A Couple Quotes

Paraphrased quotes, anyway. A homeowner told me last week that signing up with ASP hurt his pride, but having all the groups at his house as restored his faith in humanity.

Also, today I put a door in a mobile home. The homeowner's son asked about what kind of latch was going to be on the storm door. I said I didn't know -- I hadn't gotten into the hardware kit for the door yet. His mom correctly guessed that he wasn't the details of the handle and explained that it wasn't going to be a hook and loop, or involve tying string around a nail or anything like that. That surprised me. I hadn't imagined that this kid would be excited to have what I considered a standard economy-grade storm doon. As frustrating as the whole process was (including reframing the wall to accomodate the new, larger door), in the end I was glad I did it.

The summer is flying by. I'm looking forward to moving to Memphis and starting school. And I've got tentative plans for the summer that include going back to Venezuela for a little while. That's something to look forward to.

Life in ASP Land

We are heading into week four of an eight week program. It has flown by. If I didn't say so earlier, I run around four different centers and try to help out with troublesome projects and problems. Between the 4 centers there are probably 30-35 projects going on at a time. Thankfully the staffs are amazing and they get some amazing group leaders so I don't get called in for my opinion on much.

But a few things do come my way. I should first comment that I'm operating way over my head. The kind of work and the kind of houses ASP deals with are, for the most part, outside of my experience. But I'm catching on quickly. My current headache is an old house that started out with two rooms but has been added onto at every side. The additions are using modern construction and on a good foundation. The old center is not -- it has logs for floor joists, most of which are rotten, and it has sunk a few inches below the additions. We now have four weeks to tear out the logs and build a new wall-supporting floor without letting the structure fall apart in the process. Fun fun...

At the beginning of the summer, I looked at this sort of project with dread. Now though I'm starting to come around a bit. I know how to do this in a theoretical sense. It's just a series of steps with minor modifications along the way. It's easy to be overwhelmed, but I just have to look at it one peice at a time.

I think this is a great experience for me as I head towards medical school. I will often (I suspect) be required to dive into things with only a theoretical understanding and work through it methodically. This is a good opportunity to get used to dealing with that kind of pressure before it really matters. Breaking a big problem into manageable chunks isn't something I'm very good at, but I'm learning.

I should also take a moment to say that my fellow staffers here (at ASP in general) are amazing.