Carpet..

So far I have focused on mostly generic happenings from my summer. But this time I think I'll switch it up a little and talk about one of our interesting adventures from the week. We ordered special maroon carpet for one of our homes about 2 weeks ago, but instead of ordering it from Lowes, we ordered it from a local carpet store. Lowes had a leftover carpet that was the perfect color that they were going to give us for $50, but the bureaucracy that is Lowes wouldn't allow us to buy the carpet since it somehow wasn't in the system. So we compared prices and decided it would be cheaper to order the carpet from this local shop. Also, as part of ASP's mission we try to buy local as much as possible in order to support the communities we live in during the summer. We ordered the carpet are were told that the carpet would come in last Thursday. As the days went by we stopped by the carpet store everyday, but everyday we were told that the carpet hadn't arrived yet, but it should be arriving shortly. After several days of this, at staff meeting one night we decided that we should ask for a discount since they carpet was so much later than promised. However this was much easier said than done. The woman that works there is the sweetest old lady, and after all it really wasn't her fault that it hadn't been delivered- it was the fault of the supply chain and she was just the messenger. So when the carpet finally came in a whole week later than promised, we just couldn't bring ourselves to yell at the little old lady to get our discount. We delivered the carpet out to the worksite, and they began the installation. I happened to be the one going out to this house the next day for runs, that Friday. As I arrived and was standing on the brand new carpet, marveling at how good it looked the volunteers started telling me about how they couldn't stain the base board since the previous group hadn't put the top on the stain and it was dried out. They then proceeded to hand me the can, so that I would be able to match the color when I went to the hardware store. What I didn't realize when they handed me the can was that is was dripping. All over the brand new carpet. As I stood there, chatting away. Fortunately, someone finally realized what was happening. I threw away the quart of stain and then looked down in horror at the 2 new stains on that formerly flawless carpet. As soon as Ms. Alice (the homeowner) saw this she wasn't flustered or angry at all. She simply told me "that'll be alright, I'll just put a scatter rug over it." However, I still felt awful and had no idea how to get oil-based stain out of carpet. So I drove furiously to the carpet store to ask advice. After the carpet lady consulted one of the men who works there, she determined that paint thinner would be the best thing for the job. I quickly bought some, and raced back to the house. I tested it out on a scrap of carpet, and it worked fine so I proceeded to use it on the stain. After several long minutes of scrubbing, the stain was completely gone. I'm not quite sure what the point of the anecdote was other than to share this random event that would never happen anywhere else except working for ASP. And to explain that I never thought I could ever care so much about a carpet as I did about that one. Finally, it was to show how gracious all of our homeowners are, Ms. Alice as the prime example.

Mid-Week 5

Our Week 4 went really well, but as it gets later in the summer I am starting to get more and more tired. I had my sleep in day today, so that helped a lot. We get one day off and one sleep-in day every two weeks, so I'll have to figure out what I'm doing for my day off next week. Last week I got to meet Shelby in Yadkinville (where her Dad, Step-mom and brother- Ryder live). Our Week 4 groups were from Chapin, SC- outside of Columbia and Berwyn, PA- outside of Philly. As the weeks go by, it's really interesting to see how different each group is. For example the group from South Carolina was very loud and energetic, while the groups this week are very quiet, we sometimes even forget they are here. Another thing I have noticed is how different the Group Leaders are, even within the same church. Some want a lot of instruction and guidance and others just want to do things their own way, whether or not it agrees with the way you told them. There also is a big difference in the speed some groups complete projects compared with others. Something that surprised me about being on staff is that it isn't always a good thing when a group works really quickly. Sometimes this is really helpful, like with our room addition we are trying to complete by the end of the summer, but other times when a group moves quickly it becomes much more difficult to stay within our homes budget. One way that we make up for this is RC money. RC stands for restricted county, or money that gets donated that is for use solely in Johnson County. Our ice cream eating contest is our main fundraiser, and how we earn most of our RC. However, our room addition is very expensive; as are some of the projects we have worked on so far- roofs in particular and so far our fundraising has not closed that gap. If anyone would like to donate money to our county to help us complete our projects for the summer it can be mailed to:

ASP Johnson County Center

General Delivery

Trade, TN 37691

P.S. The picture at the top is me getting pied at the end of Week 3

Begining of Week 4!

Week 3 was an amazing but stressful week. Sunday was especially crazy since we had to meet our volunteers at a park in Mountain City instead of our center and we held our GL meeting, dinner, and EG there. We started our Sunday night home visits much later than usual, but we finally had everyone settled back into the center. Our groups this week were from Wilmington, NC and New Jersey. The groups from Wilmington loved to cook for their families, something I had never experienced in my years of volunteering. I was fed every single day with something delicious including peach cobbler, biscuts, barbeque chicken, macaroni, and eastern style bbq pork. For fundraising this week we decided to add on to our weekly ice cream eating contest with the opportunity to pie staffers in the face for $200. George, one of the GLs, talked to me all week about all of the gross things he was going to add into my pie; lard, hot sauce, and spoilt milk were just a few of the ingredients. On Wednesday night, my fellow staffers as well as some GLs conspired to take me and a few other youth on a snipe hunt. Fortunately for me, the family at the house where the hunt was to take place was asleep. Our picnic went well on Thursday, but it was a little more work than usual since Jacob took his day off that day. As the operations coordinator one of his main responsibilities is the picnic, so it was a learning experience for all of us finding out how much work goes into it. After everyone has finished eating, I glanced over at one of the tables where a peach cobbler had magically appeared. Ms. Marie had brought some to share, and I was one of the lucky few able to get a bite :) As the week came to a close, I started to realize that we were finishing up on a few of our homes. This was a sad realization for me that I would no longer be able to see the families that I had gotten to know and love on a regular basis. On Friday, my parents arrived for a visit. I took them on runs on Friday so that they were able to see what my job is like. After dinner that day, Jen informed me that I was the only staffer that a pie had been paid for. I later discovered that my parents were the ones that had paid for it, and the other church hadn't even been planning on buying one for me; they had just been teasing me the whole week. Luckily, the pie wasn't quite as disgusting as George had threatened, but I am still smelling peanut butter 4 days later. We were all sad to see these volunteers leave, but our moods were lifted Saturday afternoon when we discovered we had been approved for a room addition. Torey and Jen had worked on the application all night Thursday night, pricing out every single detail of the construction of the new rooms. The family had already had someone build the continuous foundation, so we wouldn't have to start from the very beginning. Although getting approval was a great first step, we still will have to work very hard in order to finish before the end of the summer. The other difficulty will be raising the funds to complete the room addition, because it is much more expensive than our usual construction projects. For the rest of our Saturday we decided to have some 4th of July fun- first we went to a swimming hole near Boone, followed by a cookout and fireworks at our Construction Consultant, Red's house. Finally we went back to our center and had a bonfire and s'mores with our neighboring county, Carter. Our new group of volunteers arrived on Sunday from Pennsylvania and South Carolina, and I am currently taking my day off today. I drove to Yadkinville last night to spend the day today at Shelby's dad's house with Shelby and her little brother Ryder. It's been very relaxing so far, and I'll head back to Trade, TN tonight.