How many miles today?

I wish we had kept track! Stop at Rancho San Diego corner to go the bank to get cash, check. Over to Target for paper for programs, ribbon for the ribbon cutting, a game of Skip-bo requested by the crew, check. Hey, they have a Starbucks stand, get a latte for me and a mocha for Forry.

Then off to National City to Sid's Carpet Barn to get carpet samples for House #3. Manager who had provided carpet for House #1 not there, he's at the local radio station recording a commercial. Salesman standing by offers to help. He and office manager look for prior invoice to find amounts, price range, etc.; not under client's name; not under CRT or Community Reconstruction Team, whose name is on the credit card used; not under Mennonite Disaster Service! Forry finally suggests looking under MDS, sure enough, there it is! Find four samples of brown flecked carpet.

From there to Chula Vista to a Home Depot for paint -- 30 gallons of it! Laminate flooring, hmm, 8 boxes of Hickory for House #3, 32 boxes of Oak for House #2 (no carpets for that house!) check, oops, we need 13 more boxes. Tile for bathrooms and laundry rooms, check. Paint rollers, sleeves of paint roller covers, paint brushes, check. Ear plugs, shop rags, drywall screws, check. Time to check out. Let's see, that cart all goes to House #3; no, those two things go to #1; that cart gets charged to House #2; oops, wait a minute, all that stuff on that end gets charged to MDS. Nice young man comes to help load five gallon pails of paint and the flooring into pickup. Stop by the vendor outside the store and buy two Polish dogs, get sauerkraut for Forry's; order diet Coke; clerk starts to fill, machine starts sputtering. Clerk apologizes, says she doesn't have another bottle. Buy two glasses of iced tea.

Oh, oh, an email on my iPhone from the environmental water guy says to contact him ASAP -- call him, he says we need to go to El Cajon to get a more sensitive test kit for testing for chlorine -- that darn well still shows the stuff -- we can't get the nitrate test until it's clear. Drive to El Cajon. Let's see now, he said to look for two ugly brown buildings, find the one next to the courthouse, okay, now for a parking space. Oops, can't both go in -- we've already got a couple thousand dollars worth of stuff in the back of the pick-up. Better have Forry stay with it. Okay, there's the door; nope, says public around to the other side; find the side door. Said to stop at front desk, sign in, get VISITOR badge, find elevator, go to 6th floor. Man at desk says the man who emailed me and I called and he said he'd be here until four is gone... Other guy shows up, nice guy, says he knows all about it. Shows me pink water from well, says the pool kit they had us buy yesterday isn't sensitive enough. Gives me five tablets, I'm supposed to add one to a water sample to check water every day, and to tell client to leave hoses running. He'll be out to check again on Monday, but tells me to go over to check it first & call him if it's still pink.... Gives me sheet of paper about sterilizing the well, it says to pour 1 QUART of chlorox down well for every hundred feet of casing. Remember seeing two empty GALLON jugs of chlorox by well... Find elevator, go back downstairs, give VISITOR badge back; now where's that parking lot? Oh, yeah, I had to go around to the other side of the building.

Stop to get gas at Costco -- price is up three cents from two days ago.

Go to Lowe's for missing piece of railing for porch at House #3.

Go to El Cajon Home Depot for missing 13 boxes of oak laminate flooring. Forry stays with pick-up in parking lot. Find only ten boxes on display...! Load them on cart. Finally think to ask if they might have any more. Clerk checks computer, says they're supposed to have fifty boxes of oak; was I sure I looked? Other clerk goes to check. Finds more boxes three shelves up near ceiling. Calls another clerk to get a rolling ladder. Climbs up gets one box, brings it down. I tell him I need two more. Asks me if I'm sure, after all the boxes must weigh forty pounds. Tell him yes, I need two more -- forebear telling him I had already loaded ten boxes of the stuff. Check out -- easy, these only go to one client. Get Forry to bring pickup over to loading area, one clerk helps load while another watches.

Forry parks truck a bit away from the loading area and I watch the pickup and wait for him to go in to purchase PVC pipe he needs for another client. Call Sister Sherry, get caught up on her and the dogs. Check my email, reply to accountant about address to send our tax return to us for signature. Sort out my wallet and receipts. Forry comes back with lengths of PVC pipe and elbows. Ties down load. Temp on clock in shopping area says 82 degrees.

Realize it's already five PM. I won't be back at camp to de-brief the crews at 5:15. Call Construction Foreman, he offers to go ahead with meeting, we can confer later.

Pull into the camp at 6 PM just in time for supper. Sure wish I had kept track of the miles...

Monday Once Again...

It's Monday and it's late. We drove in to San Diego International Airport to pick up Jon, one of the long termers, who had left early last Thursday to spend a long weekend at home in Virginia.


