Jack-of-All-Trades

I have determined that this is what I'm going to become by the end of my time in Kentucky - a jack of all trades. Not only will I know a little bit of a ton of different types of construction and home repair projects, I have been adding some other skills to my repertoire.

Some might call them resume-builders.


Lumberjack

I spent about two and a half hours last Friday up at Camp Shawnee by myself working on what may become a weekend ritual of sorts. As discussed in my last post, I recently became certified to operate a chainsaw. This training took place up at Camp Shawnee and the remains of this event includes an enormous pile of un-split logs of various widths from all the trees that were cut down. I decided that one good way to spend my day off would be to split some firewood for next year's summer camp. So I borrowed an axe and a splitter from Tony - my housing crew leader- and headed up to Camp to further advance my lumberjack skills. It took a little time to get into the swing of things, but I managed to leave this evidence of my lumberjack prowess behind. (Amazingly, I did this without any injury to myself.)

Trampoliner-Extaordinaire

Or at least I'm striving for this title. The house that we are currently working on belongs to a lovely woman named Sue. She has a granddaughter that comes to visit frequently and therefore there are several toys available for Kate and I to entertain ourselves with. Among these is an amazing trampoline which has become a staple of our work day. Every day after lunch Kate and I have 'Trampoline Time' in which we jump around like 5 year olds while Tony just shakes his head at us in disbelief. At first, it was solely used for jumping purposes which surprisingly is quite entertaining for being so simple. Then Kate took to double bouncing me when I wasn't paying attention which for some reason always seems to send me flying. Thank goodness the trampoline is surrounded by netting or I am 100% that I would have broken at least one bone by now.

As fun as jumping and getting flung into the netting is, it soon became apparent that it was time to step it up a notch. And that is how I started doing flips on the trampoline. At first, they were just little somersaults, but now that I've been doing them for a couple weeks I have upgraded to the ones shown in this picture. Today, I decided that I would try and land on my feet rather than on my butt like I have been doing. However after alternately: 1)under-rotating and landing on my back, 2)over-rotating and landing on my face, 3) landing on my feet only to have my knees give out and then come up and hit me in the chest/stomach consequently knocking the wind out of myself (3 times), 4) propelling myself face-first into the netting - I think I may need to work on that trick for a bit longer.

Cartwheeler

This particular life-skill has more to do with my 101 list than the fact that I am in Kentucky. #52: Learn how to do a cartwheel. I have never in my life been able to do one. I don't know if it was a lack of opportunity, inability on my part, or just some part of childhood I missed out on, regardless, I've never done one in my life. I figured its one of those things that everyone has done at some point in their life so now at the age of 21 (almost 22) I am learning how to do one. Inspired by 'Trampoline Time', I decided to tackle this task while at the work site. Learning to cartwheel is an interesting experience; more embarrassing than painful but definitely a combination of the two. Needless to say that one is a work in progress.

Leprechaun Charmer

If you have not yet seen the YouTube video about the Mobile, Alabama leprechaun, this one may not make any sense, but it will after you click the above link (just click where it says Youtube) and watch the video. If you have seen the video, than you know about the magical leprechaun 'flute' that one gentleman proudly displays claiming it was passed down from his "great-great grandfather". Oddly, his flute closely resembles, to the point of being identical, a scaffolding pin which we have an abundance of at our workshop. Tony found Kate and I our very own leprechaun flute which we hope to have the opportunity to use in the near future so we can get some gold. We want da gold!

Laundry-Room-Putter-Together

After reading the above posts, you may be thinking that I don't actually do any work during my work day. I will admit that it is hard between trampoline-jumping, being a gymnast, and charming leprechauns to do any of my actual job, but somehow we manage to fit in quite a bit of housing work in between all the ridiculousness. This week I worked with Andrew - another long term volunteer - to finish a laundry room at our participants house. When we got there, there was only one coat of mud on the drywall and the floor still needed to be put down and the ceiling needed drywall put up. I got to learn all about drywall over the past 4 days - from holding it above your head while trying to screw it into the joists to mudding over the rough spots multiple times to sanding down the dried mud and consequently inhaling large quantities of dust. We also laid down laminate flooring, put in a new light fixture, and did all the trim Although, I may now have a pound of drywall dust residing in my lungs, we did manage to just about completely finish the room except for some last finishing touches which we will do next week and then close the book on this house.

I don't know that my resume is prepared for all of this.