Aurora's Blog

One of the things I found really helpful in 52 half marathons project was doing a bonus 53rd race at the end.

(I mean, technically it was ridiculous, and my body was so tired. And I sort of hurt my back a bit. So, I’m not sure it was the smartest thing ever. However…)

What I liked about it was that looking back, I think it would’ve been sort of easy to say, “Project done. So tired. The end. Get out of my face, running.” But I think by then doing another race that wasn’t totally part of the project, it helped propel me forward into keeping the habit of running going.

(After all, isn’t that kind of the point of the project? To strengthen something about my life that I wanted to work on? (Not to just do something then abandon it.))

So, I felt I needed to do the same thing with the volunteer activities. I found a listing to help this place called The Maker Guilds (part of a place called The Exploratory). The goal is to provide STEAM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Art & Math) to under-served communities.

Maker Guilds was holding an event at a library in Hollywood where kids would learn about Rube Goldberg machines. Only one child showed up and there were three of us there to help. So, the teacher asked if I wanted to try my hand at one. Do I?!

So, basically, this wasn’t so much of a volunteer event as just playtime for me – fun (albeit stressful) playtime.

First, when I was given the contraption, I was told the lever needed to move to hit the cart to make the cart go down the ramp. My first instinct was to have something going across that would make the downside of the lever jump up instead of having something from press from above to make the other side of the lever go down. (Does that make sense?)

Apparently most people start with figuring out a way to get the level to go down, not up. So, when I started with my way, one of the main volunteers there said, “Wow, we’ve got a genius with us today!”

Okay, well that is a lot of pressure!

I used what I was seeing another volunteer do as inspiration to help me better understand the thought process behind certain things. Eventually, I did get mine to work. Then I built back to make it slightly more complicated. Then I got it to work… one time. I tried to duplicate it, but there was never quite enough force to do it again. At that point, the activity was almost over. So I couldn’t go back to the drawing board to try anything new.

It was a bummer not to be able to re-create it (with the new beginning), but since I could do it with extra steps (but not so many extra), and since I was able to do the more complicated way at least once, I’m just gonna call it a win. Is that cool; can I have that?

Then I helped carry the supplies out to a car (the one really volunteer-y thing I did. And that was number 53! We’re done, baby.

Soon up – a conclusion post about the 52 volunteer activities.

Picking up from last time –

I was a little excited for my “would you rather” question. Even though I know they’re pretty silly and don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things since you’ll never need to answer in real life, they’re still fun.

I easily knew my answers to some of the ones being asked around the table.

There were a number of them I found pretty interesting – would you rather lose your sight or hearing? Would you rather lose your hair (without the possibility for it to grow back) or your sense of smell?

I feel like there are legitimate sides your could take and debates you could make about pros and cons.

Then my question was, “Would you rather have your skin turn purple or blue?” Come on now! Those both sound terrible. How am I supposed to get hired for anything with purple or blue skin?

That question was the first thing I said. Then someone piped up and said, “Well, with blue skin, you could at least in Avatar and The Blue Man Group.

Smart.

So, I went with blue. Some opportunities are better than none. (And yes, I suppose technically with purple skin you could possibly make your own opportunities. Anything is possible…)

Anyway, enough with the ice breakers. We moved on to the main activity.

It was all about seeing your life in the future. There were 10 questions all about where you wanted to be in 10 years – what would you like? Where would you live? What transportation would you use?

And then you got to draw a little 4-drawing story on the other side to show something that’d happen in your life.

(In case your wondering, mine was my Broadway debut. It was me onstage with the ghostlight looking at an empty theater, excited for butts in the seat, then people in the theater waiting with anticipation before the curtain comes up. The 3rd photo was my curtain call. And the last one was my dad and high school theater teacher waiting to take me out for dinner.)

We went around the table as each girl told us about her upcoming life. It was crazy to hear some of them say things such as “Well, in 10 years, I’ll be 24 years old.” It was also slightly crazy to hear some of them react to that realization with, “Oh my gosh, I’ll be soooooo old!”

Yeah. You’ll be ancient when you’re 24. (I know I totally just said that with sarcasm, but in Los Angeles, I don’t blame them for feeling that way. I sometimes feel that way!)

