Alea Iacta Est

April 17 - present (oof)

Obviously you all have a lot of well earned "What the fuck?"'s to deliver to me. The primal one is to the main reason I stopped posting. Well, in the interest of retaining my puny education award, all I'll say is that I got in trouble what I wrote in this blog. Uh huh. In fact 4 days after I made my last post, I believe. You might be expecting a diatribe on free speech and obviously I've been verbal about it to those around me, but this electronic medium seems to be under special scrutiny. Look back at my older posts and see what could possibly make Americorps look objectively bad to a possible NCCC applicant. Could it be the ones where I talked about all the great people I was meeting and working with? Maybe it was the part about all the moments of true happiness and enjoyment I experienced? You be the judge. But, seeing as I'm short with my time in the 'corps and I've developed a decent sized case of the "fuck-its," I've decided to reactivate story time. It won't be expose style, so there's gonna be some decent holes as I recount the last 7 months. This is in the interest of keeping headaches in the next 3 weeks in to minimum. Buuuut, there'll probably be some decent reading material once I get back home...

Moving on.

I guess I'll try to illustrate everything in order based on locations. Keep it simple. There won't be that much emotional word vomit, unless it's from current events in my brain; so there might be a decent amount, it's me.

End of round 1: Still in fucking Maryland.

So I'm starting off on a side note, but I think it's important. One of the main reasons I joined this program was to travel. I really really like to travel. Really. The whole concept of bouncing around the country, helping people, learning new skills, meeting new people, this sounded fucking fantastic. It was figured out during conversation with a friend a few months ago that myself and 2 of my former teammates(yes former, that complete story will be aired at a later date) will have spent at least 21 weeks out of the total 40 weeks in the program at Perry Point, MD. Yup, the majority of our time will have been spent at our home base, simply because of luck and other currently unnamed factors. And there is one team that has spent 3 of the 4 rounds in New Orleans. Their other round was on Florida. Just saying.
I think when we last left our hero, he was gearing up for fantastic reunion with some old friends and now I remember he crushed yet another PT test. One of those last Fridays in April we had a PT test after work and I ran my fastest mile time to date: 6:53. Flying. And to top it all off, none other than Paul Zippel himself was there at the finish line. What a sight. After a quick shower and some sly comments about my newly svelte figure, we bombed down to Baltimore for a free Orioles game. My soul brother Aaron Faust had acquired tickets from his buddy Ace who received them from his very generous college. We thought we would be meeting Faust, Ace and Ace's girl. Serendipity shakes her fierce booty and what happens? We meet Faust, Ace and Stamatis fucking Zeris. So basically three of my best friends and roommates from college and a new friend decide Camden Yards is the perfect venue to surprise the shit out me and make me the happiest boy. The night was everything I needed after many, many weekends of working extra volunteer hours, no sleeping in, no beer, no guitar.....etc. It was a night of nights for our crew: almost getting thrown out twice for heckling and screaming profanity laced insults in Greek, delicious shitty ballpark food, one scrumptious beer, realizing you're in the middle of the ghetto about 2 blocks away from the inner harbor (we made the mistake of rambling into a McDonalds that was bumping the loudest rap over the sound system, and we were far to white for how late it was), and of course, lots of incredibly meaningful, insightful and ridiculous conversation with this group of guys. I was smiling inside and out all night. I think the theme for this blog might well turn out to be the fantastically random and beautiful days and nights I've had this year. Fucking serendipity how you charm me.
As far as the rest of the round, I remember everything going reasonably well. School was alright. We started to do a lot more landscaping as the weather got better, which my teachers were none to happy about. This is understandable, I am great after all. My final masterpiece in the medium of butcher paper came with the construction of 30 foot castle/dungeon set piece for a production of Rumplestiltskin. An obnoxious amount of fun. By this time the other grade had caught on and soon my teammates were stretching their creative tendons and amazing wall art was popping up all over the building, including, but not limited to: an 8' 3-d bee, a 3d jungle motif and a 5'spaceship complete with aliens popping out of the moon craters. Arts and farts and crafts.
Near the end of time at the school Rebecca, Dan and I volunteered with the preschool kids again and were on a field trip to the Baltimore Science Museum. Overall a great time. One little boy, who looks like a 4 year old version of a member of Bone Thugs N Harmony told me I was his favorite teacher. Feather in my cap. But. Why parents don't just let toddlers run away sometimes is beyond me. Trying to keep up with two 4 year old girls was insane. Fantastic passive birth control for myself. One little boy pooped in the kids' play and learn room. He covered it with a candy wrapper, and it was discovered by smell. Good times.
About a week before the project ended we found out the destination of our next project. NCCC does this, for fun suspense?, also apparently housing availability falls through sometimes and isn't shored up until right before teams leave. After much build up and scavenger hunting, we finally found out were going to do Habitat for Humanity in Vero Beach, FL. Florida baby. Right at the beginning of the summer. Yup. And right where I leave you for now. I start traveling and things in my life get crazier and crazier. This is about the first week of Mayish. Stay tuned sports fans.

*Current sidenote: I recently had some ridiculously good(re: jacked) beers with a very old and good friend in Boston a couple days ago. Indispensible advice was given that I am incredibly gratelful for. This was produced on whim, at the last minute, and at the mercy of the MBTA in a restricted timeframe. Serendipity you are quite a cunt.