Stay tuned to find out if I might be going home a few months early

So I guess I should report that we got done with our ohio project last wednesday.... And that now our team is on spring break!!!

HUZZAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well sorta. My ass is stuck here at the village doing absolutely nothing. Not many people stayed back for spring break. Most people are still on their projects and have their spring break next week, or others decided to fly home or go somewhere else. I wanted to go home but plane tickets cost a lot now. But thats not the real reason, its just all the shit thats going on at home that I don't want to be thrown into the middle of it. Which basicaly means im stuck here doing nothing. Which means spring break blows.

So as far as Ohio went, I had a pretty good time. The work was somewhat enjoyable. We mostly filled dirt in the foundation of 4 project sites which got fairly tedious after a while. But on the last few days, we finaly got to do framing and laying down the floorboards of some of the sites which definately were the highlight of our project. Basicaly thats all we did for work the majority of the time. One thing that pissed me off about cleveland was the weather. It was so unpredictible that it drove me crazy. One day it would be like 71 degrees, then the next it would be 28. Then the following day it would be 68 with a massive rain storm. So I had to check the weather every day to dress appropriately. I liked wearing my flece with my uniform though on cold days because Phoebe wouldnt let me wear my AmeriCorps sweatshirt because I "Modified it" aka I cut down the middle from the hood so I could breathe in the damn thing when I had the hood up.

As far as recreating in cleveland goes, theres not that much to do apparently. The first week we were there we went to the rock and roll hall of fame, but unfortunately due to copyright issues you werent allowed to take any pictures inside. So I can't share any of the awesomeness there. Other then that we didn't really do much of anything. My team took me out to dave and busters for my birthday, which if anyone doesnt know, is basicaly chuckie cheese, but with more kick ass games and a bar in the center of it, along with some HELLA good food. Even though I didnt have any drinks, it was still a kick ass time. But yeah, other then that Cleveland has nothing at all. Which blows. Most of the time spent at our housing was spent playing Ocerena of time for N64 on my laptop. It took me about a week to beat but at least it was something to do i guess...

As far as stuff at the village is concerned, I did a kick ass ISP yesterday with turn the page. My, Myron and Mike D. took house 3's van to downtown DC and helped them sort books for deliveries to various schools. Me and Mike did some book pickups around various places in DC and that turned out to be an adventure. I finaly got to paralell park for the first time. In a government Van too! So it was a bitch.

Other then thatim stuck here at the village with nothing to do except play game on my laptop, go chill on the internet, watch tv or pray that something comes along and finds me.

The 2nd week of our 4th project is now underway.

We just finished up our first real week yesterday with habitat for humanity. So far the work has been pretty good and really physicaly demanding. Our jobs range from shoveling dirt into..... well.... big holes, drywalling, steel plating, nailing, tool maintenance, inventory work back at the habitat store and sawing wood to make more 2x4 steaks. So we got a lot of variety in the work we're doing. Every day is something different, which is a good change of pace compared to what we've been used to for the past 5 months.

Our work hours differ every day, but on average, we get off work at 3:30. But we start every day at 7:30. So basicly its the same hours we had at Phillips school, except instead of working with kids, we're working with tools! Horray! By the end of everyday we're usualy really tired and not wanting to do anything except sit around at our housing . The girls usualy end up watching various episodes of Sex and the City that Phoebe borrowed from Lori. Mark usualy watches Kris' movies that he has and as for me, I got Ocerena of time to play. When we actually DO feel like going out, I usualy take a trip to one of the two local coffee shops nearby to use their WiFi for internet goodness.

Theres not really that much to do downtown in cleveland to our surprise. In comparison, it's a lot like portland when it comes to nightlife, aka DEAD. The streets are deserted except for occasional cars here and there. We took a trip to the rock and roll hall of fame last wednesday, was a fun trip, but we weren't allowed to take any pictures due to copyright issues, but other then that, we have yet to explore much of downtown, i'm just speaking from experience.

So, uh yeah, I guess thats are there is to say so far. Nothing much going on.

Cleveland Ohio baby!!!!

WOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! Our new project kicked itself off today. We're now working for habitat for humanity, working on fixing the foundations up, or just generaly working on the inside doing drywall, fixing up cabinents or doing doors. The first day we worked, we filled up the outer area of the basement with gravel, to cover up some of the pipes for the house so they arent exposed to anything dangerous. It was pretty intense labor today, about 3 hours of straight shoveling, then a break, then onto a different site to load up some 2x4 planks, then onto a different site where we spent about another 2 hours shoveling dirt into a big hole to cover up exposed piping again, and then we were done.

