Halloween, Generous Donor

For Halloween this year, our house maintained its tradition of dressing up and giving out candy together. Here are our costumes.

Pippi Longstocking (Anika) and a pirate (Alicia)!

Scream Mask Person (Marcel) and Greatly Mustaccioed Soccer Player (Carlos)

Juno (Julia)

Everybody. Of those not previously seen: A flapper, a vampire, a hippy, a doll, and a door.

The whole outfit. Unfortunately a little blurry.

Our doorstep Jack O Lantern curtosy of Alicia.

Even scarier in the day light - look at that mold!

Recently the church that owns the Brethren House has started to pay a little bit more attention to us. One kind woman suggested that we needed a new fridge... and proceeded to buy us one within days! Here it is.

Old fridge with crap all over it VS New and shiny fridge!

Inside of old fridge.

Inside of new fridge.

New fridge door.

The freezer's on the bottom! And the basket pulls out. Ah, convenience!

But enough about that. Lest you think I'm pampered, it's time to show you some hard work.

See tree in ground. What to do?

Let's try pulling.

Victory!

And that's how easy getting trees out of your yard is. :)

New Job or No Job?

Well, I was expecting to hear about about that job in Virginia last Tuesday, but no go. I'm surprised because they've kept in touch really well in the past, so I don't know what to think. I'm assuming that no news is bad news, but I called today to hear for sure. The answer is... probably there will be a job position opening up, but all the details need to get worked out (and since I want to live on site, that's another obstacle), and it could take who knows how long. I already asked the housemates if I can stay on for a few more months. I hope to find a temp agency/job, and then find a real farm job in March if not sooner. I don't want to wait until then - 4 months! - but it must be done.

I haven't kept this blog up with the saga that is the Brethren House, probably because it was too depressing. We are currently house-manager-less. In August, our house manager finished up her year after moving out early. She was in law school and too busy for all the drama. Plus, she was freaked out when one of the housemates punched a dent in the wall after a particularly upsetting house meeting. I don't blame her. We got a new house manager in August. His behavior worried me from the start, but not enough to say anything. Until... he got VERY drunk one night and threw a whiskey bottle into the TV to break it so that the house board would have to buy a new (and better?) one. The next day, Mike the house manager went around asking everyone if they knew what happened to the TV, because he supposedly didn't remember breaking it. This led to hours upon hours of house meetings and actual mediation in which we eventuallly asked Mike to leave. He agreed at the mediation session, but then later said he thought the process was unfair. He fought tooth and nail to stay in the house, but finally the house board did something right and told him that he'd have to resign or they would fire him. We still gave him a month to get out of the house, which was excruciating. He is finally, finally gone. I feel so much better, and now can focus on the million other problems with the house (maintenence, bad blood between folks, negligent house board, nonexistent presence of the church that owns the house).

I volunteered to be interim house manager for a month or so until we can find a new house manager. A lot of the responsibility for finding and communicating with potential house managers is falling upon the current residents. We're also trying to create a better, more thorough contract for folks that live in the house, a better interview process for potential housemates and house managers, landscape the front yard, and get the board to keep up with maintenence. Recently the church that owns the house got a new pastor and she came to a house/board meeting. She was a very helpful presence and I'm hoping to meet with her sometime this week to go over some of my concerns.

So. There's the depressing update. I will post pictures hopefully soon of Halloween. Let the job search begin!

Life After BVS

Ah, I'm a terrible blog-updater!! If anyone still checks this blog anymore, this is for you. My year in BVS finished on October 9th. I am sad not to see my co-workers every day, but totally pumped about having my days free. The first week was spent in recovery. The next week I was kind of in limbo, waiting.

See, there's a job I really want in Warrenton, VA. It involves gardening and coordinating. It seems like it'd be a great combination of office and farm, plus I would live on the campus of this gorgeous conference center... but I'll tell you more about that if and when I get the job there. The guy who's trying to hire me, Pablo, has to get the permission of the head of the conference center. She was out of town for a week or so, visiting a sick friend, and no one knew when she was coming back. She's back now, and Pablo asked her, and she said no. So I was really upset, but then Pablo said that he'll be making a "final plea" next Tuesday. So, again, I'm waiting.

I'm trying not to get my hopes up, and I'm trying to look for other jobs, but I'm just not motivated because I really want this one. Still, there seems to to be plenty to do each day. Looking for jobs could be a full time job. I'm trying to go through piles of things in my room (if it's in a pile, it means I didn't want to do it, so going through piles is like pulling teeth). I went thrift-store shopping for winter farm clothes. There's laundry to do and cooking...

