Doctor Who?

Last week was almost too busy.
Red Cross wise, we began CERT training, which is an acronym for Community Emergency Response Team. These classes are long and involve a lot of reliving the tornado, which is what my job entails anyway. It's also become a running joke that all I care about is my sandwich because I sent a singular text message asking someone from work to bring it to me for dinner. Thanks, Holli... In times like these, I have to think, "What would Jared do?"


Thursday and Friday Mike, Dawn, Cody, David Sams, and I all went to Disaster Instructor Specialty Training in Hoover. If I had not already had the Health and Safety Instructor's Course, this training would have been more helpful. We met some great people from all over the state, but it was a long two days. Luckily, my friend Lee works in that office, so I was able to randomly hang out with her/ go on bathroom breaks.

Mike and I also taught our first ERV course on Wednesday only to realize that much like our own time taking the class our ERV was completely out of coolant due to a leak. #irony We at least checked our levels before the class unlike our teacher.

I'm going backwards in this, but Monday night Mike taught Logistics to the rest of us since no one had taken it yet. It is the most useless of all courses. You learn approximately three things, but there is a hilarious exercise involved. In trying to teach you the steps of a logistical operation, the participant's manual gives you the example of a coffee pot. We were supposed to fill in the blanks in these sentences about the coffee pot with words like acquire, store, deliver, etc. The funny part was that in all of the sentences it was referred to as "the pot." Thus all of our sentences were about acquiring, storing, and delivering "the pot."

Thursday and Friday were the days of Alpha Psi Omega's second Pledge Retreat at Camp Sumatanga. If you mix both one of my favorite places with one of my groups of favorite people, how can it not be a success? Jake and Allison did a wonderful job of getting everything organized and improving the snags in last year's trip. I loved every minute I was there. I got to eat some awesome camp food and spend more time with this year's pledge class and my pledges from last year as well.

I am so proud of my pledges for how involved they've stayed after getting initiated. There were only four members on the retreat that were not from last year's pledge class. They all did a great job of spending time with everyone and helping make sure things ran smoothly. I felt like everyone had a great time and bonded as an organization.

In more detail, we did the Pledge Retreat Olympics the first night, which involved a team name contest, a choreography contest, and the puzzle scavenger hunt. Collin and I were in charge of the blind maze room. This was equally dangerous and fun as blindfolded pledges tried to walk across platforms and not fall. The only minor mess up was us not thinking to check the time that the sun rose. This resulted in me leading a mountain hike at 6 in the morning in the darkness.  It was worth it.

Here are some picture's from last year's retreat followed by this year's group picture. Look how many more people came this time!




After going on the retreat, I was exhausted during class Friday but still managed to get my costume on for a party at Bates's that night. I thought that the theatre crowd would be more likely to have seen Doctor Who. Sadly, I was mistaken. There were a blessed few who recognized my costume, but the majority were clueless. This led to the question "Doctor who?" I'm going to try the costume again tonight at another party and hope it's more successful.

Last night, Sarah and I were at it again in the kitchen. We cooked Parmesan asparagus and spaghetti and meat sauce while watching Once Upon a Time and Sisterwives. I was able to sneak out before Long Island Medium started.

A Series of Fortunately Crazy Events

This week was one for the record books. So much happened that I can't wait a full week to write about it. This blog will discuss the following events: work, Paranormal Activity 3, APO's Big Little Night, Alabama versus Tennessee, the Waffle House fight, and Sunday dinner and television with Sarah.

Work will only cover a brief portion because not too much happened since Wednesday night. Thursday night a bunch of volunteers came from the University of South Carolina's Wesley Foundation, and they were able to completely empty and reorganize the three pods sitting in the old building's parking lot. They were so much fun to work with, and their campus minister actually knew my campus minister, Ken! That night I taught Disaster Assessment to a small group and talked to another group at the Bama Red Cross Club. Friday, solely consisted of teaching a Shelter Operations course to a group of nurses in school in Birmingham and a lot of sitting around waiting for it to be 4:30.

Now on to the far more interesting portions of the weekend.

Thursday night I went with a group of theatre people to see Paranormal Activity 3 at midnight. It was too good. I love the community mentality of seeing a scary movie in the theatre. Everyone is in the fear together, which was very applicable in this movie. The last fifteen minutes were heart attack inducing.


Friday was Alpha Psi Omega's Big Little Night. Finally, I was lucky enough to have a little of mine yield grandlittles. Drew got Katie and Sam as the newest members to our APO family. We aren't as flashy or boastful as some of the other families, but I think we're plenty fun and all oddly similar. For example, my two grandlittles and I were able to sit in my car and listen toHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on CD. I had a good bit of fun helping littles solve their clues and watching them with their completed outfits on. Drew had his dress as pokemon. I'll post a picture when they get on facebook. Here is an example of a dressing up pair from the first year we did it.