Anyway, it was interesting to hear how packed full of hope so many of the stories were – and how vivid some of the pictures were. I know we were supposed to be there to help them, but I think seeing the world through such hopeful and vivid eyes is perhaps something they helped to show us.

Children of the Night is an organization that rescues children from prostitution. (You can read about the organization here.)

There is a group that goes in once a week with a new creative activity to help the children/teens.

I totally believe in using creativity for good, and I think it really can do a lot of good. So, I was in to go help out and see what this was all about.

When we got there, we all met on the sidewalk. We all gathered as a group 1st so that people wouldn’t need to be buzzed in to the building one by one. Everyone was super nice.

Once we went in to the lobby, we signed in and there was a little speech given about the rules before we were let into another layer of restricted area (the one where we met the girls). The rules were basically:
No photos inside, since you never know who’s looking to kidnap these girls back.
No touching unless it’s initiated by one of the girls – no hugs, no high-fives, no handshakes, no nothing unless she initiates it.
No talking of the past. They’re here to move on. So, we wanted to stay away from the past. We were told that if one of the girls brings up her past, we can talk about it with her, as we don’t want to shut anyone down. But we were not to bring it up.

At the beginning of the night, we played an icebreaker game. One of the group leaders had printed off innocent would-you-rather questions he found online. Each person around the circle would be given a different question.

One was “would you rather be able to change the past, or be able to see the future?” As soon as he started reading “change the past,” I felt this sense of “Uh oh. Didn’t we just hear these rules?” I know he did it on accident, but you could feel the tension on the volunteer side of the table as the girls erupted into opinions. It was definitely the most talked about question of the night.

Ultimately, the girl who answered said she would not change the past because she loves who she is, and she doesn’t know whom she’d be if she’d had a different past.

I thought that was an incredibly… I don’t even know what word I’m looking for. I don’t want to say grown-up answer because I don’t want to sound patronizing to her (or make it sound like grown-ups have it together). But it just seemed very self-aware and kind to herself.

And this is where we’ll pick up next time.

I mentioned last time how happy I was to get a Mensa event in (as it had been a smaller side goal of mine)!

On Friday night, I worked at the registration table. And my job was to keep watch of the money box. I’d worked registration tables before, but hadn’t been in charge of the money during any of my 52 volunteer activities.

Of course, this makes sense. I was always a stranger, so who’s gonna trust me? But I think here, since I’m on the board and everything, they were cool.

(Side note: I guess thinking about it, I was responsible for taking some payments at two different silent auctions. So, I have done some semi-money handling during this project. Still, I think this was my first time with the cash box.)

Of course, I gave them no reason not to trust me since the money all balanced out… Granted, most people payed with checks so that wasn’t really all that hard.

I logged everything I took in. I gave everyone the correct stickers to get into whatever they were buying. And I had a partner at the desk help me make sure everybody was getting their sticker. (Teamwork makes the dream work, after all, right?)

The only thing that could’ve made this a little better would’ve been a cheat sheet for what things cost. We kept having to look it up on our phones, which was fine. I hardly know how to function without my iPhone. So, of course she worked beautifully. But, I think one cheat sheet with prizes would’ve been cool.

(Just thought I should throw that in since I’m always looking for ways to make things better, since this 52 in 52 project has also helped me to better plan events and empower volunteers (if ever I have a job to do that).

The registration table is a pretty nice place to work since you get to meet a bunch of people. I’d be open to doing it at this event next year.

So, there you have it. #51 down. One more to go!

And I’ll have one more post (unrelated to volunteering) all about the conference in general.

I went to a Mensa Regional Gathering that lasted for a 3-day weekend, and I did various things throughout the weekend. So, I almost counted this as #51 and #52.

After all, even though it was the same organization, it was over different days and it involved different activities. Couldn’t that count? Well, I didn’t want to do anything on a fine line. So, I’m gonna put kind of the leftovers from the weekend here, and we’ll do “real #51” (an activity from the weekend I hadn’t yet done) next. Sound good? Great. Let’s do it!

I’m so happy I finally made my way around to volunteering at a Mensa event. I’ve been on the board for over a year and a half, and I had yet to really get involved in any meaningful way. So, this was pretty lovely.

