*(the title of this entry was originally going to be about how i finally got new sandals, which i thought you'd be very proud of. i also got shampoo all by myself, and it's going really well. (your baby is growing up, guys!) but then a few weeks ago the planter bed incident happened, and it kind of eclipsed the sandals. more on that later.)
i don't know where i left off with you all - different places, i guess. here's a brief overview of my summer: i sold my soul to retail - albeit upstanding, quality retail - by taking a job at the new LL Bean in my town. mostly i was trying to make Jessica jealous and woo her to Boston with my employee discount. sadly, no dice on the wooing. the first few weeks of work were great - the store wasn't open yet, so we were doing a lot of merchandising, training, hanging kayaks, training, rehanging kayaks, training, being told that wasn't the kayak they wanted there at all, etc. (they spent more money training us than they have at any other LL Bean...pressure was on). i work in the Active department (boats, bikes, camping stuff, backpacks (we sold 6,000 in the week before school started!), fly fishing (shudder) - that kind of stuff) which is, of course, the best department and has the silliest and most ridiculous managers (Dave got a little loopy the other day and radioed us all "can i get a 'what what'", and the little girl i was ordering a backpack for looked a little sketched out). the best part of the summer was getting to work with some pretty cool outdoorsy guys, including a geologist who tried to get me excited about some fossils he found in upstate NY, and i was like ahem, i went to school in Richmond - that's Richmond, Indiana to you...HA, and then i brought him some Richmond rocks and blew him away (probably). there's another guy who looks kind of like Draco from Harry Potter except that his green eyes are EXACTLY the color of our uniform shirts, which makes for a very intense effect. at the beginning of the summer i met a guy named Cute Kayaking Instructor (he also goes by the name Tom); for those of you following that story, i sadly never worked up the courage to randomly facebook message him, but we did have a funny moment in which we thought that he had applied for a teaching job at Lauren's school (turns out there's ANOTHER teacher in the greater Boston area with exactly the same name who is also passionate about English, which is frightening).
when, partway through the summer, business kind of dropped off (this is what happens when you're the only business open in a giant mall/construction site), they stopped giving of us many hours and i found alternative fun. my most exciting discovery was that the harbor islands ferry operators on the baby banana boat out of Hingham let me on for free if i said i was going to visit the rangers (this was after pretending to be related to them, which was riskier because i'm still very very bad at lying, and also clearly not red-haired), so i did a lot of that. again, some of you heard this story, but my friend Val (from last summer) decided rather quickly that her new co-ranger Elliot (female Elliot) and i would be great for each other, which got my and Elliot's relationship off to a RATHER awkward start. hehe. it was a nice thought, but probably very unlikely. funny, though. being around nice, marginally attractive male peers for the past few months i think is finally reversing dana hall's/earlham nerd boys' effect on my sexuality, thus proving that crazy convo speaker wrong about how people who are "questioning" are clearly gay. jerk :-P the extra time also gave me the chance to explore some other things, like MIT square dancing! who knew you could nerd out square dancing that much. it's like the polar opposite of dancing in Indiana (it requires a lot more thinking) but still great great fun. turns out i'm a big hit with middle aged men in utili-kilts (and i've been dancing the guys part...). i'm an official member there now.
and then life pretty much completely changed. i was incredibly apprehensive about starting City Year...all summer i looked for other jobs, but i kept feeling like i was cheating on City Year, and yet i was terrified that if i did do the program it would just be for lack of anything else. but August 25 came and i had nothing else to do, so it was off to the Bekenstein Family Headquarters for Idealism for Basic Training Academy, Week 1. it was great to meet people, but still nerve-wracking...for week 1, they placed us on "Crazy Teams" because we didn't have our real teams yet, and even just on my crazy team there were a few people (well, one in particular) that i honestly sincerely hoped i would never have to work with again. everything was a big question mark. first thing the next Monday morning, we found out our teams, but they didn't just TELL us, no, that would have been too logical....they took pictures that represented the teams, cut them up, and gave us each pieces of the puzzle, and we had to walk around the room and find people whose puzzle pieces matched ours (it was like being on a reality show, i swear). luckily, my slice said "ivi gage" so i was pretty sure i got what wanted. indeed, i am a proud member of the team with the longest and awesomest name: The Foundation to Be Named Later/John W. Henry Family Foundation Boston Civic Engagement Team (nothing simple, like the "Comcast City Heroes Team"...we do get the whole sponsor on our name tags, they just take out most of the vowels). my team is such a trip; they're crazy but i love them in the way that you love your family. we have two who just graduated from high school - TJ, who has the real bad ADHD/dyslexia/probably some of every kind of learning disability, smokes like a chimney, illegally spits in uniform, etc. he