Today my parents picked me up in Muncie and we started on the long drive to Oklahoma for the holidays. We are going down to visit my mom's side of the family for the weekend. It will be the first time in a long time that all of us (cousins, grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles, sister and brother-in-law) will be together. Our times are usually full of lots of laughter. I am looking forward to being able to hang out with family.
The last few weeks have been very relaxing. I have had a chance to watch lots of basketball - I'm not quite sure what I will do now that college bball season is over. I have also gotten to roller blade and spend time with friends. It has been fun making new friends and spending time with those that I haven't seen in a long time.
Funny Story: In case you were missing my stories, here is one from last Saturday. I helped out at a community service day in Muncie. I got to help with a group of junior high youth. They were great workers. In the morning I had the job of taking wood that the youth moved and stacking it. It was a lot of wood!
The afternoon was when things got a bit more interesting. I had the job of "supervising" two youth as they tarred the roof of a mobile home. I guess there are a few things to take into consideration when I say "supervising" - I had never tarred anything, I had never been on a mobile home roof (or even seen one, except on the news when one blows off in a tornado), the roof was made of a thin piece of metal on top of some 2x2's, and I don't particularly like heights.
Now, it was my fault that I ended up on the roof because I made the comment "sounds like fun" when we were told we got to tar a roof. To start off, we checked the stability of the roof and I was taught how to walk on it. The big thing to remember is that you want to walk on those tiny little 2x2's and not the spaces in between.
We got the tar on top of the roof and realized that the tar needed mixing. The man in charge started the project and then once I figured out what to do, I took over. It was a bit challenging, since the bottom of the large bucket of tar looked like those large tar pits that elephants die in while the top was like colored water. After about 30 minutes, the tar was mixed and we were ready to start.
At this point I had still only ventured onto two beams of the roof and was unsure of whether I really wanted to do anything else. Since we only had two brushes and two willing volunteers, I stood back and watched while they tarred the roof. I felt kind of like a jerk as I just stood there pointing at places they missed and moving the bucket of tar. I gave suggestions from my "vast" experience with tarring. The boys did a great job and by the end we were all feeling pretty confident on the roof.
I was extremely grateful that none of us ended up "helping" the owner by creating a sunlight in her roof. The boys worked very hard and did such a great job. Well, now I can add tarring a mobile home roof to the random things I know how to do. I also learned that gasoline removes tar very easily.
