Week 47

Day 322: Jun 28, 2015

Today was hot and sweaty. Because of that we pretty much laid low all day.

Day 323: Jun 29, 2015

It is raining! We had a thunderstorm last night that has extended into the morning. The rain is great. It has drastically cooled to outside temperature. The down side, though, is that one of the lightning strikes started a small fire two valleys north of us. At of right now we think it has only burned a hand full of trees but the rain is slowing so who knows. The forest service is on it, though. They are checking it out and getting it under control so we shouldn't have to evacuate due to this one (hopefully). It is supposed to rain on and off all day but then nothing for the rest of the week. I hope they get the fire under control today since it will probably be easiest now. Update: the fire has officially been named the Wolverine Fire. Update 2: The fire is no longer active but people will be out there monitoring 24 hours a day for the next few days.

Day 324: Jun 30, 2015

USA!!! We won the women's world cup semi-final!! On to the final. It was awesome because Rio let us watch it on their satellite TVs so we could actually watch the game. It felt great to yell at a TV and watch commercials like they are the greatest thing ever. After the game, we were given the opportunity to go on a tour of the work site. It looks pretty much the same as it did last summer. There has been a ton of work done, it is just all under ground. After vespers, a few of us sat on the porch to enjoy the cooler temperature of the evening. It is amazing how beautiful this place is and having background acoustic guitar doesn't hurt the beauty either :) . Once it started to get too cold/ dark we headed inside and watched Arrested Development.

Day 325: Jul 1, 2015

Wow, time is flying. It is already July. Crazy. Today was pretty normal (minus a quick meeting about evacuation and what to do if it needs to happen) until staff meeting. It was kind of a downer way to end the day because it ended up being an hour and a half of Chuck and Peg explaining what they want to do during their tenure. It was long, the room was hot, and they tried to bribe us with candy. Don't get me wrong, it was good to see what they want to do and hear about things but the whole thing could have been cut in half. As staff, we don't need to know everything and, in fact, most of us don't want to know everything. There were people getting a little upset because they are focusing mainly on programming stuff (makes sense since that is a HUGE part of having guests here) rather than betterment projects around the village. Yes, we need people to help keep the village in good shape but not nearly as many as we have needed to do all of these projects that we have done in the last few year (underground electrical, better communication stuff around the village, new pipes, new foot bridge, etc). Programming is what makes this village a fun place in the summer and it is what keeps people coming back. It is important to make the first guest season back a great one so that people get excited and tell others it is amazing so that guest seasons quickly ramp up in numbers.

It is now much later than I would really like so good night all.

Day 326: Jul 2, 2015

It is never a good sign when the directors want everyone to come to vespers 15 minutes early to make an announcement about the Wolverine fire. Turns out the fire is in a really bad spot. It is basically in a pit surrounded by steep cliffs. They have been pouring water on it from helicopters but you can't really get control of a fire or put it out without boots on the ground. Since the fire is in a treacherous area they can't get people in to fight it. Unless something changes (it rains without lightning, the wind changes, or a general miracle) it looks like we might evacuate within the week. The fire is no danger to the village but it could pass over the road which is our only way out. They really don't want us trapped. If they evacuate us it will be so that fire crews can do a controlled burn on the north side of the road so there will be nothing for the fire to use as fuel. I am hoping that if we do get evacuated it will only be a few days. I am supposed to leave soon and really don't want to have to come back to get my stuff. I guess I am going to go through some stuff and pack tomorrow....

Day 327: Jul 3, 2015

My stuff is packed and I am ready to go. Things are getting hectic and Hot Shots (fire fighters) came in for dinner and are working down valley. Everyone is making it sound like we are heading out tomorrow which is very possible but according to someone who works for the fire service he thinks it might be another few days. It is going to be a stressful few days.

Day 328: Jul 4, 2015

I think this has been one of the best Forth of July's that I have ever experienced. In the morning I gave free coffee drinks to anyone who stopped by (we went through 5lbs of coffee and 5 gallons of milk). It was fun to stay busy all morning and make people happy. I really enjoyed making the remediation guys happy and then some of the fire fighters came in and I got to surprise them with coffee too. I think we are going to give the fire guys free coffee every day we are open. I figure it is the least we can do for the help that they are giving us. So, I stayed pretty busy all morning and then rinsed out my tie-dye shirt which is my new “work” shirt. It is a random pattern where I just squished the shirt together and then dyed it rust brown which is more of a medium roast coffee brown color. On the front of the shirt I drew a coffee bean and wrote BEANIE'S and on the back I wrote “The best coffee in town”. It turned out pretty great except that the soda ash mix made the permanent marker run so it isn't as crisp and clean as I would like but I am still pretty happy about it. I took my usual nap in the afternoon but woke up early. It was so quiet in town that I got a little worried that I was missing something but it turned out that most everyone was taking a nap since it was such a warm day. We had vespers early but the remediation guys were already off work so a few came (they did an evacuation drill) and then dinner. Most everyone ate outside and it was nice because we (everyone who sleeps in the village) were all together enjoying a meal. It had cooled off nicely by dinner so we sat outside and listened to music. After dinner we started the festivities. We had proclamations where anyone could say anything they wanted, tug of war, face paint, water balloon toss, mini golf (with hockey sticks and ping pong balls), and chalk to decorate with. It was so much fun. Then we got ready for the parade. I ended up pulling Alex and Sam down the street in one of our luggage carts. They were the Grand Marshal and his wife. It was really easy to pull but a little hard to stop so we tried not to do much of that. We went down main street once and then flipped the line and went back. It was a fun way to do it and made the parade a little longer. When we flipped, I got into the cart and they pulled. It was a fun way to do it and it didn't make them seem like assholes for making me pull the whole way. Once the parade was done we headed to the village center and got free ice cream before the fireworks started. Our fireworks consisted of pictures of fireworks and all of the bubble wrap collected throughout the year. The bubble wrap added the bang without the flame. I have not had so much fun in a long time. We jumped into piles of bubble wrap and danced in the piles and once it was all popped and the “fireworks” were done, most of the 20-somethings hung around and danced some more. It was great. I used popped strings of those air pockets that are not in sheets and make a huge noise when you pop them as a dancing ribbon. We treated the popped stuff like it was a pile of leaves and threw arm fulls in the air, rolled around in the plastic, jumped in it, etc. It was such a great day and now it is 11:30pm, I am exhausted and content, and it is my day off tomorrow. :)