Ah, Monday. Back to work, back to reality. I spent the weekend on home improvement - Saturday we finally got the clouds painted on the walls in Heather's room, and painted the trim while we were at it. Maybe tonight I can get the border up. Afterwards, we went to the Saturday night church service, then to the Pub like good little protestants. Mulligan's is great fun on the weekends - live, rowdy Irish drinking songs. Then Sunday morning we were up at 5:30, getting ready to show up for the Bellevue Community Church Habitat for Humanity build at 7:00. The weather cooperated beautifully, and even though it did finally warm up, the breeze was always refreshing. I'm only a little sunburned, thanks to somebody's donation of SPF 45 sunscreen (It had so much zinc oxide in it that I looked like I had a thin coat of clown-white on, but hey - I'm not fried). We helped build a decorative gable for the roof, and we worked on finishing the trim for the front porch. We got the post mounted, but they weren't ready to put up the railings, so that will wait until next week. Another group worked around back to put a little 8x8 deck off the back, while others finished the siding and painted all the trim work. I've always liked the idea behind Habitat, and I like it even more after working on the build. These houses may be small, but they're solidly constructed, and built with love. I'm thinking about volunteering again for the next one next month. Even if my part was small, I feel like I made a difference. At the end of the day, isn't that what we all hope for? To make a difference in the life of just one person...
There are certain things about Nashville which would drive a Baptist minister to drink - in public. One of these things is the entity known as NES. Whenever NES isn't out butchering trees, apparently they're arbitrarily turning off power to entire city blocks. Granted, we had a storm the other night. Granted, there were a lot of people without power, and there was a transformer damaged. But notifying Vanderbilt 15 minutes after you've already done it that there will be "intermittent" power outages, then leaving the power off for an hour and a half, just doesn't seem Kosher to me. Blakemore is very busy street, as is 21st. I know that the traffic lights on Blakemore between Natchez and 21st were out, no police presence, just reliance that folks driving in Nashville would know to treat the intersections as 4-way stops. Since I swear two-thirds of the population doesn't understand the concept of a 4-way stop, this was a bad idea. Meanwhile, back at the ranc...
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