My Next Project

Oklahoma here I come.  After Christmas break I will be back in Denver for a week and then headed east to Oklahoma.  

My team will become Certified Type 2 Wild land Firefighters and will work with the U.S. Forest Service at Ouachita National Forest.  We'll be living in boy scout cabins!  I'm so darned excited.  This is also where we will be for our 4th round project.

The closest city to us will be Poteau, Oklahoma which comes in at a whopping 8,500 people.  Never fear, there is a Wal-Mart.  Starbucks, not so much.  

I don't have too much more information right now.  I'll let you know as I get more.  Paul is headed to northern Texas to work with the United Way.  He's happy about it.

Best Weekend Ever

I was spoiled this past weekend.  Way spoiled.  Janet and Bob picked me up Saturday afternoon after our team Starbucks run and whisked me away to Paul and Sonja's.  

I was able to have a good home cooked meal and sleep in a real bed.  Funny how my standards have changed since I've been in AmeriCorps.  

Sunday we headed to Max's Wine Dive and I had an excellent lunch which boasted my first taste of Texas fried chicken.  Delicious.  

After lunch we headed to The Witte Museum.  The museum itself isn't very large but there were a few neat exhibits.  Janet and I were on opposite ends of the spectrum for our interest in the textiles exhibit.  I've always been interested in clothing through the ages, Janet just breezed right through it. 

This quilt, aptly named "The Crazy Quilt" reminded me of Grandma Butch.  I'm sure any of you who have seen her Crazy Quilts will agree it's a pretty good replica.  

Sunday evening came all to fast and I headed back to Land Heritage Institute.  Of course, Janet and Bob are amazing and left me with a wonderful care package.  The chocolate won't last long but I'm excited to read the books they gave me.

Longhorns

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we have 32 Longhorns that reside in the fields behind our bunk house.  These are purebred Texas Cattlemen's Longhorns, or something like that.

Because they are purebred it is important that other cattle don't get mixed in with them and muddle up the blood lines.

Well, that is exactly what happened this past week.  A few cows from a nearby ranch went rogue and got into LHI's pens.  To make it easier to catch the other cows, and be sure no blood line crossing happened, Peggy rounded up the Longhorns and kept them in the smaller pen behind our house while the rogue cows were rounded up.

Peggy has conditioned the Longhorns to make rounding them up quite simple.  She drives a vehicle over to the pen by our house, honks the horn twice, then yells "hup, hup" a few times.  The Longhorns hear it and know when they come there will be a snack waiting for them.

I took advantage of the fact that the cows were rounded up to get some fun pictures.  I even helped Peggy feed the Longhorns while they were rounded up by driving the truck through their pen while she unloaded food for them.  That was an experience.  I was afraid I was going to hit one with the truck!

Thanksgiving

We had an Ameri-Thanksgiving here at the Land Heritage Institute yesterday.

One of our site supervisors, Jim, joined us and brought with him a turkey.  I was very grateful for that, as I am not quite ready to tackle making an actual turkey.  Although watching Leigh do it last year was fun.

Peggy, another site supervisor, dropped off stuffing and two pies.  Peggy and Mark are married and are the ones in charge of LHI.  Peggy is a great cook, and we've gotten to be beneficiaries of her skill multiple times.  One of my team members is allergic to milk and eggs which makes cooking interesting sometimes, but Peggy is awesome and finds ways to make great food without those ingredients.

My teammate, Laura, and I were in charge of the other sides which consisted of mashed potatoes (!!yum!!), vegetables, salad, etc.  Pretty darn tasty if I do say so myself.  I even had two slices of Peggy's pecan pie, it was so delicious.

After dinner we still had sunny skies and warm weather here in San Antonio so I grabbed my book and headed down a trail near our house to a blind to spend some time reading.  I didn't see any animals, but Mark has told me that the best time for spotting animals is just before sun rise.  Maybe someday I will be ambitious enough to get over there that early.

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving at home.  Mom, you might have to make that blackberry pie again when I'm home.  It sounds delicious.  Only three more weeks and I'll be back.

Pictures

Who woulda thought.

Did you ever think I'd be using a pick axe to dig a trench to lay pipe?  Nope, me neither.  I think I will be doing a lot of crazy things this year.  I'm excited.

Photo by my teammate Ben.

Ameri-Birthday

Happy birthday to my teammate Amanda.  I'll take any excuse to eat pie and ice cream.