means so well, he just needs to work on his presentation a little. Mark looks like an ex-Beatle and is never entirely sure what's going on. Justin, Morgan, Jess and i all just graduate from college - Justin is the bad kid turned good kid who's oddly flirtatious sometimes (i like to think of it as "brotherly"), Jess is tiny but definitely the most forceful about actually getting things done, and Morgan is probably the one person who will never cause any conflicts; her dad's a diplomat and she's lived all over the world! and then Natalie just finished another AmeriCorps program, did some of her growing up in Italy (which made her very European) and is probably the single most pretentious know-it-all i've ever met (oh that was mean. i hope she never finds this blog). she's also the one i'm most likely to kill by the end of the year, but i do still like her and find her to be a very interesting person and am looking forward to learning from her and about working with people like her. and then our leadership team is three second-years (Senior Corps Members): Adolfo, our Service Leader, who does nothing, as far we know; Matt, our Team Leader, who does everything, plus some other things...at first glance he's sort of the strong and serious type, but he actually has the most interesting sense of humor (and he's an FSU grad - Jess, does that mean anything?!) and Mollie, our Program Manager, who of all of them would probably fit in the best at Earlham (well, she's technically staff and not an SCM because she'd already done Maine Conservation Corps before CY and got super-promoted! i'm also pretty sure that Emily Jones in totally platonically madly in love with her...it's funny). i'll stop there for now, because i'm sure you'll hear a million more stories about them before the end of the year.
here we are at BTR (haha see if you can guess who's who):
on our first week as teams, we went to Basic Training Retreat, which is CY's take on your typical leadership retreat. it was really fun and a great way to sort of break us into being teams - a lot of activities and a lot of sharing things about ourselves. after BTR the other teams continued merrily along with their training, but we had a service day to plan for the end of the next week (we kinda got thrown off the deep end; Mollie kept apologizing and then giggling a little). the service day was for staff members at the Boston Celtics and a local HMO. as we gathered up at the end of the day before, Mollie was like "oh, and you guys know about the Cameron Diaz thing, right?" and everyone except my co-project leader and i were like, oh yeah...but Mark and i were like whaaaa???!!
yeah, so Cameron Diaz ended up working on my project. with the owner of the Celtics (who is kind of obnoxious). http://www.people.com/people/cameron_diaz/photos#20669149 - those are Mark's legs in the background. she was really into earthworms, and she gave me a hug before she left. needless to say, it was madness. i had, like, the entire news media around one of my planter beds. which kicked butt, by the way (the flower beds, not the news media).
last week we as a team had to earn our boots by performing Physical Training on Copley Square (which we normally do as a whole Corps). it took us two tries, but we all donned safety sunglasses and passed on Wednesday. BTA is officially over as of yesterday (thank god - yesterday my whiny teammates declared that they'd rather have inhaled toxic paint fumes than sat through more workshops) and Opening Day is next Friday. i'm currently mired in the process of attempting to design a mural for a school in East Boston that will be painted during our all-Corps service day that afternoon after the ceremony. i also still have my job at Bean and work sometimes on weekends; we'll see how long that lasts before i go insane. it's even harder to sell people stuff when you've spent the rest of your week doing decent things for the world.
so the short answer is that i'm feeling really good about CY - better than i usually do about things, in fact. after Earlham, it's a huge blessing for me to be in a organization that has as much structure as this does. i feel like i got a lot of big, philosophical tools at Earlham, but at CY i feel like i'm actually DOING something in ways i never felt during college, and it's great for me. the only thing i'm feeling even slightly negative about is that i'm part of this Corps and not last year's - there are some senior Corps members i really wish i could hang out with, but i can't because of our non-fraternization policy (i mean, it's good thing - it would be awkward to have an overly personal relationship with, like, your team leader) (don't worry, Em and i have a pre-existing relationship, so we get to hang out!). sometimes i think you guys would think that this program is ridiculous (no mocking the disclaimer i have to put on this entry!), but it's definitely the right thing for me right now.
funny story, the one guy from the Corps i've hung out with outside of work is this kid Reese (i keep almost accidently calling Reece House...) who has decided he wants to square dance with me. of course, now everyone is kind of making assumptions, which cracks me up because i don't think i've ever been less attracted to anyone in my life. he's a really nice guy, but SO painfully awkward (plus we must follow Sue Jones' "don't get your honey where you get your money" policy...but mostly it's the not being attracted to him thing). i may end up getting him and Katie Minetti together, though...
okay. this is long and so done by now. i love you all buckets and miss you tons. and i'd love to talk to any of you; we have free long distance now, so either i'll call you or give me a call and i'll call you back.
all my love,