We were at the possible House #5 today to check and make sure the well water was free of chlorine so the county could retest the water. Forry had bought a pool water test kit to check for chlorine levels and it showed absolutely none, so hopefully tomorrow's test will be successful. (They did the first test the day after they had poured a gallon of chlorox down to sterilize the well casing. They ran the water for 24 hours, but it evidently wasn't long enough...)

This picture is taken from the hill above the potential house site. You can barely see the orange ribbon outlining the foundation parameters.



I took this picture about halfway up the hill. The homeowner really has a green thumb and has already planted many plants on the hill.




I took this one along the road on the way back to camp. There aren't too many yuccas around this area, but they are beginning to bloom.

The Weekend

It's hard to believe it's already Sunday night and the weekend is already gone. We welcomed a new crew of folks from Oregon this evening. There are only nine of them, so it's a much smaller crew then usual. It rained this morning while we were at church and it's quite chilly this evening --48 degrees -- so I think they were a bit disappointed. We told them the weather was to make them feel like they were at home in rainy Oregon...

These are some of the pictures we took yesterday on our harbor cruise:

The aircraft carrier Midway which is parked just a dock away from the tour boats. She is permanently docked in San Diego and is open for public tours. Some of the guys went over and took a walk around her while they were waiting for us.

Looking back at the skyline of San Diego:

A ship in dry dock:

And one that just came out of the dry dock:


A US Navy hospital ship:


And a ship that is "supposed to be invisible to radar":


Then we watched the carrier Nimitz come back into the bay (they had departed just that morning for some testing?) with all of its sailors standing at attention on the deck. They stood there for over an hour while the ship came in and docked.


All in all, it was a lovely afternoon. We went to Anthony's afterwards for dinner. We had a long wait -- even though we had reservations -- but, it was worth it for a table by the window with a view of the bay.

On the water...

This is a view of one of the sailboat mooring sites along the San Diego Bay from the deck of the Hornblower. All of the long-termers went on the two hour cruise, then out for a seafood dinner.

I am really tired, so will share more pictures tomorrow...

A BIG Day!

It was a very big day, indeed! This is part of the food set up by the local Community Recovery Team at the house by the road at the front of the property where our MDS Camp is located.

These are some of the crowd that gathered for the opening speechs by the dignitaries from the San Diego Foundation that were present. All of the various funding agencies were represented, as well as neighbors, current and prospective homeowners, vendors and the banks. It was gratifying for all involved to see so many different people here. Groups of people then toured the camp facilities, looking through the dorms, the showers, the kitchen, the dining hall and the office trailers. The representative from the San Diego Chargers groups was quite pleased with the camp and the camp layout as they had donated much of the money for it.

Some of the short-termers stayed at camp to help set-up and to park cars. They think they parked over fifty vehicles, most of them with 2-4 people in them. After touring the camp, most of the folks drove on up to House #1 for a tour of the almost finished home.

This afternoon, the short-terms quit work about three PM and returned to camp to wash vehicles. Usually, we have them clean the dorms and showers, but that had already been done in preparation for the Open House. The two shuttle buses are coming to get them at 5:30 AM tomorrow to get them to the airport for their flight back to Poole, Ontario, Canada.

Once again, more miles...

It's amazing how a trip to five stores or vendors can take all afternoon! Forry and I took off before lunch to pick up a few things to keep the crews going and some things I wanted to get before the house dedication next week. We also stopped by the harbor in San Diego to arrange a harbor cruise on Saturday afternoon as an outing for the long-termers. We barely made it back to camp in time for dinner!

I spent an hour on a conference call this morning with the Moderator and Conference Minister of Franklin Mennonite Conference seeking their input on the search for the new director of Mennonite Church USA. It's kind of fun to think about something besides construction details for a little while.

We had the inspection on the sheetrock (wall board) on House #3 this morning so the crew was able to start mudding and taping. The crew at House #2 has all the primer on the walls and has painted a portion of the ceilings.

There was a big group of volunteers -- not ours... -- at House #1 today sprucing up the grounds and weed-whacking in preparation for the Open House tour tomorrow. News about the Open House was in the San Diego paper today, so we may have quite a few people show up. We're not quite sure what to expect, but I expect tomorrow will be a long day!

One of those days...

I spent most of the morning on the phone arranging inspections, making arrangements to change the scaffolding for ones that you can put multiple levels of planks on, following up on all the little details that the project entails -- but at the end of the day I was left wondering what I had done all day.

I did get a good start on the program for the dedication of House #1 next week. I wanted to get a picture of the homeowners in front of the house for the program, but when I was there earlier this week, there was too much construction stuff on and around the front porch. The crews are gathering up equipment and picking up as much as possible for the house tour that will be part of the Open House here at the camp on Friday. I told the homeowners I would take a picture of them then.

