Sharefest

Published on by Casey Category: Colorado

Saturday kicked off the 5th annual Sharefest weekend. Sharefest was started by Calvary Bible as a way to reach out to the community by cleaning schools, non-profit facilities, and community areas, and now, this past weekend the event has grown to 35 churches participating! This was the 2nd Sharefest Noah and I worked. Last year we were at an elementary school in Lafayette painting endless hallways. This year we spent the day outside at Boulder Reservoir (tough job, but someone had to do it).

The weather could not have been any nicer on Saturday! It was in the low 80s, a nice breeze and plenty of entertainment by watching sky divers land near the lake! I was placed in a weed eradication group and Noah ended up with a paintbrush in his hand. The church didn’t organize a lunch for us at the Res, so what did we do? Bar-B-Que of course! We really were spoiled, and yes, I did wear sunscreen this weekend. 🙂 I think us weeders had a harder time than the painters (you should have seen the size of some of those weeds!); we formed a “union” and went on strike at about 3:00pm as we were completely spent (we started the day at 9am). The painters finished up about an hour later.

I only have 2 pictures from the event and those are of our friend Scott running a roto-tiller in a section we needed to weed. It was a blessing that one of the women in our group had the tiller, otherwise we would have taken us half the day weeding that section! Also, milk weeds have now been dubbed The Spikey Weed of Death by Scott’s wife, Meggan. If I can get more pictures from the event I will post those as well.

To wrap up the weekend, all the churches involved met together for one service at a large auditorium on the CU Boulder campus. Noah and I arrived before the rest of our group and randomly picked a row to save. Funny thing is that the row we selected was right in front of our next door neighbors! What are the chances of that in a room filling with 3500 people? To make things even better, we saw another family from down the street and they came over and sat two rows in front of us, with the group that they worked with. So even though we all go to different churches and all served in different areas on Saturday we ended up sitting near each other in the auditorium!

At the service there are representatives from the organizations we served and a slide show of photos taken from the different locations. Our group did not have a representative present nor were any pictures of us included in the presentation, but we all decided that was okay. It boded well for us that we really were the people in the background making the community a better place without receiving any accolades. Although…we did have one guy at the Res ask us where our orange jumpsuits and armed guards were…

Colorado

Published on by Casey Category: Colorado, Whatever

It’s amazing how many of these I can relate to now…I think Noah can relate to just about all of them…

A winter statistic

98% OF AMERICANS SAY ‘OH SHI*T’ BEFORE GOING IN THE DITCH ON A SLIPPERY ROAD.
THE OTHER 2% ARE FROM COLORADO AND THEY SAY, ‘HOLD MY BEER AND WATCH THIS.

You’re from Colorado if:

You’ll eat ice cream in the winter.
When the weather report says it’s going to be 65 degrees, you shave your legs and wear a skirt.
It snows 5 inches and you don’t expect school to be canceled.
You’ll wear flip flops every day of the year, regardless of temperature.
You have no accent at all, but can hear other people’s. And then you make fun of them.
‘Humid’ is over 25%.
Your sense of direction is: Toward the mountains and Away from the mountains.
You say ‘the interstate’ and everybody knows which one.
You think that May is a totally normal month for a blizzard.
You grew up planning your Halloween costumes around your coat.
You know what the Continental Divide is.
You don’t think Coors beer is that big a deal.
You went to Casa Bonita as a kid.
You’ve gone off-roading in a vehicle that was never intended for such activities.
You always know the elevation of where you are.
You wake up to a beautiful, 80 degree day and you wonder if it’s going to snow tomorrow.
You don’t care that some company renamed it, the Broncos still play at Mile High.
Every movie theater has military and student discounts.
Everybody wears jeans to church.
You actually know that South Park is a real place not just a show on TV.
You know what a ‘trust fund hippy’ is, and you know its natural habitat is Boulder .
You know you’re talking to a fellow Coloradoan when they call it Elitches, not Six Flags.
A bear on your front porch doesn’t bother you.
Your two favorite teams are the Broncos and whoever is beating the crap out of the Raiders.
You’ve been to the original Chipotle near the DU campus on Evans.
When people out East tell you they have mountains in their state too, you just laugh.
You go anywhere else on the planet and the air feels ‘sticky’ and you notice the sky is no longer blue.

Windsor

Published on by Casey Category: Colorado, Salvation Army, Weather

This morning Noah and I up got up at 4:30am to head north to Windsor to prepare breakfast with the Salvation Army EDS team.  We served about 300 servings of eggs, sausage and hash browns to National Guard soldiers, Air Patrol Cadets, Windsor and Greeley police, Windsor Fire and city officials and of course, EDS volunteers and employees.  Once breakfast was served we started to prepare another 300 or so lunches that would be given to a nursing home in Windsor as well as soldiers working in the field.  We worked in the canteen for about 6 hours this morning and then had the opportunity to take a tour of the damaged areas of the city.

