tray table. It was a little nerve-racking but the lighting out the window was cool to watch.

Not too much exciting happening here. However, we did learn a new trade today. Ceramic tiling. Let me tell you, laying the tile isn't too tough but doing the layout for one tile grid that includes 5 rooms is a real bitch. It took us a couple hours just to figure out the layout. It was the most difficult type of house that we build though so it should be cake from now on. Tomorrow we are supposed to be learning how to shingle a roof. I'm glad we are learning different trades because that damn punchlist and painting work was starting to kill me. Actually, it's not that bad but the more I learn the more things I can try to do and screw up on other people's houses when I'm done here.

We've had a little drama in the Corps this week with some members frustrations with management coming to a crescendo. Basically, we were given a BS busy work job to do with volunteers from Enterprise Rent-a-car and they caught on that it was BS (they were supposed to frame a house and were raking islands in a subdivision instead). They asked Brian if it was busywork and he said yes. One of the volunteers filled out a negative survey and Brian got a one-on-one lecture and then we got a group lecture about how every job is important and necessary. Well, obviously that lecture was BS too. So Brian might start looking for other employment elsewhere this weekend, which is too bad because he is just about everyone's favorite co-worker. All of the management BS doesn't bother me much because I've been dealing with this type of stuff for years and I do a pretty good job of keeping things in perspective I think.

Well, I hope that will keep the disgruntle blog reader's happy for a while. Also, if I don't get at least a couple comments for a post I won't post again for a while because I assume no one is reading so throw out some BS comments.

Upcoming events: Jacksonville Symphony, Superbowl Party, and another trip to Orlando. Stayed tuned.

-Jonnie Juicebox

PS - The picture is part of the 94 home subdivision we just started at the beginning of January.