Some of the extra things I did over the weekend included:
– Helping serve food at dinner.

(I’d done that for a previous volunteer activity – which actually kinda helped me learn how not to spill bean juice (when I ended up on beans again). So, that was pretty cool. Learning, baby!)

I got to stand next to some fun silly people also helping to serve food. And we got to serve some fun people as well. I forget how it came up, but I mentioned I went to Berklee. And one person said, “Whoa. Berklee?! That’s like the MIT of music schools!” And I was all, “Oh, thank you so much.” Then he said his wife went to MIT and he went to Harvard, so we were all kind of Boston buddies. And I just thought, “Yep. This is a Mensa convention all right.”

Speaking of the food, I’d heard this was the first year that they had someone in charge of vegan and vegetarian options, and I just want to say bravo! We got Veggie Grill one day and Native Foods (my favorite!) the next. There was so much! And I never like to let any Native Foods go to waste. So, my stomach was practically bursting by the end of the weekend. (Sorry, stomach.)

– Speaker shepherding

Basically, we just needed to make sure speakers got to their rooms and had everything they needed. And sometimes we gave a little intro. My speakers were so on top of everything. They had their set-ups down to a science, and they were in their rooms early. So, conceivably I “helped” by being there, but I didn’t do much.

– Working with the kids.

Yet again, I felt there wasn’t a ton I needed to do here. There were plenty of other adults in the room watching the kids and helping them with various activities. I did get to answer a few questions here and there for parents. So, again, I kind of sort of did stuff. I mean, I did give my time. So, I guess that was something. But, ultimately, I basically just played with the leftover frosting in the kids’ cookie decorating class.

And we’ll get to my real 51st volunteer activity next!

Picking up from last time –

As far as how I contributed, there wasn’t tons for me to do. I did get to answer a question about Garageband. (I got to show how to bring up automation for volume, so you could change the volume levels throughout a track.)

That one felt especially cool because before the program started, as we were setting up, I familiarized myself with the new version of Garageband (since some of the computers were running that).

One of the things I didn’t immediately see how to do was show automation for your tracks. I thought if there’s anything these students are going to ask (since it’s helpful to working out your arrangement and not immediately visible in the program), it’s going to be how to change volume, panning, etc. throughout the track (that sweet, sweet automation).

So, I looked it up. And wouldn’t you know it, that’s the exact thing that came in helpful later! “Aurora do you know how to do this?”
“Oh, yeah.” [*Confidently walks over*] Just go up to “mix” in the menu. Now “show automation.” Great. Now you can choose what you want to see. You’re looking for volume, which is the default right here.

Ba-bam!

And that pretty much covers my entire contribution – showing someone how to do one thing (which google could’ve done, but let’s all choose to believe I’m cooler than google).

The students were surprisingly self-sufficient. I guess I shouldn’t say surprisingly, as I know high schoolers are smart. I just remember being at Berklee and one of the first classes you take is intro to Music Tech.

I studied up for a day and tested out of that class. But still, as was mentioned (by other people) earlier in this day, Berklee is one of the best music schools around and even they have to acquaint much of the incoming student population with Garageband. So, I dunno. Maybe I’m behind the times or something, but I still thought it was pretty impressive that these students had such a great grasp on it.

We (adult mentors) walked around a bit, looking at their screens, trying to see if anyone needed help and was perhaps too quiet to ask. But everyone was happily working away on their own.

Basically, all around applause – to the students working so hard, and the school for offering this, and especially Lauren and Harley for running such a program. What a volunteer activity! This was truly lovely.

I thought this program was pretty darn cool. It sounds like what they’ve been doing for the past few weeks is having musicians of different instruments come in, and record some stuff. I guess they talk about their instrument and life as a musician. Then they all laid down tracks in the same key at the same tempo.

Now that there are plenty of different things to choose from – different drum kits, brass instruments, vocals, electronic sounds, strings, and such – all the tracks were set up in GarageBand so the students could go through them and decide what they wanted for their song.

Some people were going after more of a techno feel. Some were going for more acoustic. It was incredibly cool to see the ways different people could take the same options and make things that were totally different.