One thing I guess I'll need when I get a farm job is a car. I will want to be traveling back to DC on the weekends. Please keep your eyes out for a good deal. I am willing to buy a car under $5000. I would like it to be cheap, but able for me to put some miles on it. Something with good gas milage would be good too! I want to ask family and friends first, because I'd also be happy to borrow a car for a year and give it back. Sometimes circumstances work out for that to happen. Let me know if you have a lead! (I'm willing to travel to get the car.)

Metro Tragedy

Yesterday I got a ride home. At about 8 PM my housemates mentioned in passing that there was a crash on the Metro (subway). Lu (housemate) got a call from California asking her if she was okay. She didn't know what the call was in reference to. That's how she heard about the crash. We didn't know many details. They said it was on the Red Line in Northeast, coming into the city. That's the line I ride, and the direction I go. My housemate said "well, I heard it was above ground so I stopped paying attention because whereever I ride the Metro, it's underground." But when I ride the Metro home, the first 3 stops are above ground.

I didn't find out any more details until today, on my way to work. When I got to the Metro, there were delays. First I had to wait maybe 10 minutes to get on, then the train stopped before my station. I got off and had to take a bus the rest of the way. I was really worried that I would come to work and find out that someone had gotten hurt on their way home. Turns out, the crash was one stop before mine. Here's the diagram. From North to South on the Red Line, the stations are Takoma, Fort Totten, Brookland. Brookland is where I get on to go home (South). The train was going North to South, so it's actually pretty unlikely that anyone I know from work was in the crash. Still, it was pretty close to home.

Here are some reactions of local communters. (I'm famous!)

Olivia & David visit - with camera!

Olivia and David came out for a weekend. It was so fun! On Saturday we did the monuments and some Smithsonians. It was a beautiful day for all that walking. In the evening we ate at a restaurant on 8th Street (very close to my house). We came back home and played Settlers of Catan, and they taught me the Cities & Knights version - SO fun! On Sunday morning we went to a neighborhood I like - Dupont Circle. We all bought our weekly fresh foods (for O & D it was what could survive on the trip back), then went to a restaurant for lunch. After lunch I took them to Mr. Yogatto's - a quirky frozen yogurt place. Olivia ordered in a Kermit T. Frog voice and got a Mr. Yogatto stamp on her forehead, and got 15% off! We came back home and played more Settlers, this time out on the patio at the picnic table. Then they took off! It was a busy weekend, but you must remember that just about every activity we did was followed by a short nap. :) One time we all piled onto my twin bed, hee hee. Here are awaited pictures of my house and garden!!!

My hand cupping the house number. We like to think that the unattractive facade of the house means it'll be the last one on the street to get robbed.

My room as viewed from the doorway.

The reading corner.

The closet & dresser across from the bed.

The seedlings on my desk (right by bed): tomato plants, basil, Baby's Tears plant

Heirloom tomatoes close up.

The upstairs kitchen, right by my bedroom.

The upstairs hallway. The open door at the end of the hallway is my room. To the left are the kitchen and bathroom. Does Olivia know I'm taking the picture?

Other end of upstairs hallway. Carly (housemate) at the community computer.

Top floor looking down.

Main floor: mailboxes.

Main floor hallway. Chore chart, communication white board, open door= kitchen.

Carly cooking in the main floor kitchen.

Carly cooks with eggs!

A normal picture of Carly.

Basement bike room + laundry.

Basement - community room.

Out the basement back door. Our picnic table on the patio.

The garden - the full view.

Foreground: peppers. Background: rosebush.

Lots of turnips. This is the best grower in my garden. When I direct seeded them, I went a little overboard. :) I need to thin them out.

The garlic patch. This was started in November. It's super easy to maintain, because you don't have to do anything! Behind it you can see my homemade compost pile and a branch I need to saw up.

Anika in the garden! Taa daa!

FLOTUS at the CAFB

That's the super undercover spy way of saying... First Lady of the United States at the Capital Area Food Bank (I actually got an email titled "FLOTUS at the CAFB). And it's true! She came in April, and I had to hold my tongue for about a month, knowing that she would be coming. I knew this wasn't out of the realm of possibility when I came to the Food Bank and saw pictures of the last 4? presidents visiting, plus Morgan Freeman and some other celebrities. I guess this is because we are the main food bank in the district and we serve so many large and small agencies. I could only hope that the president would visit in his first year in office (while I'm here!). On his hundredth day in office, Mrs. Obama invited over 100 congressional spouses to participate in a service event at the CAFB.

