Hot and Heavy, I mean Humid.

It is starting to get a little sticky down here. We get rain just about everyday now. Speaking of rain, I hope my friends in the northeast (especially ones with old cracked basement walls) are holding up in the floods alright. I just got back from a week of golf in Michigan. My team even won 2 of the 3 rounds of golf in the annual JWP outing. Unfortunately I wasn't quite as good at the poker table this year. It was a good time but a little cool as the temperature never got above 80 degrees. Even in Detroit I got screwed by the Chicago air traffic. My plane was late on Monday night coming in from O'Hare so my 9:30 pm flight didn't take off until 10 pm, a 100 knot head wind cost me another half hour in the air, and terrible baggage handlers in JAX added another half hour on the ground here. Luckily I have a good roommate, Nick, who was willing to pick me up from the airport at one o'clock in the morning on a Monday night.

I'm heading to Hotlanta this weekend to see Officer Niez. We're going to play some golf and go to a Braves / Cards game. I'm looking forward to it. I may hit Savannah, GA on my way home. It should be a good warm up for the big cross country trip. If anyone has a sight-seeing recommendations around the country for me I would appreciate hearing them, and I don't need a smart ass response like "The Grand Canyon." However, if know of a good spot to visit at the Grand Canyon I would like to hear about that.

Not much to update on the Boys & Girls Club golf course. Still waiting for the putting turf to arrive which is supposed to come this week.

I hope everyone is having a great summer and I look forward to see you all. Take care.

-ME

My Days Here are Dwindling

After this week of work I am down to about 14 work days remaining here. It was a pretty boring work week. On Tuesday I played secretary walking around to 15 houses with one of our superintendants creating punch lists for the houses. I had to do all the writing and I think I even did more than my half of the list creation. Some of the houses built in the blitz were very poorly done especially considering it was all done by pros and not volunteers. We do a better jobs of interior painting with lazy volunteers than some of these contractors did. They didn't even prep the walls before painting them. They really look like shit. Maybe I did learn some marketable skills while I was here. Anyway, after the lists were created on Tuesday, I spent the rest of the week leading volunteers (mostly good corporate ones, not HOs) fixing the items on the lists. The good thing about it was that I didn't have to reload my truck every morning, I just left my package of cleaning supplies in the cab each night. We'll probably being doing punch everyday until I'm done here.

It was a busy social week for me too, especially considering my typical "going out" patterns. Jack, Amy, and I went out for wings/dessert and to watch the NBA finals on Tuesday. I don't really care about the NBA but I felt like doing something. We were back out Thursday at a different place to watch the game with the same group plus a girl originally from Chicago who also works here. Then last night Heather and I went out to play some pool but ended up playing darts and having a sing-a-long with a hundred of my closest friends at a bar where they had the "dueling pianos" set up. It was a good time and Heather was happy because she's a little low on cash and they had dollar drafts. So I've been a little short on sleep this week but that's alright because I'll make up for it over the next week up in MI. I'm going to my first board meeting as a director of TPG this week and then I'm headed up north for the annual Phelan golf outing. So I'm going to have a fun week, I hope everyone else does too. Take care.

-Jonnie Juicebox

Blitz is done. Yay!!!

Last week was our big "Builders Blitz." The Blitz entailed 30 homes being built in one week by various northeast florida home builders. Habijax oversaw the whole thing but each general contractor was responsible for lining up sub-contractors for the houses they were building. It went of without much of a hitch. Only one house failed to get its certificate of occupancy by dedication time on Friday. It was a long couple weeks for me as I worked 10 days straight with a couple 10 hour days in there. It was in the low to mid 90s all last week too. I have to say that I'm glad to see 30 families getting affordable houses but I don't think Builders Blitzes are what the Fuller's had in mind when they started up HFH. I mean we paid a bunch of contractors to build the houses while homeowners and volunteers picked up trash and raked up rocks all day. They did get a chance to put up some siding one day and lay sod on another but the 5 other days it was a waste of volunteer resources. The Americorps pretty much babysat the volunteers until they got bored enough to leave in early afternoon and then we could do some real work. Overall, it was a good project to be a part of. The first picture above is the house that was widely considered the best one for the week. Ryland Homes went well beyond specs for the landscaping on this one. It is quite a nice looking place. The other sets of pictures above show the progress of houses between June 4 and June 9. I think the second set of pics do a good job of showing how much was accomplished in 5 days.

In other news, the grass for the mini-golf course has been order but I don't know went it will show up. I know some people (Kim) have been begging for some pictures of the progress but I haven't brought my camera to the work sessions lately. We didn't work last week because of the blitz but we'll be back this week to finish up everything except the grass. Two weeks ago we put up hole signs which really make it look nice. We also put some pavers in between the holes. I'll try to remember to take a picture this week and post it. I can report that we did quite well with the fund-raizin' pulling in a whopping $725 from 13 donors. Some donors did not want to be mentioned on the blog and I don't remember exactly who so I won't mention any names, except Lee, but I will send an email out thanking all that contributed. It looks like we will use all of that money on supplies with a couple bucks thrown in by the three of us building it to cover the slight overage. Thanks again and look for pictures soon.

-Jonnie Juicebox