Friday night I stayed with Natalie on campus so that I wouldn't have to drive and park for the game Saturday. We woke up around lunch and watched Halloweentown on television before going out to the quad for tailgating. There was so much free food! It was wonderful. After that I went to the game with a bunch of theatre people. Before the game ever started, we witnessed a young man throw up onto our seating area and then he fell backwards into it as he tried to leave. Things became a little less eventful after that until the second half at least. I'm so excited for the LSU game. It should be pretty intense just like two years ago. I'm so glad I was able to see Tennessee lose again. Just four games left unil post season!
 

Well after a short bit of post game celebration at the Jungle, an apartment handed down through the theatre department, Natlie decided it would be a good idea for a group of us to go to Waffle House, so we did. We had fun eating and talking, and then things took a turn for the violent. I'll let the video explain it all. Here's a picture of our pre incident happiness followed by the video link.


http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=http%3A//www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D2YKrw-2njeI%26feature%3Dshare

Due to violent content, you'll have to sign in on youtube to prove your age, or you can view it on my wall. Look for me between 1:30 and 1:45. I'm trying to save my friend in the Houndstooth coat from getting beat up. Luckily, Kaitlin was able to climb over the counter into the kitchen area.

Sunday, Sarah and I made some enchiladas that we found on pinterest. They weren't too hard to make and tasted great. It was the perfect compliment to Once Upon a Time, RHONJ, and Sisterwives. Of course, we also made some cookies to go along with it. Hopefully she'll be posting some pictures on her blog.
http://thesimplysarahblog.blogspot.com/

Now that I'm pimping her blog, hopefully she'll return the favor. Sometimes it just takes two.

A State of Disaster

This can apply to a lot of things: the Red Cross in general, our specific office, the state of Alabama, etc. All of this will be covered later.

We last left off on Wednesday of last week. Since that point work has been a blur of business and miscommunication and everyone helping everyone do everything. In Tuscaloosa, we are just trying our best to get things organized, which would be easy if we didn't have to keep functioning as a nonprofit. We had a statewide meeting yesterday of the Emergency Services A List in the Hoover office. This meeting was both educational and frustrating, but I do think that things will be improving as a result. This time of transition just came at a terrible time with our old building destroyed and our resources spread out all over the county. We're doing pretty well for missing most of our server and having very few paid staff members.

I've tried to keep myself busy personally as well. Wednesday night the Donner Party was able to score another point for the trivia league. Hopefully tonight we'll be able to get another solid victory. We really do hate Chico's Bail Bonds. Thursday Sarah and I spoiled ourselves to dinner and Project Runway. Being at Buffalo Phil's made me miss my dining dollars so much. The fingers of fire are just too good.



Saturday, I went to see the University of Alabama's production of Animal Crackers. It was much more entertaining than I was expecting it to be. A lot of that was thanks to Caroline Schmidt and her wonderful portrayal of Harpo as The Doctor. She only said one word the entire show and was still the best part. Following the production, I drove quickly home to spend sometime with Rachel Folsom. We caught up while simultaneously watching The A List Dallas, going to McDonalds for sweet tea and cookies, and renting Something Borrowed from the Red Box. Then we went to see Bridesmaids at the dollar theatre Sunday afternoon, which was wonderfully funny. Here's Rachel:

Monday was perfection. I taught a Disaster Assessment course at the Birmingham office downtown. My friend Lee took the course and was a wonderful student. There were a couple of questions I wasn't prepared for, and she was able to help out. I also want to say that Ruthie "I can make a joint out of a pipe cleaner" Coleman was also there. After class Lee and I had lunch at Urban Standard. IT WAS AMAZING. I thought I had been to all the major Birmingham restaurants, but I had not ventured to this Northside eatery. If they had sweet tea, I'd eat there everyday. I had so much fun just relaxing and chatting with someone who understands the Red Cross things I talk about.

Last night, Sarah and I fed ourselves and our television addictions. After a fun filled RHOBH on Monday, I was glad that Sarah Michelle Gellar's The Ringer didn't disappoint. Corey joined us but didn't enjoy people getting killed by their friends. I'll talk about this show as long as it's on the air, so you better hope it gets cancelled. The more important part of the evening was our dinner. We went to Taco Casa on 15th Street. It just reopened after the tornado in April damaged it. Now I know that there are seven other area locations, but this one meant a lot to me because it was the one I frequented from birth until now.





