Tuesday, 17 July 2012
Today I volunteered with Habitat for Humanity. They’re a Lutheran organization that builds and repairs houses and sells them to people in need for relatively cheap.
This wasn’t totally volunteer, I suppose. A few months ago, my supervisor asked our department what we’d like to do for a summer outing and, instead of selecting a ballgame or booze cruise or laser tag engagement (all things I’ve done in the past with my department), everyone agreed it’d be nice to do something meaningful for the community. So, today, i was at a house in south Minneapolis scraping mud off the wall and, in the afternoon, painting the walls.
Here’s a picture of the house we worked on today:
It’s a pretty nice house, actually. Four bedrooms, two full bathrooms, and a large living room. The yard is small, and there’s no greenery on the lot (except for that one tree in the front). It’s also devoid of many amenities: no central air, no dishwasher, no two-car garage, and the same windows that my wife and I had in our townhome (which allow steady drafts to blow through all winter – great for blowing out candles!). Still, I would live in this house, despite the fact that I did some of the painting.
Wednesday, 18 July 2012
Session II of the strength training course at my job began this afternoon. I was one of the first participants to arrive, and when the instructor asked how I was doing, I informed her I was sore from working on a house yesterday. She said she’d go easy today. And she was right, too, perhaps because she’d just sprained her ankle and wasn’t up to par.
It appears a lot of people lost interest in the class. During the first course – which ran through May and June – there were always a dozen or more participants. Today, there were seven.
After holding a paint brush over my head for most of the day yesterday, while balanced on a step stool, in the stiffling heat, and now using weights and bands to work my muscles, my arms feel like rubber. I’m gonna try to not use them for the rest of the day.
Thursday, 19 July 2012
Right now, Owen and I are reading through The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster. I have known about this book for a long time, but I’ve never read it before. When someone mentioned it in a blog post recently, I started looking into again. I figured Owen would like it because it has Mathmagicians in it (and Owen fancies himself a Mathmagician) and there are discussions about infinity and dodecahedrons and other mathematical curiosities.
Well, we haven’t arrived at the math part yet; that won’t come until Milo arrives in Digitopolis, but we’re nearing the halfway point. In some ways, the book reminds me of Alice in Wonderland, in that crazy things just happen to the young child for no reason other than just because they give the author a chance to say or do funny things. It wasn’t even until chapter six, or mayebe seven, that some sort of plot seemed to be coalescing.
At any rate, Owen seems to be enjoying the read. I’m just doing my best to plow through it, eager for the day when we can return to the A to Z Mysteries.
Friday, 20 July 2012
So, I’m sure you’re sick of reading about my wedding ceremony escapades, so I’ll try to keep that part toned down in this blog entry…
This evening, I participated in the rehearsal for a wedding I’ll be officiating in 24 hours. Instead of talking about the details of that rehearsal, or tomorrow’s wedding, I want to talk about the location:
The Little Log House Pioneer Village in Hastings.
I had no idea this place existed until the betrothed couple wrote it down on our contract. Even then, I just made a mental note that it was in Hastings and then, this afternoon, I looked it up online to figure out how to drive there.
This evening, I drove through the city of Hastings, then just kept going south until, right when I started to fret that I had gone too far, I saw the sign and made a left. About a mile down the roud – right in the middle of farms – a tiny city just popped up. It looked like something out of the 1950s; the kind of place where Clark Kent grew up. There was an old gas station with old fashioned pumps, an old post office, an old church, an old saloon, several old homes, and even a mid-centruy style automobile bridge across a creek. There were several old vehicles sitting around, too. Everything looked meticulously maintained. The grass (with signs ever five feet or so saying not to park on it) was perfectly groomed, and all the buildings looked like they’d somehow escaped the ravages of the decades.
I overheard a few groomsmen talking, and they claimed the owner, on older gentleman who grew up just down the road, began collecting old buildings on his property. He goes around the country looking for buildings he likes, buys them, has them disasssembled, shipped, and reassembled in this city-sized museum.
Despite the name, I never saw a log house, and I don’t think it’s within the city limits of Hastings. The place is nearly always closed to the public, too, just opening their doors for weddings (there was a wedding taking place today), retirement parties, corporate functions, and, well, anything that anyone rich enough to rent out the place would like it for. According to one of the groomsmen (and confirmed on the website), the place opens up to the public during the fourth weekend in July – which is just a week away.
I’m considering taking the family for a looksee.