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.