Today, the Red Cross has its own fire in the form of over microwaved muffins. James, who is one of my favorite employees other than Tree at the Hoover office, normally asks me to cook things in the microwave for him, but today he took a brave but unsuccessful step toward Independence. The two muffins he put in the microwave came out as hard bricks that caused the smoke detector to go off, which prompted the fire department to call (ten minutes later). The only way to disarm the detector was to unplug it, and that took us a good 15 minutes to accomplish. Holli is a little upset that we didn't inform her of the mini fire because she was unable to hear the alarm in her office, meaning were it real she would have burned up. #irony

I am sitting at the office waiting to activate a Client Assistance Card because the IT department has not given us the ability to do it ourselves... Thus I will give you a list of some great reality television quotes.

"Werewolf balls."

"My party went from flash mob to splash mob, and I was not happy about it."

That's all for now.

And I Know Things Now

I started this a while ago to be about Costa Rica, but I never finished. Here it is a year and a few months later!


I thought it would be interesting to compile a list of things I learned in Costa Rica now that I am looking back of the entire experience. I am so glad to be back in the land of sweet tea, but I will always miss my time with the Ticos.

1. Cell phones are not necessary. It's a lot more fun to just hope someone will find you at the right location at the right time without any complications.

2. Punctuality is frowned upon and discouraged.

3. Protein is not the focus of a meal. In fact, you may have to dig under all of the rice to find it.

4. It will rain between 2 and 5 PM everyday, and cheap Tico umbrellas will rust and break after about a week of enduring this.
5. Vented windows and an intelligent floor plan work just as well as air conditioning. 
6. It's difficult to make study abroad friends more than just that.



7. Every country has it's own cheap beer. I'm talking about you, Imperial!

8. Chinese Restaurants can easily transform into bars and have some of the best names like Fung Sheng and Wong Kok.

9. Costa Rica was the third country in the world with electricity. They need something to be proud of besides not being Nicaragua.

10. There is definitely a West versus East Coast rivalry, and the West Coast wins by far.

11. I will never be mistook for a Tico unless I get really tan and ginger.

12. My host family showed me more unconditional love than I could possibly imagine, and I miss them, their cooking, attractive cousin, and David's cakes everyday.

13. Costa Rica doesn't have a lot of history because explorers overlooked it for better territories.

14. Costarican children learn three languages in school. People here don't even have to learn one well.

15. The beaches are beautiful tourist traps.

16. I will never be a surfer.

17. If you were shorts or a raincoat, you look like a total n00b even if it is 80 degrees and pouring outside.

18. "Winter" means rain in 80 degree weather, but Ticos wear heavy coats for fun anyway.

19. I have never been in a place with more natural beauty.

20. Hooters are everywhere.

21. Costa Rica will always have a part of my heart, and it taught me so much about myself and my love of travel and nature.

22. Teachers will not let you give up even if you tell them there is no way you can pronounce that town in Colombia.  

23. There's no reason to worry about anything. All you have to say is "¡Pura Vida!"
24. All men are born marvelously different.

I Need an EOC for My Life

The Red Cross consumed a large portion of my time this past week, which is the reasoning for my late posting. Monday night I taught Shelter Operations in Tuscaloosa to a lovely class of people including my coworker Joe, new volunteers Nolan and Jeb, David Sams, and my friend Sarah. You remember my friend Sarah?


Anyway, I love teaching these disaster courses to volunteers. Every singe one has been so much fun, and I hope that it's a job I can continue doing after my VISTA year is over. This was a particularly involved class, and so far Shelter Operations is my favorite to teach.

Tuesday was filled with road trip fun. Mike, Holly, and I met up in Eutaw, Alabama, for lunch at a great barbecue place and then a quick trip to do a shelter survey at a church in Forkland followed by a tour of Livingston. Then, Mike and I continued on to Aliceville in Pickens County to teach the Disaster Services Overview course. We only had three people in our class, but they were three crazy sisters. It's so reassuring to see people in every county come to our classes and have a good time because honestly some of this stuff is boring.

After class I got to have an impromptu meal in a historic home in Eutaw that my coworker lives in. It has a wikipedia page and the most "haints" in the whole town. When we teach another class in Aliceville next week, we're having a sleepover!!!!! That includes his four roommates not just the two of us...

Wednesday was epic for one reason only. I have no idea what happened at work, but the Donner Parter pulled the DP on every team at trivia and won! Jenae, Maggie, and I got $50 and 8 points for the league. We were wuite happy to beat all of our nemeses including: The Red Elephants and Chico's Bial Bonds. Here are the current three members of the Donner Party in full graduation garb. Our fourth member Marzi is in a hot air balloon in New Mexico.


One of the best parts of my job is making up things for the community service volunteers to do. I hope they find it as an endearing quality. I really enjoy hanging out with them and getting them to do all of the jobs I had to do my first week. Thursday, we made two of them clean the inside and outside of our Emergency Response Vehicle so that all of us could take a field trip to the secret warehouse for the city of Tuscaloosa. If I told you where it was, Holli would kill me if Billy Green hadn't gotten to me already.

