Greetings

Welcome to my little corner of the inter-webs! I just wanted to take this space to warn you that my posts will rarely be up to date. Due to the spontaneity of natural disasters and the unpredictability of when AmeriCorps' services will be requested I will be digitizing my journal entries whenever we return to St. Louis. Oh, and most of the pictures you see here were taken by myself. If ever I do use someone else's material I make a point to give them due credit though! That said, come, leave comments and be merry! I hope you enjoy your stay!

Saturday, November 2, 2013

Cape Girardeau 10/30

Cardinals need a win tonight.  As you have probably heard by now, my home state Tigers were knocked out by the Red Sox and now my current state team, the Cardinals, are on the verge of losing.  Will has this theory that if one gets his or her bad luck out of the way early then one only has good luck to deal with.  For this reason he buys a lottery ticket every time we are about to go on a big trip.  If he wins, he plays again.  He plays until he loses just to get the bad luck over with.  So far this tactic has worked splendidly!  Except for the trailer tire blowing out on the way back from Montana… we’ll blame that one on Eric though.  The guy just couldn’t lose when it came to lottery scratch offs.  Anyways, today I lost my safety glasses, participated in the losing of a nut for a chainsaw, and the orange team’s truck got stuck in soft soil.  If Will’s theory is correct, I think the Cardinals are due a win.

For our service project of the day we headed over to the Riney Conservation Area and dealt with invasive Cedars.  I cut down a tree twice as big as the largest I’ve tackled thus far!  It was about the size of the bar on my chainsaw, so about 18 inches wide on any side you looked at it.  The tree was a beast.  I ended up needing to bore into it because my quarter cuts in the back didn’t quite connect.  It fell right where I wanted it to too!  I tried to take a picture to document the moment but it seems I am still stuck in Silent Hill. I settled for finding an angle that just made it look blurry instead of foggy.  Overall I am very happy with my felling today, particularly my analytic abilities.  Our leader, Dan Burch, tested me by seeing if I would cut down certain cedars before the beast and, after taking several moments to look them over, I made the correct call to flag one and let the others be. 

The movie of the night was Zombieland.  Everyone watched it and loved it.  I think Richard took particular interest in the film because John decided that if the zombie apocalypse happened he would be Tallahassee.  We were laughing at the similarities between our Tallahassee and the movie’s just as much as we were at the film’s quirky moments.  If someone were to walk in on our viewing, the person would probably assume this was the first time we’d seen the movie by our reactions.  We would have been an awesome midnight premier group, just saying.  I love Zombieland.  The movie gets me like Bill Murray does Wichita.

It just occurred to me that I haven’t told you all where we’re staying.  We're staying in the mess hall of some kind of cool church camp.  I believe it is called Baptist Camp.  It has a nice kitchen that we have been taking advantage of, a pool, a small playground, a big pavilion, and lots of open fields.  There are dorms too… but they smell a little funny so we avoid them.  By Odin’s raven, Zeus and Thor came through for us today… although it sounds like there is some tension building between the two.  Rumor has it there is going to be some throw-down tomorrow.  Egos or something.  But yeah, the place we’re staying at is heated, spacious, and has electricity.  AmeriCorps is really spoiling us this week.



Before I turn in, I just wanted to say how happy I am to be in this program—reiterate, if you will, as I am sure I have muttered something similar before.  When the Blue Hulk got stuck in the soft soil, everybody jumped out and helped get the vehicle free.  Each night when we return to the Baptist Camp, everybody volunteers to help prepare our fantastic dinners.  Everyone is so kind and generous… it’s just incredible.  I get to go to awesome places with awesome people to do awesome things.  Well, good night all and Happy Hallo’s Eve!





A shot of my stump with a felling axe to give some idea of its size.  The second two pictures are the last two I managed to take before the mist took complete control of my camera.


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