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[usernamenumber]

Day Two (written over the past few days)
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If day one was all about reality checks, day two was all about learning and improving. Things I learned today:

Taking breaks is ok. No, really.
They'd said during our orientation that you should always work at your own pace, rest as needed and drink one small bottle of water per half-hour. It wasn't that on day one I was being macho and intentionally over-doing it so much as that I hadn't really figured out what "my pace" was. It hadn't occurred to me that working for twenty minutes and then resting for ten is reasonable under the circumstances.

Buttoning up your shirt is stupid
The long-sleeved shirt is protection, not a uniform. On the first day I wore it buttoned up because, well, that's how I usually wear that type of shirt. HOT. Unbuttoned with a t-shirt was an enormous improvement.

The other thing that made things easier was getting used what doing this work is like. There comes a point where being completely sweat-logged, at first a surprisingly exhausting and depressing sensation, starts to feel normal, almost comfortable. After all, once your clothes are saturated it sort of keeps the humidity out. =:)

So work went a lot better today, by which I mean I survived. I even made it back onto the bus with a bit more energy than I'd had the first day. I'm feeling more confident that I will at least make it to the end of the week, something I was genuinely concerned about just a day ago. We got our first house almost completely gutted today and hope to have it finished by lunch tomorrow. Greg's already been by the next house we're going to do and he says that it will be a lot harder. For one thing, unlike the current house, it had a _lot_ of furniture that will have to be removed.

After work today we went downtown for food and net access. Up to that point I really hadn't felt like I was geling with the other people on our team. Most of them were older than me and nobody struck me immediately as a bird-of-a-feather other than the obvious Linux connection. During the first day I have to admit that I'd wondered if I was ever going to really connect with any of them. But on the way out to the car Pete pulled out his (full, 60gb) ipod with car adapter and started listing things we could listen to. When he got to Etta James I took a chance and put my vote in for her. Greg seconded this almost immediately and Pete began talking excitedly about the obscure live album he has and so Etta James it was. It turns out that Greg and Pete are both big music guys, which in New Orleans is as good a thing as any to bond over. Pete appreciates old school rock and blues on a wonderfully primal level, with the ipod representing only a fraction of his extensive collection, and Greg seems to have been hip for as long as he's been alive, with an encyclopedic knowledge of the last 50 years' worth of music, plus the will and ability to sing show tunes in public. Rockin. After Etta was done, Pete put on Hayseed Dixie, the bluegrass AC/DC cover band. Oh. My. Wow. Everyone was suitably impressed. Everyone sang along. For the first time in the trip, I felt the walls start to come down. The evening was off to a good start.

What followed was a reltively uneventful dinner followed by the already-blogged, "Napoleon's Itch" incident. After we'd "checked our email", we went off in search of something else to do. Greg has been to New Orleans many times so we just followed him around for a while, strolling through the French Quarter. Soon enough we found our way to a LaFitte's Blacksmith shop, where I had the mandatory Perfect New Orleans Moment. It was one of those times when the stars aligned and everything was just right. LaFitte's is an old, probably 19th century, blacksmith's shop: red brick walls and dark wood ceiling, lit only by candles. In the corner, a huge piano with an old black man behind it. Magic. We sat on stools arranged around the piano, where we could talk to, make requests of and sing along with the piano man, one J.B. Davis. He was one of those people who could play anything you wanted to hear (except for the the Nina Simone song the drunk lady across from us kept asking for). It's amazing how many songs there are that have become such a part of our culture that you can take any five people randomly off the street and know that if they grew up in America they probably know the words to these songs. And so we howled along to "Dock of the Bay", "Wonderful World" and others. The singing, the comradery and the ambience all fit together perfectly.

We got back to camp at 1:03am, just past the 1am curfew, singing along to the blugrass version of "Shook Me All Noght Long". 'twas a good, good night.

Comments

[choose-again.livejournal.com]

you have so much good stuff.