All of this had to be done so that I could be in the ERV for the University's Homecoming Parade. I had such a great time with the Bama Corps club. This was mostly due to me getting to sit in the car and wave from the air conditioning. The only bad thing about the parade was the treatment of Spectrum. They were walking in front of us, and many people in the crowd gave them disapproving looks or vocalizations while applauding our car driving by. I will never understand that kind of unfounded dislike, but I suppose I'm not really a neutral party in that matter.

Saturday, due to some sad directional circumstances, I missed he entirety of Flannery and Chrisoph's wedding. Luckily, I made it to the reception to see my Birmingham crowd of friends and see the bride and groom in their wedding wear. It's odd seeing so many people getting married when i feel like I am so far away from it.


The rest of the weekend was spent realizing my surprisingly high weight gain over the past four months and hanging out with Will, my brother, at home and being devastated by my mii's weight gain on Wii Fit as well.

I took a class on working at an Emergency Operation Center yesterday and today. Thus the title. Class was a great networking opportunity because I got to hang out with my friend Lee and meet all of her coworkers as well as a national employee who was able to give me advice about working at the national office in Washington DC. The class was filled with all of the important disaster employees in the region as well as Ruthy. Ruthy was a fun older woman, who was just oblivious to so many things. She made an ash tray out of playdough and a blunt to go in it out of pipe cleaners during class. This was not an assignment.

The reason my life needs an EOC is because I feel like everything is just a little off kilter. I love work so much, but it's one of the only things I have to do right now besides trivia and watching reality television with Sarah. I'm considering moving to Birmingham next semester, but things feel off there as well at times. I'm trying to get more involved in things by teaching classes in Birmingham and working out and joining Capstone Alliance in town. Hopefully, it will do the trick soon.

Now with my Wii Fit workout over and a strong craving for sweet tea it is time for Sarah Michelle Gellar and The Ringer. You should all watch it. It's getting better each episode.

Old Fashion Buffalo and Frogs

This week was a long one at the West Alabama Chapter of the American Red Cross. You may have already read my post concerning the atrocity of Wednesday, so I'll skip over that and focus on the other happenings. Overall, we are experiencing a staffing shortage because all of our positions require us to leave the office. There are only five of us here full time, so it is quite easy for all of us to be scheduled to leave the office at the same time.

Luckily things worked out this week, and a few of us were able to go to Frog Level Festival in Fayette, Alabama, which is pronounced "Fet" by all of its citizens excluded my friend Martha. Because the town is in a swampy area, it is filled with frogs. This is enough reason to have an annual festival in the frogs' honor. The festival was a lot of fun, but sadly everyone there assumed we were taking blood and either avoided us because of this or became frustrated when that wasn't actually our purpose. My favorite part of the day was seeing all of the dressed up frogs outside of each business. The best one was a bandit frog outside of the bank. Also, our table was surrounded by people selling the craziest, kitchiest crap including but not limited too: "authentic" American Indian crafts, animal salt and pepper shaker holders, and a Winnebago.

In my venturings with Mike around West Alabama, I have discovered that there is one thing that I am great at: falling asleep in cars. I cannot for the life of me stay awake during long car rides on country roads. I tried my best not to do this on the way to Sulligent on Saturday morning for Old Fashion Day, but I sadly failed. I was shocked at how many people there were at this festival in such a small town. People even drove from out of town just to attend. We set up right by the Civil War weapon table and across the street from the table urging voter registration as long as it is for the Republican Party. There was also a great rebel flag bikini on sale for $20. We actually got a couple of interested volunteers in this town where "democrat" is an insult.

In the world of non work related activities, I had a lot of early mornings so I tried to go to bed early. My roommates and my love of hanging out saw to that not working out too well. The Donner Party worked hard Wednesday night to get some more points for the trivia league, but we fell a little short. Sarah and I had dinner Thursday and watched Project Runway with Briana and enjoyed the ridiculousness that was the 70s challenge. We also got together Sunday night to watch Sister Wives. I got to write a guest blog about it for Sarah, you'll have to check it out. Saturday after my time in Sulligent I went to have dinner with Chris in Birmingham at one of the many Mexican restaurants in the area. Then I watched his beautiful crewing of Moon Over Buffalo with Theatre Downtown. I really enjoyed the production even though I had already seen the University's production two years ago. It's such a cute and funny show and had a great poster. Afterward, I helped them strike because I'm that lame. Then Chris and I watched an episode of Jim Henson's Storyteller about a Russian soldier coming home after the war and obtaining a magic sack.

 

I stayed at home that night and got in an episode of Doctor Who before coming back to Tuscaloosa to do laundry and watch more television. Jake and I also had a meeting last night about pledge retreat and Big Little Reveal. I love Alpha Psi Omega so much that I just can't seem to get away. I figure the organization deserves a mention since it is the reason for my blog's name. Seek a life useful!