We prepared for weeks. It was my job to create a display about our department that will be used for years to come, but that can also be changed easily. I laminated and velcroed on the pictures and captions so that they can be changed in the future. I also arranged flowers in 2 watering cans. (tangent: I'm starting to wonder if these people think I'm too eager to please because every time we do a project and they ask "who knows how to paint?" I'll say, "I do! I worked as a painter for a few years." When we needed to arrange flowers, I said, "I'll do it! I worked at a flower shop for a few years." My coworker asked me to babysit, and I said, "Don't worry, I know how to do the Heimlich, first aide, and CPR for babies. I was a lifeguard for a few years." Do they think I'm lying? I mean, I'm only 24. Of course, I was a lifeguard and painter in the summers, and the flower shop was my after school job in high school, but they don't know that. Oh right, I can also say I'm a certified English teacher. It's a whole thing with our generation and how we get to do so many different things...)

Here's the display:
You can sorta see the thing I made (on the easel). I wish I had a better picture of it. There's also a grow box on the floor with various herbs and lettuces (to make it pretty and farm-y).

The ladies you see there are my coworkers. Here up close are Jody, Susan, and I.
By some lucky, amazing feat, all current and past AmeriCorps volunteers got to help bag the groceries that the congressional spouses and the first lady were putting together for kids. First she gave a speech about service.

(Here she is with the lady from Feeding America, Dr. Jill Biden, and our CEO, Lynn Brantley.) Then she went through the line with a bag, collecting goodies. I was handing out bags. The media were on a platform right behind me, so this next picture is basically where I was standing, only I was closer to the ground.
When she leaned in to get a bag, she touched my finger!

Here's another nice picture of her going through the line:

At one point she doled out the goodies to people going through the line:
At the end we got about two seconds to stand in a huge group with her for a picture. We were sad that she didn't address us as a group, but I guess we had to work pretty hard even to get a picture.
We gave her a few presents - CAFB t-shirts for her and the girls, books for the girls, etc. My department also gave her a grow box (like the one at our table) from the kids at our garden in Southeast. The kids decorated tags that said "oregano," "basil," etc, which I laminated and taped to little metal stakes. I also painted the sides of the box with vines. She liked the gift a lot and spoke to Miss Hannah Hawkins who runs the Children of Mine Center where we have our garden. It sounds like she wants to visit! Maybe this time I'll actually get to say something to her. :)

This experience was so interesting for many reasons. For one, we learned that the secret service is really hard to work with. For a long time we knew what day she was coming, but up until the day itself, we didn't know what time exactly. They changed the plan every few hours and made random requests at the last minute. I wonder if they're really that disorganized, or if they intentionally try to keep people confused so that they can't plan anything disruptive. It was also SO much work to get ready for this event. We had to give the secret service all of our names & social security numbers so that they could do background checks, we re-arranged the whole warehouse, set up all these displays, had special t-shirts made... It was ridiculous. On the day of, we all had to leave the building for an undisclosed amount of time so that security could make a sweep. When we came back in, we walked through a metal detector. Once we were downstairs, we weren't allowed to go back upstairs. There was so much planning and craziness that it's hard for me to imagine that the White House staff plans outings like this every day, sometimes even multiple times a day! I mean, we were in contact with them for weeks working out the details.

Another interesting insight I got from this experience was into the Capital Area Food Bank and how we work. It happened like this: all of the gifts for the Obamas had to be in Lynn's (CEO) office a few days ahead of time so that secret service could look them over (or something). We put the grow box in there, but we still had to add the tags and paint the sides. So the day before, I go into the office, lay down newspapers and kind of lay down on the floor to paint the sides of the box. Lynn's in her office and so is a guy named Grant. Grant is either a volunteer or an employee, and he's been with the CAFB since the beginning when it started with Lynn, him, Father Brake, and a couple of other old-timers. He's wrapping the other presents. We haven't spoken before, and he starts asking me questions about myself. We start chatting, and he's really easy to talk to, and really interested in my life. Every once in awhile, Father Brake comes in, and I hear them chat about details about The Visit. They're super casual, and it's funny to hear them talk so candidly. But this is how our office is! I mean, I - a volunteer - can just waltz into the CEO's office and say "what's up, Lynn?" I can also lay on the floor, painting something, chatting it up with the founders of the Food Bank. The world of the non-profit is so interesting!

Sakura

Tis the season for Cherry Blossoms or "sakura" in Japanese (I think). Most of the petals have blown away by now, but last weekend the trees were in high form. I was lucky enough to go at non-peak times, so I avoided a lot of tourists. But that means I had to go at less than ideal times, being Wednesday and Friday after work. One day was rainy, and one day was windy. The second time around, I brought a friend with a camera! It's good to have friends with cameras. Her name is Jenny, and she's a coworker of mine.


Hi Jenny!


Twisty branches.


The picture every tourist takes...


The blossoms look like snow. (But I'd much rather have Cherry Blossoms than snow.)


The dramatic sky...


The Cherry Blossoms line the tidal basin. I don't know how we managed to miss a picture of it, but lots of the trees were bending over towards the water. When you stood under them, it was a beautiful canopy.


The rain was worth it for this puddle.