Then, once the students had their jumping off point, they got to write their own part for their instrument that they’d add to make the song even more their own.

Before we even started working in Garageband, the afternoon was started off with the people running the program telling the high schoolers about a couple of song contests they could enter. I thought that elevated everything to an even higher level of awesomeness. ‘Cause not only are we gonna make some music here. We’re gonna have a goal to add to it.

I also thought something that was quite interesting was that immediately after the contests were introduced, the first question (phrased exactly like this) was, “Can we collaborate?” The first instinct wasn’t to try to one-up everybody else in the class. It was to work together. I thought that was probably a testament to the kind of program Lauren and Harley are running.

(Don’t get me wrong. I’m slightly obsessed with competition and being the best… I still thought it was nice though that the students wanted to work together.)

And I’ll pick up here next time.

This one blew my mind!

Let’s think back to almost a year ago. For the 3rd of my 52 volunteer activities, I helped tear apart a school’s library in Watts, as part of its renovation.  We were told they were going to transformation it into a creative space that could be used in various ways.

Well, I saw a listing looking for someone to help on the tech side of an after-school music program – helping with GarageBand and such. Well, I did study Music Production & Engineering at Berklee College of Music. I think (hope) I know enough about GarageBand to help most high schoolers.

So, I happily signed up. (At the time I signed up, I didn’t know where the school was – just what they were looking for.)

I’m sure you probably see where this awesome story is going. The program was held in the new renovated library space! I got to see the finished product, and I got to see that the school really was using the space to do creative things with students after all!

It tickled me and warmed my heart so much to be present for that!

So, that’s the most amazing part of the story, but now I’ll get into the actual event itself.

It was slightly nerve-wracking for me to go help with music stuff. There were three other amazing adult musicians there. So, uh, who am I? And they always introduce new people to the students (of course). When I was introduced, they said, “She studied Music Engineering at Berklee College of Music. I don’t know if you know this, but it’s one of the best music schools in the country.” Then, one of the other leaders of the group jumped in and said, “One of the best in the world.”

Okay, that is obviously true (and awesome – I kind of love when people get all impressed about where I went to school). But it’s still a lot to live up to!

And I’ll pick up here next time.

Hmmm. It’s April, and this project ended in February. Think it’s about time I catch up on these events, or what? 🙂

The homeless count is conducted to try to get a sense of the number of homeless people living in our city, so the government can have a sense of how much money to allocate to various areas.

My understanding is that the LA count takes place over a few different days. (LA’s quite large.) Judging by this article, it sounds like our count sounds may be a little different from counts in other cities. (Or maybe it’s the same and I just don’t have a full overview of the program since I participated in one area on one night.

For out count, we were instructed not to try to engage any homeless people. We were given pamphlets that had information on some programs, and we were told if anyone asks us about what we’re doing, or asks for help, we give a pamphlet.

It sounds like some other cities conduct surveys, seeking out homeless people and asking them questions (and possibly trying to get them services right there?). Again, maybe a different group in our city does that to. But on our night, in our area, we didn’t.

Basically, we all started by meeting up in a conference room downtown. There was a short presentation on what the night would be like, and what we should be counting. (There were spots on the form to count vans people lived in, tents, etc… And of course, there were spots for people themselves.)

We went around the room and introduced ourselves. Then we split into groups of 2 – 4 who each took a different area of the city. Most of the areas available were in downtown, but there were some to which you’d have to drive.

Get this! This was possibly one of the coolest things I’ve experienced since I’ve been in LA. When some of the leaders of this activity asked who was available to drive, you could hear rumblings around the room of nearly everyone saying, “I don’t have a car” or “I didn’t bring a car.”

It was glorious! It seems so many people out here use cars to drive 3 blocks. But downtown, ah downtown has the people with the metropolis mindset. Mmmm

I was paired with a lawyer, a former bodyman for a now-disgraced politician, and the guy who started Peddler’s Creamery (a super cool ice cream place downtown). What a group, huh?

We traversed every corner of our area – including going through all these alleys I never even noticed. (And our blocks were right by apartment! How did I not notice any of these alleys before?)

It rained a little, but not enough to be bothersome.

