Bayou Spicing up my service

On Wednesday, I am headed to South Carolina. I am so ready for it.

Perhaps I’ve mentioned this, but I’m just so ready for a break. Really, other than the weekend in Denver in August, I haven’t had a break.

It’s not that I’m stressed out or anything, but I’m due as well as deserving.

And the food is good. So very good.

A break will be nice, though. Some of the stuff here is just insane.

First off, AmeriCorps week is coming up. What, you say? Yeah, right. My thought exactly.

Although they’re both service under the federal government AC differs from PC in many ways. In PC you give your live for two years and you’re on the clock, really, all the time.

For most, AC is 40 hours a week. I guess, anyway. Considering what crap the local office gave me when I reported my well-over-40 hours the first month I was here, you’d think I’d turn to stone after working 40 hours and a serious earful.

Having been in PC, I told them it was OK with me, and it is. I like what I do and, let’s face it, there’s not too much else to do here.

So maybe the 40-hour thing enters into AC’s reasoning, but three times a year, they *require* volunteers to do a service project. In addition, you know, to the 12 months we’re already doing.

I find it really, really stupid. I mean, come on, I worked all summer at 9.5 hours a day, seven days a week and still average over 40.

So why wouldn’t I welcome another freaking project, in my spare time, right? Good grief.

So for the 9/11 and MLK days, I pretty much just put a title on something I was doing anyway. And since I’m all about service, it was a service project.

But this AC week is different. They expect us to go in and recruit for them.

Uh, no. My experience with the local office has been less-than stellar, honestly, and I would not recommend this to many people.

It’s not like I wouldn’t recommend it to some people, but like Peace Corps, I would not just go out and say, “Hey, do this!” I’d have to know the person first. It’s not for everyone.

I’m happy to answer questions, and do so often in a couple of online forums. But one of the suggestions given to me was to go to a high school and recruit. That is just not going to happen. Beyond having no time for it, I have very little interest in it.

But I am psyched for North Augusta, that is for sure. I’m not remotely ready for it, although I did start packing. There’s not a whole lot I can do since I still need to wash a load of clothes.

There’s a new guy working with one of the partners and I’ve given him a key to housesit. He’s currently living on campus with no running water. Apparently guys are more OK with this than women are, because he said he probably wouldn’t sleep over here but just cook, shower and wash clothes.

And water the five plants, which I’m a little worried about. Plants aren’t supposed to shed, I don’t think. But I have a little problem with two of them. Let’s just say I’m glad I have a vacuum.

The idea of leaving for over a week is really freaky, honestly. I don’t remember taking a vacation for this long. I mean, even Alaska, India and Russia were only 10 days or so. And those were rarities.

The trip after PC was a month, but that wasn’t time off work. (Oh, that was fun: nothing so sad as listing your job as “unemployed volunteer”) And Morocco, the second time, was a month but that was work.

This trip, though, isn’t 100 percent vacation. Beyond the entire point of helping Karen with the Bayou Spice catering, I’m bringing work with me. I will be working at least a couple hours a day.

It’s kind of odd because most of my work is done online, even the local stuff. We don’t have one central location and I even send emails and make phone calls to the trailer across the parking lot or the one on the other side of the building. So really, there’s just not a lot of difference between me being in my “Vicar” office or on, for example, a Greek island.

So I figure the land of Chick-Fil-A is a happy compromise.

Getting a grasp on time

Yep, we’re now more than halfway through February. I had no idea it was Michael Jordan’s 50th, but today is etched in my memory as Luc Robitaille’s birthday. Gotta love Lucky Luc.

There haven’t been any phenomenal updates since last week; so far it’s all gone as planned. Got my taxes filed, and due to the earned income credit thing I’m getting refund for the first time in awhile.

Still psyched for Feb. 27, when I head to N Augusta for some catering, but now I have another short trip: I have to head back down to Bismarck on Friday. There is some two-day church mission seminar thing and I am going to have a booth. It’s Friday and Saturday and it’s cheaper for me to just stay down there than to drive back and forth.

