Saturday, September 18, 2004

Saturday Recap

Son of a bitch... I just did this whole long post and it got eaten by blogger...

Once upon a time I posted how one of the greatest showers ever is the shower after you've been camping and you smell of woodsmoke and outdoors and somewhat of BO. You're usually cold and tired and your body aches from sleeping on the ground... I've found a shower almost equally as wonderful. The shower after you've spent the day volunteering and doing some sort of really physical labor. Today was the King County Day of Caring in conjunction with the United Way. Students in Freshman Orientation are required to spend the day in service to one of a variety of United Way agencies. They are put into groups and a leader was assigned. Yours truly was the leader for a group of 15 freshmen and I had 1 orientation advisor as my helper. We were sent to the Emergency Operation Center which is an agency that provides food, and clothing to needy families across King County. Yesterday was their harvest day and so 800 families came in and received produce and groceries. I can't even imagine what that must've been like. As a result, there was a lot of clean up that had to happen. So there were 12 of the 17 outside sweeping the parking lot, breaking down boxes and shoveling rotten fruit into dumpsters headed for compost (I hope). The other 5 were inside sorting baby clothes. After lunch, we swapped out some of the indoor folks to come outside. We finished crushing boxes and sweeping and washing the parking lot. We also bagged bulk bags of food into smaller bags of food and bulk boxes of pears into smaller boxes. It was exhausting but I think we came away feeling pretty good about doing it. A couple (ok many) of my girls in the group were fairly hesitant about getting in there and getting dirty, but once we got going it seemed to be a little better. We talked a lot about where they were from and why Seattle and all that. Four of the kids in the group were from Hawaii. I found that kind of funny. All in all it was a fairly successful outing and I think I'll do it again next year. Next week I think I'm doing the Aids Walk. I only signed up for it (and you can laugh it is okay) because Allison Arngrem (aka Nellie Olsen) will be there. I'm a geek I know it.

When I got home, I took a nap then said shower. It was wonderful. I also had taken out a roast for dinner that I had marinating in a little chili oil, sherry, pepper, garlic and a couple dashes of apple juice. It tasted much better than it probably sounds, except... I hadn't let it thaw enough before cooking and so the inside was still frozen when I cut it open. :D Now I'm settled in comfy clothes watching the Apprentice which I missed last week. I have to say, I love the boys' team. I love that they originally took some of their profits and donated it to the Leukemia & Lymphoma society. So it was a marketing ploy, who cares, the charity got $$. I loved it even more when at the end of the results portion, they asked DT if he would donate the rest of their profits to the society and DT said yes. I'm weepy I admit it... it made me tear up a little. And I love that they chose that group because Kevin's brother had it.

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