For some reason, I thought it might be a good idea to sign up as volunteers for Habitat for Humanity. If you are unfamilar with the organization, they are a homebuilding group, in fact, the 12th largest homebuilder in the United States. Along the way, Jimmy Carter got involved with them, and now most people associate it with him, even though the only reason he does it is because his friend and neighbor in Americus Georgia founded it. Also because he is kind of into carpentry, as well as service, and mostly Christians. Habitat is a Christian organization, though they don't push that side of things too much. Pretty much all they do is hand out a bible with a set of keys to a new house. There are poor people who get the houses, and they have to work on them for 500 hours, as a downpayment.This is what the jobsite looked like. As you may note, it doesn't look like much, other than a dirt field with some houses under construction.

Anyhow, my company was looking for volunteers, and I said yes, and I guess it was fun, even though I wound up doing my least favorite construction thing, which is sanding plaster. Even now, as I write this, white boogers are coming out. Which is gross, but it also kind of gives you a headache to get all that plaster in your sinuses. On the upside, some poor people will have smoother walls in their new house. My company bought us lunch, which was very nice of them. The lunch came in white boxes that looked like they might have cake in them. Plus they were tied with a purple ribbon. They sent twenty lunches even though only four people came from my company, so we were able to share them with the other people there.

They don't let you play music as you work, because a lot of people who volunteer come from churches, and pop music is sinful to some people. Some snippits of conversation I heard were like "my arms are going to be too sore for communion" and "I don't know if I'm going to make it to evening mass tonight". These were Catholics. There was an episcopalian group there as well, who were not talkers. They came, they worked silently, pretty much. At lunchtime, they had very organized lunches. I don't know anything about them, but a woman said that they only eat grapes and wafers instead of wine and wafers, and they only do it once a month instead of once a week. A bunch of mishegas if you ask me.

This is what I looked like with all the plaster on me, which you can barely see in the picture, but I was really covered in white dust. That's my clean honey with me.

They had this really dangerous thing, that was kind of like a giant chainsaw attached to a tractor, which I would have played with, only they told me not to. Plus there was a really scary warning sign on it.