The driving is going to stink because we’re going to have another arctic blast – the high on Tuesday is supposed to be minus 7 – and it’s supposed to snow. But hopefully it will work out. I’ll pack my blanket and MREs and hope for the best.

And then the next Wednesday … I’m out of here. I’ve already taken note of where the Chick-Fil-As are in both the Minneapolis and Atlanta airports. So excited for that.

So no matter what the real time is, my brain keeps fast-forwarding through February. Part of this is because the little digital clock by my bed keeps rushing me through the day.

I had no idea digital clocks could run fast, but this one sure seems to. I’ve set the darn thing three times since I’ve been here, but it seems to lose about 10 minutes a month. Right now, it’s about 12 minutes ahead and I know I set it again at the beginning of 2013.

Seriously, how does this happen with a digital clock? I didn’t know that could happen. I’m baffled as to how it does.

In work news, I’m happy to report that we’re now scheduling a volunteer work day this month. I was quite thrilled when I got a call (from across the parking lot; we have no phone system) to ask me to put together some promotional stuff.

Of course I would! Holy smokes, this is the same idea I’ve had and pushed since AUGUST. This same group of people keeps thwarting me and now they’ve come up with the same idea, ostensibly on their own. Yeah, right, but who cares? It’s getting done!

There’s just nothing normal about this month

February is my 12^th favorite month. It’s not even close, either. I think January is probably No. 11, but it having the bulk of the bowl games makes it a high No. 11. February is just far, far in the distance.

Thank God it only has 28 days in a normal year. (There’s nothing normal about election years.) I’m cheered to know that even though I’m not quite halfway through, we just got started and already we’re in double digits. By this time next week, we’ll be halfway over AND inchallah I will have my taxes done.

Oh yeah, THAT. Welcome back to the US! I finally got my W2 – it’s been since pre-PC that I even had a W2 – and, according to TurboTax, had a taxable income of $-2k in 2012. Woo-hoo!

Although I still lack two 1099s to file federal, I took a stab at filing North Dakota taxes this past week. My AmeriCorps is the only taxable I have for ND; bank interest isn’t their business. I finished – nothing due, nothing owed – and got it ready to mail and then realized they want a copy of my federal form, too.

Sigh. I don’t have this yet. But since I planned to mail that in and will e-file federal, my hope is that by the time they get around to processing it in Bismarck, I’ll have everything in place. If not, well, I’ll just have to mail a federal copy later. With my booming income, I’m hoping they won’t care.

My last partial year in Detroit, I didn’t even bother filing. Since traditionally Detroit wound up owing me about $8 a year, I figured if they really wanted to go through the trouble to pay me they could.  Since that was while Kwame was in the federal slammer, I think they had other issues going on.

Detroit. It’s so much better as a distant memory.

So will February, but I have to get through it first. It’s just a really weird month, work-wise.

It’s been slow since mid-November or so, but I’m fine with this. After all, I did average about nine and a half hours a day, seven days a week through the summer. I don’t feel guilty about not doing a whole lot right now.

But it’s picking up a bit; I’ve got a newsletter going out tomorrow and have done a couple of recruitment pieces lately. Right now, we have about 40 teams registered for the rebuild season. I feel like that’s low, but in reality, it’s ahead of where we were last year, because at this time last year, Hope Village didn’t exist. It started in April.

I’m pretty much on my own this month, too. My supervisor had the Cancun trip the first week and this past week had to go to Phoenix and heads straight from there to a cruise.

He gets back the 16^th or something like that, and then I leave the 27^th for North Augusta to help Karen with some catering.

So it’s just a really, really odd month. I’m looking so forward to the trip out of here; I changed my flight back this week to return Sunday, March 10 instead of the Thursday before. Originally I could only spare 10 days but as it turns out, taking one more day, I can work another event and visit Charles, Mary Lynn and Anna.

Realistically, it’s not even as much time off as it seems because I’ll be working at least a couple of hours a day. Most of my work is done via computer – my computer. So I can take it with me. I work via email primarily, even when I’m communicating with people in Minot, or on the Hope Village campus. So working remotely isn’t a big deal.

