I'm Outie 5000

What a crazy week. The second round is over and my team has wrapped up with Parks and Rec. Our project culminated with Vinton's 20th annual Party in the Park festival. There were 3-days of events with games, parades, live music, food, and fireworks. Then you have the guy who showed up with geese dressed as cowboys. That's him in the back dangling a pet ferret on a leash.


A highlight for me was cleaning out a ball pit. I usually find these to be very unhygenic, so I was glad to disinfect this one for the youngsters.


I also enjoyed eating a walking taco for the first time, which consisted of a Doritos bag cut open and filled with beef, lettuce, salsa and nacho cheese. On top of that I took a ton of photos of people's dogs. Win. And I got to see some of the facilities we painted being used and enjoyed by the community. Like this bandshell that I helped stain and install doors on:


A low point was when I crashed a trailer into the city truck it was attached to, denting the fender big time. My bad.


My least favorite task of the weekend was cleaning up the firework debris. All these years I never realized that fireworks leave cardboard scraps all over the place post-explosion, and they're a real pain to pick up. As a treat for a job well done, we blew the rest of our food budget on a BBQ (aka BallerQ) the last day of work. Then VPRD surprised us with free tickets to join their yearly bus trip out to Chicago for a Cubs game. It was cool to see Wrigley field, and we repped our neon orange Parks and Rec shirts hard. On the far right is Brian, our site supervisor, and to his left, Brad, the Assistant Director of Parks and Rec.


I have to say though, that my previous belief that baseball is long and boring was confirmed. Right around the bottom of the 13th inning, in fact. A nice way to end the round though. Amidst all this, I've spent over 25 hours in the last 2 weeks doing end-of-project paperwork on top of the normal workday, while under the influence of a Prednisone/Benedryl cocktail I started taking for the poison oak. So I'm pretty pooped out, and very grateful to be writing this post from the Cedar Rapids airport on my way to the east coast for a 10 day break. Adios, Iowa!