Moment of Zen

A few of my corps members and I went to 2 high schools in the Cincinnati area to speak to kids about joining AmeriCorps NCCC. Our first recruit was this guy.

It's a twister! It's a twister!

Here is the scene earlier this week, waiting out a tornado warning in our basement for an hour at 1am. Please note that Brad is reading a book, Christina and Hillary are huddled in semi-terror, Greg decided to save a bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos in case our house blew down. Sam was pretty "salty" the whole time (in the words of Christina). For Phil this was pretty much old hand since he's from Missouri. Diana was involved in a riveting game of 20 questions with me. And at one point Drew fell asleep standing up. Thanks, Gaby, for this video:

We managed to drag ourselves out of bed 6 hours later to get cracking on our last full week of trail building:


Maple 4: getting things done for America... and braving the elements!

Do Not Disturb, Por Favor

Was getting a ton of work done tonight while drinking a cafe vanilla frappuccino and listening to Tribe Called Quest. Then Starbucks closed, depriving me of my awesomely productive mobile office. Solution: head back to the farm and put up this sign.

Southern Bell

Found this Virginia Bluebell on the trails. It's a native wildflower that's able to get the sunlight it needs to grow now that we've cleared out the overhanging honeysuckle. Way to go, us. :-)

Critters on the Trail

The first few weeks here, there wasn't a single animal on the trail. Once in a while you'd see a bird or a house cat, but other than that, no dice. Then recently, the weather started to change and some little guys have come out to visit. Like this owl chilling in the woods who I tried to sneak up on, but flew away. (smart bird)


Or a garter snake that Phil found and showed to some high school kids we worked with yesterday.


Then this afternoon, we made a friend named Moki. Ted, our site supervisor, told me that Moki is a male box turtle. You can tell because he has a yellow shell, and the bottom of it is curved so it's easier for him to mount the lady turtles during mating season. He was a feisty fellow, and it looked like he had an infected eye that was closed up. We counted the rings on the back of his shell and estimated that he's about 11 years old. Check him out:

Government Shutdown Shenanigans

What happens to NCCC in the event of a government shutdown, you ask? We pack up our things and head back to Iowa lickety-split. Then hang out there twiddling our thumbs without pay for as long as it takes Congress to figure out what the dealio is. We were pretty much bracing ourselves for the worst on Friday night. It was at this point that I realized I had locked the keys in the van. lol Talk about bad timing. Luckily my teammate Diana has AAA. Ohio wanted us to stay, I guess. And it seems the U.S. government wanted us to stay as well, at least for now. While we're on the subject, if you happen to casually bump into your senator, feel free to suggest he or she continue funding us, because if they yank AmeriCorps from the budget and I am sent back to New Jersey next week without a job, I may have a panic attack.

Since we were still around Saturday morning we were able to attend a volunteer appreciation pancake breakfast at Gorman Heritage Farm. Here we are with our sponsors, Mare and Sandra:

A few of us headed over to Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal where we learned about the history of the city, and watched an Omnimax film about tornadoes that terrified Hillary and Christina. They are already pretty freaked out, being from twister-free Oregon and New Hampshire respectively. And they don't like the fact that the tornado sirens go off in Ohio even when there is just a bad storm brewing. It doesn't help that our campus is in Tornado Alley! One of the star scientists of the film was is town and parked her storm chaser vehicle in front of the museum for us to check out.


Sunday I was given a lovely tour of the city with a nice gentleman named Brian who our team met at the Evendale Rec Center. He's a television guy himself, and is headed to Guatemala as a Peace Corps public health volunteer at the end of this month. We saw a ton of the city including the Purple People Bridge (a pedestrian-only walkway to Kentucky) and the Big Mac Bridge (nicknamed that for it's golden arches).

We also went to the top of the Carew Tower where you can see a 360 degree view of the city from their open-air observation deck. It was really nice to explore with a local, not to mention enjoying 6 hours of relatively AmeriCorps-free conversation. Way to go, Brian!

Out There in the Blogosphere

Sometimes I check the stats for this blog page to see how many people read my posts each day and where they're from. The odd thing is that there are about 30 unique views per day and they are from all over the world, from the U.S. to Brazil to Estonia! So that either means that friends are traveling far and wide, or someone out there in the blogosphere just happened to find me. I'd love to know who you are! If you're an avid reader, click the "follow" button and let me know you're out there. It's pretty cool to know that I'm writing these posts and they're actually being read and maybe even enjoyed. You guys rule. Here's a few seconds of what I see and hear each day at the farm:

A Friendly Face From Iowa

This week, our Maple Unit Leader Jimmy Kelly drove around the North Central region visiting the 6 teams in our unit to learn more about what we're doing on site and provide moral support and advice. This visit came none too soon. Though from my blog it may seem it's all fun and games out here in Ohio, this work is actually quite stressful. Long days of pulling honeysuckle in the cold with a team of individuals that have just met each other and have very different communication styles means there are often times when we're not all on the same page. We have different experience levels, abilities, and interest in the type of work we're doing. Often we get snippy with each other and tensions can be high. This is something we're addressing as a team, and to be honest Maple 4 is still a work in progress. When you're on a hill in tunnel vision mode just trying to crank out as much trail as possible, it's easy to get irritated with each other and lose sight of why we're out here to begin with. Though our NCCC mission is to "get things done for America," I think it's important for our team to keep reminding each other that we're also here to learn new skills, figure out how to respectfully work and live with people different from us, and most importantly have fun.

