Thanksgiving Shenanigans

I'm reading a book called "Team of Rivals" right now.  It's about Abraham Lincoln's Cabinet members.  One of them spent 15 minutes every night reviewing the days activities.  Well that's kind of what I try to do every week.  This was a particularly hard one.

This is probably what I look like while trying to remember things.

So I'm thankful for pictures that remind me of what happened.  On Tuesday of this week I left Battle Creek at 6am so that I could meet the rest of the maintenance crew in Houghton Lake.  We spent the day reviewing Timber Wolf Lake and Springhill Camps.  It was a fun opportunity see how other camps build and maintain their facilities.  

The plane dorm at Springhill.

The inside of the plane dorm.

The whole trip was kind of interesting.  They also had very nice dorms.  These camps have nice things, but they don't have the feel that Camp Barakel has.  From looking at these couple camps I find myself thinking that their facilities are great, but it's not really camping anymore.  It's a conference center.  That didn't stop us from checking out their maintenance department and having some fun during the visit...

Timber Wolf Lake has Go-Karts.  Unbelievable!

This is me before I lap everyone.  Believe that!

So after visiting the camps we headed out to dinner and I hustled home.  It was quite a long day.  The other highlights of the trip included playing volleyball and basketball with some of my friends.  Competitive, organized sports are something I dearly miss at Camp.  Both of them went really well, but my lungs need some stretching out.  

Me and Mom went over to the Ramer's (her friends that live around the corner from us) for Thanksgiving.  There were only 6 people there and I enjoyed that aspect of it.  It's good to have a relatively quiet and calm day to eat and watch the Lions.  

Now I'm preparing to drive back up to camp tonight.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Mousing Strategy

Mice are a problem in the trailer.  They don't have to be, but the door doesn't close very easily and people have issues double checking this kind of thing.  So over the summer I begged the folks staying in the trailer to keep it all the way closed, but every time I went by it wasn't closed.  So now I have the mice.  Last year they were terrible, pooping all over.  This year I might have figured them out.

Look at all that cereal!  That's only about half of it.

So between the fridge and those drawers there is a crack.  I have come to believe this is a main artery in the mouse traveling network.  I believe this because I've snagged about 5 of them there in 10 days.  I also haven't seen any poop anywhere all Fall.  So either the YAPS (summer college kids) potty trained them, or they aren't gallivanting around my trailer freely.  I blame my trap placement.

Other than that we're digging up some major stuff in the East Side Dining Hall.  Everywhere we pull down the walls we find more moisture, so we've chased it right into the walls.  So now we have a skeleton of a freezer left over.  In the basement I took out the drop ceiling and all the insulation under there.  After that I posted a couple fans to dry out the wood.

The ceiling in the basement.

Big fans.  I'd like to make a quadrocoptor out of 4 of these.

Right now it's Dan Haines, Mike Baker and myself working on this, but when the time starts getting crunched down I think we'll drag Mike Alchin in.  All of this stuff has to be back together by the 2nd of January.  That's about 3 full work weeks (full meaning 2 out of 3 of us will be there while the others use up their last vacation days).  Breaking the tile was a grueling part of the process that we tried to make fun.  I tried duel wielding hammers and it became a tiring mess of dust and flying tile chunks.  Making the best of it.

Now for the weekend.  I packed things in, so I'll just rip through them here.  I left camp Friday afternoon and headed for Rochester.  There I went to the joint birthday parties of Karen Morgan and Aaron Jerome.  It was a blast that kept me up til about 3am.  Then I headed out for Battle Creek at 6am.  (It's not a Cody road trip if I don't do some major driving on 3 hours of sleep).

In BC I went to the State Volleyball Finals where I watched St Phil win their 6th Class D title.  I stuck around for a couple other matches.  The Class A was notable because those girls just pound the tar out of the ball.  After that I went to the annual Holiday Parade where I saw the Linsley's (from Camp) and the Riegel's (from home).

Today (Sunday) I enjoyed a morning at church, some good food at a Fundraiser at Pizza Sam's, and then volleyball at the Y Center.  I really miss competitive sports by being at camp, so I was thankful the Penrod's needed some people for their volleyball team.  It felt good to get out there and crush some volleyballs.

As you can see I'm traveling.  So pictures become scarce and stories become crazy and staggered.  I'm having a good time though.  God is good.  Pray I keep my car in between the ditches and that I use my time home for the Kingdom (not just for me!).

Going Inside

November is treating us well.  The temperatures are cold in the morning, then nice weather most afternoons.  Except for about 2 days of hard rain.  That pushed us inside for a lot of this week, so me and Mike Baker worked on new trash can lids.  While camp is replacing the trash cans over the next years, we need lids for the old ones in the meantime.  After several designs we settled in and made 20 new lids to cover all the West side trash cans.  Mike Alchin seemed to enjoy spending some time in the carpenter shop too.  He was working on some plumbing for the West Side Bath House.

Mike Baker gets excited when we stop planning, and start cutting up wood.

Mike Alchin has a nice little work station.

A new project is starting to take shape in the East Side Dining Hall.  We're taking apart the walls around the freezer to try to shore up some moisture issues.  It turns out there is some condensation that has been soaking into the insulation.  So while most of the maintenance crew is taking some time off for the Fall Break (for Fairview schools) I'm plugging away on some of these walls trying to get some fresh air in there. Now it's a race to get everything back in working order for the retreats in January.

It looks really odd without the drywall.

So we keep working in the off season at camp.  This weekend I joined the Bakers family vacation at Avalanche Bay.  It's a water park that's part of the Boyne Mountain resort area.  I'm feeling like a wreck after a day of climbing the stairs up to the different slides.  Me and Matthew Baker hit one of them about 10 times in a row during a slow spell in the afternoon.  Lydia provided fantastic food for lunch.  It was a full day.  About 16 hours all told.

I feel like it's about half way through December.  That and the time change has kind of messed with my head.  But I'm cruising through work, enjoying this settled down November.  Now if we can just get wiped out under the snow next month.... we'll be all set for January.

Driving Again

It's my big driving season coming up.  A lot happened, so I'll try to get through it here kind of quickly.  On Tuesday I went down to Spring Arbor University to talk to people about Camp Barakel.  After that we had a small gathering at the Parlour in Jackson.  That was followed by Camp's annual business meeting in Okemos.  Kind of a full day, but it was a lot of fun to see all the different summer staff and board members. 

It took us a while to pick out our treats.

I settled on a Peanut Butter cup sundae. 

At camp we've been working on different small projects, including a fair amount of work on roofs.  Mike Baker and I have been chasing leaks around several of the roofs.  We also spent a while on Arrowhead and Snowshoe to clean off the roofs and kill some of the moss.

After the work week I ran down to a Spiritual Warfare Conference in Perry where Tom Harmon was speaking.  I enjoyed seeing lots of friends at this 2 day affair, then I hustled over to Battle Creek where I was able to see several friends that night.  I played drums in the morning at Garrison Hills and made a run for the east side of the state.  There I joined in on a Mexican themed party at the Houston's house.  We played cornhole, night frisbee and a lot of Taboo.  Thanks to Dave and Tim for throwing the thing together, and then letting me stay the night there. 




Construction!

I left Detroit at 6:15am and now I'm blogging at the McDonalds in Mio just before returning to camp to work.  So you can see how I've been driving around a lot.  I'm sure it'll keep increasing as the Holidays come around.  Oh, and without retreats on the weekends we're back down to working 5 day weeks.  So I'll probably be blogging on Sundays now.  Just for your information.

Thanks for following!