Finally Some Prompt Service

So from the title you probably wouldn’t have guessed that this post is actually about prompt service from a cell phone company. Since my cell phone died and our contract was up, we did some shopping around and found that we can get a better deal by canceling our current plan which is under my name and having Jenny sign up for a new plan. If we would go with a different carrier we could keep our current numbers but I think we’ll go back to ATT (formerly Cingular (formerly ATT Wireless)) because they have the phones we want and we can get them for free with a new contract. As a bonus, the plan is cheaper than what we currently have. When I called to cancel our service I used Jenny’s cell phone so that I wouldn’t have to type in any numbers and I was curious how long it would take before it would really stop working. After waiting on hold for 10 minutes, I got an operator who asked what I was calling about and then quickly and promptly filled the request. The last I heard from her was "Okay sir, I’ve canceled your service. Is there anything else I can… (silence)". I couldn’t help but find it a little ironic that it takes forever to get something fixed, like for my corporate discount to show up on our bill, but before I can say thank you they can shut down my service.

Friendly Reminder

Just wanted to put up a friendly remidner for those who wanted to get their sponsorship in on time. Olivia will be participating in the Walk for Life THIS Saturday. Thanks to all who have already shown your support!

OOO

JR says that is standard office lingo for "out of office" – I guess I never worked in a standard office. Anyway, we are on the first night of our 2nd annual family vacation. We went back to the Texas coast (Port Aransas) because we enjoyed ourselves so much last year and being 7 months pregnant, I wanted to know what I was getting myself into! We had a nice drive through San Antonio & Corpus Christi this afternoon and got ourselves settled at the beach house, grilled dinner and even took a dip in the pool. Tomorrow we’ll head over to Mustang Island State Park for some beach time and then Sunday we have a dolphin tour right after Mass. They say they have 18 brand new baby dolphins so we are really looking forward to that! We also plan to stop by the TX State Aquarium on our way back home (in Corpus). Should be a great weekend. We’ll fill you in on all the adventures when we return to Austin.

Get Your Hands Dirty

This past Saturday I volunteered with Habitat for Humanity with some friends from church. If you’re not familiar with Habitat be sure to check out their website, but essentially they help low-income people become homeowners. A common misconcepton is that they give away the houses. Instead the new owners get a good deal with things like zero interest loans and volunteer construction which keeps the mortgage managable. To show that they are really committed they also have to put in ’sweat equity’ hours working on theirs and other peoples homes. If you were worried about the quality of voluteer construction, they do have people who know what they are doing on the site overseeing the volunteers. The quality of work is really quite high and they bring in sub-contractors for things like the plumbing and electrical work.

We got there at 8 AM it was a bare concrete slab which had actually just been poured the day before. We started by unloading all of the framed wall pieces from a trailer, which had been constructed earlier in a shop. There were several sections to each outside wall so we had to lay them out, attach them together, and then stand them up. While others moved on to getting the interior walls in place, my buddy Micheal and I got a special project. Someone must have decided that we looked like we knew what we were doing because they gave us the job of making sure the bottoms of the exterior walls were straight and then ramsetting them into the concrete slab. Basically, it’s a nail gun that uses a .22 shell to shoot the nail into the concrete. The job got more complicated after a brief rain shower which erased the chalk lines we were supposed to use to tell if it was straight. But we improvised and used a string line instead. After we had the entire exterior bottom done, we moved on to making sure the top of the exterior walls were straight by bracing them out to stakes in the ground. Again we used a string line to guide us. We got that done just in time for lunch and had a sandwich in the shade. After lunch we moved right along and lifted all of the trusses up on top of the walls. Once they were all up there we started putting them in place at the front of the house. I ended up with a job up top so I spent the afternoon on the roof in progress while the Texas sun beat down. Luckily I had put on some SPF 50 sunscreen and my neck only got a good tan. But it was a good crew of people and we all worked hard and had a good time. By the end of the day we had gone from a bare slab to a completely framed house with rooms that you could walk around in. They even got the exterior walls felted so it really felt like a house. The leaders were pretty impressed that we got it all done in one day, although it was a relatively small house at around 900 square feet.

If you’ve never volunteered with Habitat for Humanity you should. It is on my list of things everyone should do at least once in their life and is my favorite volunteer activity. You don’t have to have any construction experience and they’ll be happy to teach you what ever you need to know. As if doing a good days work swinging a hammer building something and being able to see the physical results is not enough, you’ll probably be able to work alongside the person whose house you are actually working on.