Seeing Jimmy was a great opportunity for me to get back on track. He arrived Sunday night while I was out grocery shopping, and as soon as I got back to the farmhouse he informed me that we were about to embark on an epic trek to Dairy Queen. Though it was only about 5 miles away, it somehow took us a hilarious 40 minutes to find it. When we got to DQ, Jimmy instructed the owner (a 70-year-old granny in a Sylvester the Cat sweatshirt) in the art of making his favorite custom Blizzard. She took extensive mental notes as he explained exactly how to mix this beverage so that it would taste like a Milk Dud. Granny griped that the young teenagers that work for her don't understand the true art of Blizzard-making like she and Jimmy do. I promptly double-fisted a strawberry milkshake and coke, then talked Jimmy's ear off for a completely unreasonable amount of time, after which point he imparted some words of wisdom. Back at the house, he refused our offers of a bed because he wanted to rough it... in our dining room... with a tent. This man's hilarity has no bounds. The fact that most of the team was asleep when he set up the tent, made this even more ridonk, as they found out at breakfast that we had a squatter.


Tuesday morning we gave him the grand tour. It was more rewarding than I had anticipated to show him the work we've been doing and to recognize just how much we've been able to accomplish in only 2 weeks. Seeing a friendly face from campus also reminded us all that we're part of something bigger. Thanks, Jimmy, for the delicious milkshake, and for making the trip out here to rev us up! You rule.

Jungle Jim's

Waterfalls, an animatronic lion dressed up like Elvis singing "Jailhouse Rock," a myriad of hot sauces displayed on an antique fire truck, a 765lb sleeve of provolone cheese, a port-a-john that you walk into that's not really port-a-john at all, but the doorway to a lovely marble-finished restroom. No, I am not describing a fabulous dream you regretfully woke up from once. I am sharing the details of a rare gem of a grocery store called Jungle Jim's, a mere 10 minute jaunt from our farm. A family-owned business that's worked it's way up from nothing when Jim was selling produce on abandoned gas station lots in the 70's, it's pretty neato.




Chase that with a bowl of chili-cheese fries from Cincinnati's famous Skyline Chili and you've got yourself one heck of a Sunday:

Maple 4 Escapes to Louisville

Sometimes in NCCC you just need to get away. Then again... I guess we are away from home, family, friends etc. But sometimes, even when you are away on "spike" which is what we call an off-campus project, you still need to get out of Dodge for a day. That's why they allow teams to take MWR's (Morale, Wellness, Recreation) trips to bond and unwind. Over the weekend, Maple 4 drove a couple of hours to Louisville, Kentucky, and fulfilled Christina's lifelong dream of visiting Churchill Downs. She was pretty excited as we set off on our tour of the racetrack and Kentucky Derby Museum.

Afterwards we took a walk through Old Louisville to get coffee:


Explored downtown and stumbled upon the visitors center, which celebrates the life and times of Colonel Harland Sanders (the KFC guy):

Then we visited his grave. For reals:

Some people broke off on their own to grab a bit of much needed alone time or meet up with family in the area, but we mostly just took advantage of the chance to be silly together. This photo with a banana man is particularly funny in the context that our team eats approximately 60 bananas per week. And that is not an exaggeration.


While there, I found out that Lewis and Clark started their Excellent Adventure here back in the day. Since I'm just starting out on my journey as well, I felt this was a good omen.

Then in a random nerd store I found this board game that's pretty much named after me, and that sealed the deal. This HAD to be a sign from the heaven's that I'm on the right track in life. haha!


We shared a congratulatory ice cream/pie break for a day well done. Woot!

Happy Anniversary of Being Sprung Violently From Your Mother's Womb, Friends

Thursday was a special day - my teammate Brad's Big 2.0. He was intent on not celebrating this occasion, but Gaby decided to make him a vanilla cake, and I think that was a good call on her part. Brad, you are a hilarious addition to the Maple 4 family, and we'd be missing a certain spark of awesomeness without you. Your hard work and enthusiasm for NCCC make my job much easier! Also, your chili is dah bomb.



Not to be outdone, my best friend Lara decided to have her birthday on the same day. How do I love you, Lara? Let me count the ways.

1. For being ridonk on a daily basis without shame including this moment, posing with a random toilet on the street while holding a KFC take-out bag. (Excuse the blurriness folks, this was taken impromptu-style with a camera phone because I didn't exactly plan for a once-in-a-lifetime moment like this):


2. Then there's the fact that you're totally glam. Even when posing with a giant macaroni noodle in the middle of downtown Boston, you know you have those fly heels on.

3. Your bowling team pep talks, sideline cheers and dance moves are what's up right now. No joke.

4. In the Rocky and Bullwinkle episode that is life, you keep me in line.

5. And well, you just get me. From Michael Bolton sing-a-longs, to marathons of murder-mystery-themed news magazine shows, to McDonald's Big & Tastys. You just get me.

Missing you on your bday, brosif. You are the Ying in my Ying Yang Twins and the midwest just ain't quite home without you.