Some homeless people were on bikes. So, I don’t know if some maybe got counted twice (if they biked to another area and another group saw them) or maybe not at all (if they never happened to bike in the same place people were counting).

There are criticizers of the method of the homeless count. But we did the best we could, and hopefully the count was accurate enough to get the necessary funding to continue working on this problem.

The woman who ran the event was a total hoot! She was practically doing stand-up comedy as we were waiting to be assigned into groups. So, seeing her at the end to give her our tally sheet was a welcome bow on the evening.

Even though it was generally sad to go around counting homeless people, a lot of them were actually laughing and talking to other people. Seeing that happiness was nice. And spending a few hours getting to walk around (in the sweet, sweet darkness without the crazy sun all up on my business) with a totally interesting group was quite lovely.

I’d call it a pretty grand night.

Picking up from last time –

Not only did all the bags need tissue paper, they all also needed cards from the mayor (with some personal messages written on them by various volunteers and such).

This became yet another source of confusion. People would be walking the bags over to various tissue paper stations. The people putting in the cards couldn’t keep up with how fast they needed to stuff cards in the bags. And the people carrying the bags didn’t necessarily know that some bags had cards and some didn’t, so they’d just set the bags down somewhere generally by the station. And you’d have to have eagle eyes and quick reflexes to go get those bags immediately.

Chris and I were at one of the stations, putting in cards as fast as we could. One of the bag carries noticed how ridiculously fast we were going, and thankfully asked if we needed help. I gave her an immediate huge yes. With three of us, we were able to keep things pretty well under control.

Chris gave his brilliant idea that it actually would probably be easier if, instead of trying to keep piles straight at tissue paper stations, people just went over to where the finished bags were and put cards in there – with no bags getting carried away from that station until they had cards.

Of course. Why hadn’t anyone thought of that before? Even when he said it, though, none of us went over to do it. So many people were carrying bags. There was no way one or two of us could’ve kept up with the way things were moving. And we didn’t feel like we could all go, because then there’d be these bags coming in to our tissue paper station during the transition that didn’t have cards.

So, we just stayed in triage mode – stuffing cards into the bags coming into our station as fast as we could.

Once our station slowed down a bit, I noticed a very busy station with only one person manning the cards. So, I ran over to help him. We were stuffing as fast as we could. Even still, our new station was getting out of control pretty quickly. So, I ran over to the pre-carried bags and started stuffing them, just as Chris had suggested. I went as fast as I could. Very quickly, some other card stuffers came to join me and the bag carriers jumped on board, not taking anything except the carded bags.

Yay for efficiency and super helpful people!

Of course all the bag carriers also told their stations “these are already carded” when they delivered the bags, so the stations could keep to whatever individual sorting stuff they had going on.

So, everyone seemed to be on the same page. Woot!

We wondered why the cards weren’t just part of the assembly line. My best guess is because they weren’t necessarily done in time to be part of it. Volunteers were writing personal notes on the cards when I walked in for my shift. So, I think that’s why we waited on those.

While I love to learn from the experiences and write out how things could’ve gone better, I’ll also say this was a good day, with a lot of nice people, where a lot got accomplished (and we got nice mini-workouts and free swag). So, thumbs up!

Picking up from last time –

The line got oh so much slower as people had to stop for longer periods of time for us to stuff goodies in their bags. We were going as fast as we possibly could. But it couldn’t be as fast as the ol’ drop and go.

Some people were asking us (at the front of the assembly line), “Why are the blankets in first?!” I didn’t totally enjoy having annoyed people around me, because there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t even give an explanation as to how or why that came to be the deal.

Soon enough, we all kind of shrugged our collective shoulders. No, the whole blankets-first thing didn’t seem like the greatest idea, but at that point there was nothing any of us could do about it. People who were there were there to give and have a great day. So, everyone got back in the spirit, and we all just laughed about our bleeding fingers.

Eventually all of those bags were finished. We got to go back to stuffing empty bags. There was practically cheering about it, and the already happy mood got even happier.

Everyone in the line seemed cool, but there was one guy specifically (Chris), who had this super outgoing, sort of flamboyant personality who was totally my new best friend of the day. Every time he’d come through, I’d ask a little more about him, ‘cause he seemed so fun. And he’d ask a little about me. Once as he came around, he said, “It’s kind of like we’re speed dating, Aurora!” That got a nice laugh.