Growing up in earthquake country seeing tornado damage is almost hard to fathom.  I have never experienced a tornado and hope I never will.  But the their destruction is so random!  In an earthquake epicenter there is damage everywhere and it’s very obvious.  With tornadoes, it really is hit and miss!  The side of town our command post was located had little to no damage.  Looking around you would never have guessed there was a tornado.  The east side of town was not so fortunate, but at the same, it was not as if everything was demolished or damaged.  There was one neighborhood that every house was practically destroyed, and buildings across the street looked as if they were not even touched!  The Salvation Army employee that took us and another volunteer around said that about 100 damaged homes were able to be repaired, but another 100 or so were condemned.  We saw one house that only had 1 wall of the garage left standing.  Most were missing roofs or had damaged roofs.  It’s an EDS semi-policy not to bring cameras to events, so we took what we could with our cell phones.  I have uploaded the pictures from mine here, and when I get a chance I’ll add the pictures and video Noah took with his phone.  It was not what I expected, but then again I didn’t know what to expect, but it was a great experience and one I will never forget.

One thought I had while touring the city, that’s a bit morbid, is that although the tornado was a horrible act of nature and cost so much damage, it will create the workload and jobs needed to help sustain the slowed construction economy.  So even in the darkest of situations there is always a silver lining.

Tornadoes

Published on by Casey Category: Colorado, Weather

Yesterday we had some wild weather in Colorado. For about 8 hours we were under a tornado watch! Yes, even in Boulder County! For about 20 minutes, Northeast Boulder County was even under a tornado warning! A bit unnerving! I called Noah to see where he was (as he drives all over the county for his job) and told him to stay out of Longmont. He was in Superior (Southeast of Boulder) at the time. Although we only had sporadic rain showers, wind and small hail in the city of Boulder, a town in northern Colorado was not so lucky. Windsor, in Weld County (which is Northeast of Boulder County) was hit by what is being called an F-4 tornado. The estimates are that the tornado was a mile wide and was on the ground for 35 miles! I heard on the radio this morning that Weld County has more reported tornadoes than any other county in the country. The only difference is that the tornadoes in Weld rarely touch down, or they are usually small and don’t do any damage.

Last night when we came home from bible study we had a message on our machine from the Salvation Army. We were being called to go up to Windsor to help, mainly with feeding the workers. If you remember back, last year we signed up to be Emergency Disaster Volunteers (EDS). I called the guy back this morning and signed us up to help feed breakfast Sunday morning. It will be an early rise, as we have to be there by 6am, and Windsor is about 40 minutes away, without roadblocks to talk our way through (we do have SA IDs, so hopefully those will help!). This will be our first experience volunteering at a natural disaster event. Pray for the families affected by the tornadoes (there were actually two touchdowns) and for us that we may be a light (and helpful) to the people in Windsor.

Balloons, Sales, Sun and Superheroes

Published on by Casey Category: Colorado

Saturday morning, our one day a week to sleep in, we got up before the sun (5:00am) to head over to the Erie Town Fair to watch over 30 hot air balloons take to the air at 6:00am. It was an amazing experience and a lot of fun! We took 150 pictures of the Balloon Launch and one video. The video is currently horizontal, but if I can ever figure out how to rotate it, I’ll repost it. The balloons were set-up right next to the hundreds of spectators. We had a balloon go up on either side of where we were standing! If you ever wanted to know how hot air balloons are prepared for flight, be sure to check out all the pictures and the video, which details the balloon directly to our right being filled with hot air.

After all the balloons were airborne we headed south from Erie to Westminster to spend the day with friends at their annual community garage sale. The weather could not have been better for spending time outside, about 80*! It was wonderful, so much sun that my arms are currently a nice shade of red. We didn’t bring much to sell but we did make $18 on what we sold and Noah bought a new set of golf clubs for $20. So, the next garage sale, Noah will sell his old ones…for at least $20.

After the garage sale, Noah went golfing with some of the guys then we went out to see Iron Man. Awesome awesome movie! If you want to be entertained for two hours, I highly recommend the film. When it comes out on DVD, it will be added to our collection. Up at 5:00am and to bed at 1:00am made for a very long but very fun day! Did I mention we only had 5 hours of sleep the night before and then 6 hours last night? I think I need a nap…

The Word is Out

Published on by Casey Category: Work

This is an excerpt from a cover letter I received today regarding an open position:

“I am also hoping that the fact that I am an avid Dodgers fan might sway you to take a closer look at my resume.”

That’s qualification enough for me. 

Back into the Swing of Things

Published on by Casey Category: Colorado, Weather, Whatever

Last night was game 1 of 36 softball games (assuming we play every game on all three teams). This morning I am tired and sore…it’s going to take a game or two for my muscles to get used to being put into positions they do not experience in a normal day.

Last night’s game was the team our Sunday School class formed (of which the church would not help fund). Although we played very well, we had one inning that did us in when the opposing team earned 9 runs. We didn’t have any errors, the other team just liked to hit the ball over the heads of our outfielders. Final score, CDG Custom Homes 12, Boulder Path (us) 7. Not a slaughter and a good first game.

Tonight is USA Rugby’s first game (yes, ruggers play softball too…hopefully well). Noah and I will be at that game (unless of course the clear liquid falling from the sky causes a cancellation). Tomorrow night is Floorcrafters first game of the season but we were informed yesterday that we do not need to play this week. Next week however, I think we do.

Also, on an unrelated note. I think the fatigue is somewhat exacerbated by the fact we were awakened at 5am by thunder. Yup, spring is officially here folks.