Brian Round 2.

Well the whole bad trip thing has continued, but in different ways then I expected. Nothing too bad, and on a whole it is still a really good time, but a few minor complications still seem to rear their ugly heads. But first lets continue right where we left off last night:

After the arrival of Adrianna and finishing up some personal finanace stuff we got back into our van and headed down to an old steel works. Here we dined on some fine pizza and beer, before watching a presentation that is being used for the state archives. The presentation was amazing and the man doing it was very knowledgeable about it as well as opinionated. The real thing I got from this presentation was a realization that yes it was a terrible event and a lot of people suffered and are still suffering, but people suffer like this every day through out the world. You may not agree with this view, but I find it to be very true, yet they are not as well documented, because they are not so close to home.

Another problem I have is that they are rebuilding the city, yet they haven't done anything to improve their systems and are pretty much just replacing the ones they had in place. What the hell is the point in that if in a couple years we could have another storm and the same consequences, or worse. Why would you start rebuilding before you know that you have a system that will not fail? I know that some people might not have any other place to go, but something needs to be done about it.

After watching this presentation we continued on to a coffee shop and ate some of the local cuisine once again in the form of beignets, which as you well know by now are squares of fried dough sprinkled with lots of powdered sugar. We munched these down and then Xander and I couldn't resist but to throw the sugar at each other looking like we had just been in a huge battle with a small fortune worth of cocaine. After this we headed home and I retired to my oh so lovely pull out bed which I am very sure Xander will be delighted to sleep on tonight.

Now things were great again until early this morning. I had set my alarm for 7 am to be at breakfast by 7:30, but somehow I didn't hear it or even when Jean called me to find out where the heck we were. I don't know how I didn't hear it because my phone is pretty loud, but 8:10 rolled around and we got a little wake up knock on our door. So we threw on our clothes and headed out with the rest of them. We loaded up into our van once again and headed out to the Habitat for Humanity project site. When we got there people were already working on the houses and there were so many that it is amazing that they are able to organize it and get anything done. The thing is we found out that the organization did leave something to be desired, but in the end they seem to get things done.

When we arrived we finally got directions on what we were supposed to be doing and our task for the day was to tress a house. The first thing we had to do was remove boards from the top of the frame that were there for dry wall. So Pat and Bear were up top prying up the boards and dropping them down for us to remove the nails from so that no one would accidently step on one. That was my one job at the time, remove nails so people did not step on them, well of course guess who ends up stepping on a board with his full weight, right on top of a nail facing up. Yeah, you guessed it. The thing was is it really didn't hurt too much at first cause I was kind of in shock and thought oh well maybe it didn't go that deep and I'll be able to shrug it off and keep going. As I went to remove my foot there was a slight problem and that was that the board was now nailed into my foot and I had to do some pulling to get unattached from the board. So I pull the board off my foot and try to see if it hurts now. I was hoping still that I would be able to just continue on like nothing happened but after just a couple of steps I realized that I probably should do something and that it was indeed bleeding quite a bit. At this point no one had known what had happened, so I proceed down a ladder to the back of the house where everyone else is carrying the tresses to be placed upon the house, I sit down and begin to remove my show and look at the damage. As I get my shoe off I was right and it was bleeding quite a bit, but nothing hospital worthy at all. So I finally show people and they get their on site "medic" who also happened to be a first responder for the Red Cross. Oh was Catherine excited...... Anyways he put some Neosporin on it and then bandaged it up and sent me on my merry way, because honestly what the hell else can you do for that kind of injury.

At this point I wasn't sure how hard to walk it would be, but Jean being always prepared had plenty of Advil with so I popped some of those down and it didn't hurt to bad after that. So we continue with our work and begin to carry the trusses up to the roof. We had got 3 up there when we kind of looked at them and realized they didn't reach all the way to the ends of the house and were too small. We got this confirmed and then had to bring the trusses back down and restack them. Luckily we hadn't got to far because a couple houses down they had the wrong tresses on also, but they had them nailed in and all set up. Now we had no tresses to put up so our task was to build a tress walk to make the job easier for when it was finally actually going to happen. We completed this and after that it was pretty much lunch time.

We dined at a restaurant, I have no idea what it was called, but some one must have known, with some very southern things on the menu. It was delicious, and I am sure just so good for you, but really the fact of the matter was that it was really good. After that we headed back to our bread and breakfast and got to learn what the hell Pat actually does as well as work on our own financial plans with him. Now it is time for me to go use my shath and prepare for dinner, good day.