The volunteers that we're working with seem to be very nice people and we get along with them really well. So far we really only worked with 2 other AmeriCorps Habitat volunteers, but tomorrow we should be working with some church groups, or other volunteers from schools around the general Cleveland area. From what I have seen today, I can say that so far this seems to be a really good project from the looks of it. Also our housing is KICK ASS!!!!!!!! We're staying in an old church that has been around for at least 100 years, which has actually really kept up well considering its age. It has a really nice sanctuary, complete with an organ thats a one of a kind. Only 3 of them exist in the entire world so there you go :D. There's also a gym with a basketball court "Which we have yet to go to", and even theater room, but no projectors. Hopefully i'll post some pictures when I get a chance, there's no wireless internet at the church, but a local coffee shop nearby has free wireless, so that's going to be my hookup from now on.

As far as team dynamics go, there's barely any guys anymore on this team. Kris is hanging out with cassie most of the time, so me and mark are left to fend for ourselves while the rest of the team "aka girls" goes and hangs out with eachother. In a way this kinda sucks but for me this is really good because i really value my personal time that i have to myself so I can make calls to people whenever I want and not get bothered by anyone else, but at the same time, there's less stuff for me to do to make myself entertained. Meh....

Anyways, more on the drama at home. My parents are now getting divorced and my mom seems to keep fucking up my dads life more and more every day. My mom has taken our finances into her own hands and has started to make really stupid decisions. One of these decisions made the interest rate on one of my dads credit cards jump from say 5%, to 20%. Hopefully she doesnt fuck our finances up so badly that they have to sell the house to pay the bills. I'm really concerned that my dad is going to go under due to everything my mom is doing, but my dad is constantly consulting his brother, grandpa and his lawyer for tips, I just pray that the world doesn't go to complete shit back in Portland because so far, thats what is happening. My mom is making up lies and slander about my dad to everyone she knows so she can get support for herself, which I believe is total bullshit. She's done this a lot in the past to people she doesn't like and because of that, not a lot of people like her. Little does she know that I actually have a pretty big influence on some of the people she knows, a bigger influence then she herself has, so i'm going to use this to my advantage soon to regain support for my dad. I think that this has to be done because there are a lot of things that need to be clarified so my dad doesn't turn into a hated man for stuff he has never done in the first place.

If it wasn't for the damn drama going on back home, i'd feel like these next 4 weeks are going to be completely awesome. But I just know that things back home in Portland are going to escalate to a point of where I don't know if I'm going to go home to my own house anymore. I definately know now that all the packing I did before I left for AmeriCorps will be in vein because all the rest of my stuff in my room is going to be packed up with out my consent of what goes where, because knowing my mom, she just cleans shit for no reason. So i'm going to have to get my dad to pack up my stuff for me which is really shitty because I don't really want anyone to even touch my stuff, but if my dads moving out, i'm moving out with him or getting my own apartment when I get back to Oregon.

Why does life have to bite me in the ass? I've been a good kid in AmeriCorps :(. I even got an Upliftment award from our unit leader. Come on!!!!!

I could use a nice bottle of Captain Morgan right now, sigh....

As we enter the last week of our 3rd official project, everything seems to come down to a close with a few items added not just our teams own personal drama, but the drama of life back home as well.

First off the bat, we lost one of our team members permanently. Billy took a job working for some senators campaign up in maryland, mainly to boost himself up into the political workforce. I'm actually glad for him because this seems to be a good step for him to take to get into the upper workings of the government. But at the same time, we lost a team member that I sometimes go to for a good laugh or his intelligent wit. But he stops by occasionaly here to chat.

Secondly, Mike on our team is joining a Red Cross Composite team that stays back here for the next 5 weeks. So he'll be stuck back at the campus here for another 5 more weeks while the rest of us are in Cleveland Ohio working with habitat for humanity. So that means the 2 people I usualy hang out with while on spike are now gone, so i'm left to contend with the rest of the team instead, which might be tough, but we'll see how it works out. To solve the boredom issues I had last project in phili, My dad bought me a guitar and i'm in the process of learning how to play it. I try to spend at least a half hour a day practicing chords, so i'm getting some where. So far the only song I can play is Teh n00b song!!!!

w00t!! <3 pure pwnage

So we lost two team members for our next project. But fear not! Max will bring his laptop and hopefuly his guitar up to Ohio so he won't be bored out of his mind during off hours. Maybe me and our new teammate mark will find something to do.

