I Got a Bike!!!!!!!!!!

I found a bike on Craigslist that wasn't ridiculously expensive, and I met the woman, and I got the bike! It's a little too small for me. I'm hoping that raising the seat will help. I might also bring my bike seat from Goshen, because this one hurts. The bike's a road bike, and it shifts really well, which my other bike doesn't. I took it upon myself to ride the bike home after getting it. It took an hour and a half, and there were hills. Why do I always do that? It's like how my first project after knitting scarves was to knit a sweater. After that I didn't know if I wanted to knit ever again.

I've noticed from the other BVS-er blogs that I follow that we all kind of stopped blogging at the same time. I'm getting more involved in life here, so I'm not as fiercely attached to communication from home, and the complexity of life makes it overwhelming to blog about. By the time I write a new entry, there's way too much to say in order to give people a complete picture. It seems like there are a few subjects that I keep updated, but plenty more I could be talking about. So those are my frustrations with blogging.

And now for a work update, because I realized that the last post about work is really outdated. I. Love. My. Job. And my boss is amazing. She would have made the perfect cooperating teacher for student teaching. I'm appreciating more and more the orientation she's given me. In the first week, she made it clear that she wants me to see as many aspects of the Food Bank as possible. So I've participated in a food distribution with Agency Relations, I've assisted with a class for the Nutrition Education program, I helped run a station at a food fair, I sat in on a class in Spanish about how to connect with supports in your community (for food pantries), I've toured our warehouse, and even driven the huge Capital Area Food Bank van. I really don't need to know all this to work in my department. And knowing that I'm only here for a year, my boss could easily just want me to get to work for her and our department. But it's become more and more clear how valuable all of this is. I can be such a better employee by being well-versed in what we do. Plus my boss puts so much trust in me and has made me a part of the department. It's pretty necessary I guess, because I'll be doing a lot of her job when she goes on maternity leave soon. Oh, here's an example of how awesome she is. We got to a site visit early last week, so she took me to Ben's Chili Bowl to get vegetarian chili cheese fries, just because it's a "DC must," even though it's so artery clogging. She's also tells me about what night life places she recommends and tries to orient me to the city.

It's hard to say what I do at work exactly, but I'll try. No day is the same. Every week, I'm out of the office for part of a few days. I really like breaking the week up like that. Tomorrow, I'm meeting my boss at a distant Metro stop. She'll pick me up to go to the farm, and we'll go over our notes for our "end of season" meeting with farm staff, then do some garden work. I think we have to pull up this really big ground cover thing and weed and plant cover crop. We won't get it all done, but we're going out to the farm again on Friday. Susan (my boss) and I will both run the meeting with farm staff (we planned it on Friday). When we get back to the office, I'll continue to call agencies to follow up with an email I sent out about our end of season meeting for agencies. Then I might type up notes from the meeting with farm staff. Or I'll call this one agency to see if they decided whether or not they're bringing a school group to the farm for gleaning day. And I'll send out an email to Food Bank staff saying that they can come to the farm with us on Friday if they want, because there'll be a lot to do. I'll follow up with revisions to an article I wrote about one of our member agencies. I'll start hand writing some thank-you notes to agencies that advertised one of our brochures. And I'll do anything else that comes up. That's a really jumbled idea of what one day might be like at work. It actually doesn't sound that great, but it's amazing. It helps that I really like the people I work with. The only thing I don't like is an entire day at the office, with mostly computer work. That makes my eyes hurt. I also don't like when I finish everything and there's nothing much for me to do. I always have a list of eco-websites to check out and a stack of books on my desk, but doing that kind of background, general knowledge fortifying makes me fall asleep. I'm also adjusting to the 9-5 work week. I don't always work 9-5. I often come in early and stay late, but I get comp time for that, so I leave early too. It's kind of hard to just go to work week after week. My weekends have been entirely dedicated to relaxing, gardening, reading, going out. But it's a little depressing to go back to work again on Monday. I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving, and actually I have a ton of holidays that a normal first-year wouldn't have. That's good because I'm just so unused to working full-time for an entire year, not to mention year after year.

Consider Yourself Invited

... to Inaguration on Jan. 20! Come to DC, stay at my house, walk to the ceremony, and witness a brilliant moment in history. I'm serious - I have the day off of work, and the day before - so I have a 5 day weekend, and I want to celebrate with you!

Last night I was with a considerable Goshen contingent. We were watching John Stuart and Steven Colbert inbetween (actual) election coverage. When the show ended, we switched back, and there it was on the screen, "NBC predicts Barak Obama winner." I couldn't believe it, because it was only minutes after the West coast voting ended. I know they were assuming the outcome, but I still thought we'd have to wait longer for more official numbers. We were crying and laughing and calling family... then someone suggested we run around the block and I remembered that I said I would run into the streets celebrating when Obama won. So 15 of us let out our excitement, yelling in celebration as we jogged around the block. People came to their doorsteps to cheer. We hugged strangers on the street corners. Cars honked and people hung out the windows, high-fiving us. Earlier that day I had sat glassy-eyed on the Metro, blankly staring past the people around me. The change was drastic. Now every person I saw was united.

After we watched the acceptance speech (so beautiful), we walked to U Street & 14th where the streets were blocked off, there was drumming, and people were out in mass. This is the exact same place where there were riots and looting 40 years ago after the assassination of MLK. What an amazing thing I witnessed! I saw fireworks, people on top of the bus shelter waving a Kenyan flag, cardboard cut-outs of Barak Obama. When I started to make my way back to SE (I was in NW), I walked down the middle of the road, hi-fiving people in cars. For blocks, traffic was stopped. I got to a bus stop and REALLY lucked out. A bus came (all the schedules were messed up), the driver staying past her shift to drive people home. We sang "we shall overcome" on the bus, and one man kept saying "I can die happy now!" You know, I imagined that I would celebrate in the streets, but it didn't occur to me that everyone else would too. But that's what you get when NINETY-FIVE percent of the district votes for one person. My vote went to Iowa, and I'm still waiting to see if Indiana turned blue for the first time (ever?). Thank you for all your hard work, friends who helped out in Indiana and Pennsylvania. Your work paid off!! It was so fun to be with people from Ohio, Iowa, Indiana, and Virginia last night. We were so proud of our states. At work this morning, there is a lot of screaming. I am so proud of my country at this moment.