The carpet layers were supposed to be there this afternoon, but it turns out that they did NOT have enough in stock for the job (bedrooms and living room) like they said they did when it was ordered. They're saying that they ordered it from Georgia and it will be in tomorrow, but I wouldn't wager it'll be done for the Open House. I guess I'll just be happy if it's in in time for the dedication on the 27th.

This evening Ken and Mabel and Forry and I went to visit the site for House #5. We needed to check and see if they were running the water to flush the chlorine from the lines before the county came to test the water tomorrow. It's a new well and they needed to sanitize all of the lines today. Once the well water passes its test, the permit for construction of this house can be pulled by Robin. It's going to be in the most beautiful site yet -- the view is just fantastic. The homeowner has a green thumb. Her vegetable garden is already growing well and she has planted many trees and flowers.

Our Wednesday on Tuesday

We had our Wednesday night special program tonight instead of tomorrow as this was the only night that Robin could come. Robin is the coordinator for all of the area projects and she spoke about what it takes "behind the scenes" to run a project like this. She did a great job, but I think the long termers probably were more interested than our young short-term crew.

This morning we met with Deena, the county lady in charge of the environmental stuff, and reviewed the first three house properties with her. We've got some wild flower seeding to do at House #2 after we finish smoothing out the slope behind the house, but she was happy with what had been done at the other houses.

Forry and I spent the afternoon on the road, buying interior paint for House #2 (the guys seemed to think there needed to be a "woman's input" on the paint color) and a refrigerator and stove for House #1. Of course, the stores we needed to go to were a long way apart.

I started out the day with a conference call with the Moderator and Conference Pastor for the SE Mennonite Conference in the Florida area. We (the Search Committee) are contacting each of the area conference to gain the thoughts about the job description and the type of person they visualize for the new Executive Director of Mennonite Church USA.

All in all, it's been a busy day with lots of interaction with lots of different people. It's definitely time for bed -- maybe I can even manage to read at least one chapter in the book I've been working on for two weeks...!

Another Monday...

Mondays are always interesting... We always have a new crew of short term volunteers and you never quite know what to expect. And today I had a conference call at 7:15 AM, so had to say grace for breakfast, then leave for Auntie Violet and an hour long phone call. Bless Sue's heart, she stepped up to do the after breakfast devotions.

We had the inspection for the stem walls on House #4 today, but the inspector didn't like the length of the rebar, so we didn't get to pour concrete today. The rebar has been lengthened and it'll get another inspection tomorrow and hopefully we'll get the concrete poured. Forry spent most of the day on the road looking for a concrete vibrator to rent. One place had sent theirs out for repair, another didn't rent stuff, another didn't have one... He probably would have been better off staying a camp and letting his fingers do the driving if he had only known.


I spent most of the morning running errands to the post office, to Staples, and to the grocery store; then had lunch with the head of the Long Term Coordinating Committee. When I got back to camp I went with Ken, the construction foreman, to House #1 to take a picture of last week's crew to Elsie. It's amazing to see the progress on that house since we have been here.


A couple more pictures from Saturday:






This is a picture of the very funky Desert Tower near Old Highway 80 close to the Imperial County line. It was built in the 1930s? and is the place to see all of the rather strange Boulder Creatures. From the top of it you can see quite a panoramic view of the Imperial Valley.

These scarecrow-like figures were seen along some of the railroad and highway underpasses. We were told they were the work of a local eccentric who dressed the branches in clothes discarded by undocumented workers...

San Diego and a Nap!

This morning we dropped our cooks of the last two weeks, Hap and Deb, off at the airport for their flight home to Pennsylvania, then went on to church with two of the other longtermers from Oregon. The top picture is of the building where the Mennonites and the Church of the Brethren hold joint services. The Friends group meets at the same time on the other side of the complex. The picture below of the round building is the one they are building as a Peace Center. Last week they took us on a tour of the inside of this building which is made out of rice straw bales. I didn't get inside this week to take a picture of the bales.

After church we came back to camp for a much needed nap! When I woke up I wrote some postcards to the grandkids and friends, but didn't get much more accomplished. Our new group of short term volunteers arrived by two shuttles buses about 5:30. We let them get settled, then had orientation at 7. This is the first group we've had that has females! That should be a nice change.

Here are some more pictures from yesterday's expedition:

This is the farming with the border fence. They were setting sprinkler pipe in the ditches between the raised beds. I'd sure like to know what they have planted there...

These are some of the whimsical "boulder creatures" at one of the stops we made. The succulent below was blooming nearby.