Dunno if i mentioned mark at all either......... but yeah, we gained a new teammate at the beginning of january from the charelston champus. I don't know all the specifics but he was the only one on the team that was below 21. But now that he's on the team, we hang out a shit load, so he's a cool guy.

Other then that, nothing else to report. Except troubles back home with my dad and my mom. They're getting to the point of where I think they'll get divorced within the next few months and my dad will move out of the house. Which means most likely, I'm not flying back home to the house i've lived in for the past 18 years. That would really really suck, but the way things are going, thats whats most likely going to happen. My dad's been filling me in on whats been going on lately, and i've heard nothing from my mom. "Not that I want to hear anything from my mom either". So its tough to realize this fact when july comes rolling in.

How this affects my future is this. Although i'll probably move out either way when I get back to Portland in July. I gotta realize the fact that the way things are going now, I don't want to live in my parents home at all anymore. Which I had hoped on doing if I decided that I want to go onto community college. I could have a free house and not have to pay for rent/food. But since my dad might leave, i'd have to stay with my mom, and with her in charge of the house, she would force me to pay for everything cause she's a bitch like that. So if the whole thing goes through, Max is fucked for a free place to stay at, unless my dad comes up with something.

All teams except for ours, house 4 and 6, and senate 8 are now on their Gulf Coast projects. The majority of teams are down in Mississippi, and 2 teams are down in New Orleans. So now the village is back to its boring dull self with nothing to do. Except play guitar!!! In game news, the only games i've played, and beat for the past few weeks have been Megaman X, Megaman X2 and Megaman X3. I've kicked sigmas fucking ASS 3 times in a row. That mofo cant mess with me.

Yep. Nothing else to report. PDXLAN went on 2 weeks ago, Wish I was there :(.

Life goes on i guess

As of tonight, i'm really worried for a big percentage of the Corps.

Mainly, everybody is getting into drinking alcohol on campus, which as most people should assume, is a really big no no. So why do people keep doing it? My assumption is the staff's lack of commitment to the rules that they themselves are supposed to enforce. The only time someone has gotten kicked out was when 2 people were drinking in SPIKE housing, not on campus, and that was because someone on that team admited to buying alcohol for someone that was under 21 and they both got kicked out. Since then, there have been numerous incidents involving people drinking on campus, and even underage drinking, but no one has been sent home ever since those 2 got kicked out.

So what is with the staffs commitment to the rules? Do they just dont care anymore? Do they feel like since this is most likely going to be the last year of NCCC, they dont really have to enforce anything? I just want those questions answered, because now, people that you wouldnt expect to do this sort of stuff, are now getting in trouble because they're in this state of mind that they won't get kicked out because everyone else who does this sort of stuff stays and just gets fined, where as the policy CLEARLY states "Drinking on campus results in a Dismissal Hearing", but NO ONE GETS DISMISSED!!?!?!?!?!

#1 reason why im worried. Today we had another incident, but it involved one person and she's under 18. Extreme goody goody, and i respect her a lot because she's a real cool person. I won't lose respect for her because of this incident becausmost likely she was pressured into it by someone, and because of this.... well..... She's now in the hospital. The only details i've been told is that a group of people went out to this club, and she was underage, so they got someone to take her back, but apparently she had been drinking before she went to club, which means she had to have been on campus.

I can't see her drinking on campus, thats the thing I dont get... She's so against it, so my main question is who, and where, did she get alcohol from?

Right now her team leader is staying the night at the hospital by her side, making sure she's alright. So far as it stands, she's concious now and she's really scared and embaressed "As she should be" for what happened.

SO YA, MORE DRAMA, IT NEVER FUCKING ENDS!!!!!!!!!!!!

In other news:

Me, mike and Mark stayed up till about 3:30am making a snowman, taking a stroll inside the infirmary, watching movies and just chilling out in the snow while watching the drama go on. But yep... Thats whats going down. Good pics will be added of yesterday on myspace hopefuly shortly. But until then.