Until this week, that was my only out-of-town plan until I finish up here, but I just got my new date to re-take the foreign service oral assessment. So now I am headed to Washington in late April. I’d hoped for a May date, but this is close enough. I feel I’ve pushed my luck enough already.

So I used a frequent flyer ticket and got my flight. I’m holding on the hotel because it’s possible Zippy and/or Laurie will come, too. If I go alone, I’m staying at the $40-a-night guesthouse I’ve stayed at twice before but if they go we’ll get a hotel room.

Now I have to plan on time to study for that interview. I am already on the hiring list but scored low, so I might not get an offer. Passing a second time would give me 18 more months to get an offer. And right now, I am on the do-not-call list because I couldn’t accept an offer until after June. (At least as it stands now – the AmeriCorps extension is still up in the air.)

So I’m getting ahead of myself, I know. I try not to think about it outside of preparing for the interview.

But thinking about it gives me something to look forward to. And helps me remember that there’s life after February.

Whiskey Girl of Someone Else’s Dream

This week, Pastor Andy popped in to let me know about a bizarre dream he had, and I featured a prominent part.

Get your mind out of the gutter.

Pastor Andy is one of the three pastors on staff at the church; he’s the newest and is the youth pastor. He got here shortly before I did. He also works with Hope Village and visits with volunteers (when we have them) and homeowners.

The other two pastors are my supervisor (the senior pastor; he’s been at this church 19 years) and Pastor Dan.

PDan is about my age and has four kids. He also has a bald head, at least one earring and no shoes. He looks like a pirate.

I guess now that it’s -21 out, he is wearing some kind of foot cover, but usually those toe-shoe things. In the summer it’s bare feet or sandals at most. Quite a hippie. I’m not sure how Crystal puts up with him. She said he had long hair when they got married.

Pastor Andy has two little kids; Gwen is 2 so I’d guess Aiden is maybe 4. Aiden played shy at first, but he loosened up after I helped him out with wiffle ball. Gwen doesn’t have a shy bone in her body. Right now, I’m housing all their scooters and trikes in my garage as they live nearby.

The dad is also my next-door neighbor as far as offices go. I’m squatting in the old vicar’s office (all my supplies are clearly marked “VICAR” in Sharpie). Both PDan and Pastor Andy have much bigger offices (PDan’s even has a sink; it used to be a kitchen), but mine is about half the size, and so is my supervisor’s. I think technically, we share an office but it’s divided into two rooms. You have to go through my door to get to my supervisor’s. We also have a window so we can wave at each other and send hand signals.

The two-offices-in-one means that my door to the hallway is also my supervisor’s, which explains why I have his name on my door above the sign that says “Pastor” and the photo of his newborn grandson, with a Pastor Andy-created bubble coming out of his mouth that says “Grandpa, will you buy me a guitar?”

Both my supervisor and Pastor Andy play their guitars in their offices, and Bonnie, who is the music director and whose office is diagonal across the hall, plays piano here and there, so it’s a very pleasant place to work.

Anyway, Andy walked in earlier this week and said he had to tell me about this dream he’d had.

Somehow, I was driving a school bus. He said he wasn’t sure if it was Hope Village people or Our Savior Lutheran Church people on the bus, but I was behind the wheel. We’d stopped for gas outside of some town that was completely abandoned.

There was a police car involved somehow, and then an “older woman,” Pastor Andy called her, came walking up and waving a gun at the police officer. There was a puff of smoke and the officer disappeared. (Remember: dream.)

Then, the woman went back to her car and pulled out the heavy artillery and came at us. Missiles, guns, etc., the whole nine yards. (I have my theories as to whom this figure represents!)

Pastor Andy said I got back on the bus (I guess I was the one gassing it up – I do it all, even in someone else’s dream) to get everyone out of there.

“But first,” he told me. “You took a big shot of shot of whiskey.”

Then I got in and started driving like a mad woman as I dodged artillery fire.

“We got to the abandoned town, and missiles were landing around us everywhere. You were driving up and down these little roads, turning left and right,” Pastor Andy said. “There was nobody around – it was completely empty – and you just drove us all through it as these bombs were going off all around us.”

I’m no dream interpreter, but I think I came out rather well in that one.