Drama sucks, i hate it, go away plz k thx bye.

I just have one question for this god damn world.

Why the hell do people have to be so stupid when it comes to alcohol?

I mean seriously. People, you dont need it in order to have fun, you can have fun without alcohol, YES it IS POSSIBLE. But unfortunately some people here at the campus feel as if drinking makes everything better.

Lets just take into account what happened this saturday, 2-4-05. I come into my room, and my roommate is in there with a cheap bottle of rum and he and some other people are passing it around to eachother.Now at first i'm like "What the fuck is going on here?" Because drinking on campus is strictly prohibited so i'm really concerned. Nothing bad happened then, But thats nothing compared to later that evening, I once again walk in to pick my phone up off my charger and its a fucking beer party IN MY FUCKING ROOM. This makes me really concerned because I'm not sure if I should hang out and have fun and risk being caught, or just remove myself from the situation entirely and make sure I stay away from that situation and find an alliby incase I, for some reason, get called into questioning. So I did the smart choice and removed myself from the situaiton completely when I went in and grabbed my phone. They wanted me to stay because we're all good buddies and all but I made up an excuse that "Oh i need to make a call i'll be back in a couble of minutes".

Minutes turned into 2 hours.

So instead of going back to my room, I go wallking around the campus hallways looking for something to do to pass the time by. I ended up going to the computer lab to chat with some of my buddies to try and see how I should best handle this situation. In the end, I ended up going into the main lounge to watch The Notebook with a few people. I was just praying that they wouldnt get caught cause I didn't want anyone to get sent home, even though they were acting this stupid in the first place

Then it goes downhill from there.

About 3/4ths of the way into the movie, one person that was "enjoying themselves" comes down the Main hallway being carried by 2 people, i assumed, back to their room. And of course, since there's a lot of people watching the movie, they see that person being carried and that person is also making loud noises and laughing really loud "Mind you, its about midnight'ish when this is going on.quiet hours start at 10:00pm" So people in the room are starting to ask questions like "Whats going on?" "Are (they) trashed?" "How'd (they'd) get trashed?".

And now it gets even worse.

When the movie is over, I see Kate and Phoebe, two team leaders, on their way down the hall towards Harrell and Lewis halls. Now when they're walking around the halls this late at night, together even, something bad is going to go down. So I decide to follow them to see whats going on.... AND....................

Yep..... My worst fears came true.

Everybody that was in my room 2 hours ago was standing outside my room, and the team leaders come up and start quetsioning them, starting off the conversation with

"So whats going on with this whole drinking situation?"

When those words were said, I swear to god my heart stopped for a second. I was scared shitless that people were going to be sent home that night becuase they decided to be such fucking idiots and have some "fun" on campus rather then away from campus on the nearby trail.

So what went down was this. The majority of the people said that they just went down the trail and enjoyed a few beers, and that's all they did, then they came back here and started to just chill out.

Bear in mind, that all I did during this conversation was stand back and observe. They didn't ask me anything because they saw me in bartman and I walked with them, mainly just to go back to my room but they seemed to be headed along the same path..... Unfortunately

Then of course, 1 person has to ruin it all because he's scared for his life..

"You all know what we were doing, we were fucking drinking in there and we know its wrong so do what you got to do".

Everybody in the room instantly shot glares at that person, and the team leaders questioned him as to what really went on. The only thing he said was that exact statement word for word and nothing else. Eventualy he stormed out of the place because this was basicly his 2nd strike. He made a huge scene out of it, breaking shit left and right. Smashing someones pepsi can off the nurses station, taking a Caution wet floor sign and throwing it hard against the wall and kicking over a trashcan because he knew most likely, he was fucked for sure.

One question remains to be answered though.... How did the team leaders find out?

Apparently, when i saw them carrying that one particular person to their room, One of the teamleaders saw what was going on and waited for the two people carrying the person to leave, where then she went into that person room to quetsion her as if she was alright. No one knows what was said by that person to the team leader, but most suspicions point that the team leaders decided to investigate further.

And thats all I know about what is going on here now.

Most likely, there will be more dismissal hearings to come in the future, and most likely in this situaiton, if people dont keep their cool together, more people will probably get kicked out. I'll probably lose a roommate if this goes really bad. But this is all I have to say in this situation.

They brought it onto theirselves, they get what they deserve.

And thats my fucking update for now, time to watch the superbowl.