I also loved that during the event, I was basically getting a nice little workout! Someone said she felt like Lucy in the chocolate factory episode (which was actually just on at the gym the other night – so her reference was extremely fresh in my mind). And I agreed! The line went so quickly. And as people went by, we kept having to open new boxes of stuff. Then people would be running us boxes, as our resources depleted. It was actually a semi-taxing day. Yee haw!

Once all the bags were completed, it was time to put the tissue paper in the top to make them festive.

Some bags got white tissue. Some got red. They were separated according to gender.

This sort of confused me, as in my line we didn’t have any gender specific products. I later found out that they were separated based on the style of the blanket. Oh, come on. The men got more “manly” styles. I think theirs had some animal prints and such.

I want people to be happy with their bags (enjoying their styles) and all, but do we need to be quite this gender stereotyped about these care packages? Just curious…

Oh well. A nice thing is being done. No need for me to nitpick so much…. Though I totally finish up with a bit more about the finishing of assembling the bags next time (not for a while because coming up, we’ll be talking about Let’s Make a Deal…).

Picking up from last time –

The way the bags had been being made was that you’d put little items in on the bottom (such as  stamps, toothbrush, toothpaste, lotion, soap, and a light little scarf). Then, you’d put this big blanket (that was already wrapped up for you) over that stuff – as the last thing in the bag. And it worked great. It worked great for the first part of my shift. From everything I heard, it worked great for the whole first 4-hour shift of the day.

And then someone decided to change it.

I will admit when I got to fill the one bag earlier in my shift, getting the blanket in was the hardest part. It was a pretty big blanket. So, it took some work to stuff it into the somewhat tight bag. But it wasn’t so bad. The way we did it was I held it, and the two people at the bag station stuffed it in. Yes, it took slightly longer than the other stops where people could practically throw in the small items. But in my experience, it didn’t take inordinately long.

Even still, somehow, they changed it up so that people would fill bags that already had blankets in them.

What?! Who decided this. I don’t know who decided it or how it happened. I just know that before we could do anything to stop it, we looked over to this area that was filled with so many bags with blankets. People were told they then needed to be filled with the rest of the stuff. [*head falls on desk as I write this*]

I’m pretty sure that whoever made that decision must’ve thought it was going to save time or headache. And maybe things were much tougher for the blanket stuffers than I imaged (though they still had to stuff the blankets… the hard part was the sides of the tight bag, not the bottom with stuff in it… so I have no idea how doing blankets first really made anything easier for them).

But the only thing this did was annoy, confuse, and even hurt people!

Some people were confused as to what had the small stuff in it and what didn’t, since all the other finished bags also looked, from above, just like rolled up blankets in bags. And then, when people cam through, we had to try to stuff the smaller goodies into the already tightly squeezed sides of the bag (so the stuff hopefully wouldn’t fly out). A bunch of us in the assembly line were literally getting cuts because of the plastic sides of the bags we were catching our fingers on as we tried so hard to stuff things in there. (Ow!)

A bunch of us actually bled. Yes, it’s just small cuts. No one was seriously injured. But still… I hope none of the recipients of these bags have any blood on their stuff!

And this is where we’ll pick up next time.

Picking up from last time –

Someone came over and said we’d be consolidating lines. So, we needed to move whatever supplies we had to the table in front of us.

Okay, sounds good. We all did.

Once I got up there, we had more than enough people (since two lines were converging into one). So, I got to grab a bag and go down the line myself to fill it. Yet again, from a different angle, I saw the great efficiency.

Once I got back to the beginning, the morning shift was leaving. With the empty spots, I re-took my place behind the table.

There was one person who was trying to be efficient, and I appreciate her (as I appreciate anyone trying to make things better). But her plan was proving not to be wildly efficient after all. Her plan was to take a bunch of empty bags and put the first items in them (stamps, toothbrushes, and toothpaste). Then people could grab those bags and not even have to hit that station.

This was not necessarily a bad idea in theory.

Granted, the station that had that stuff was staffed just like the others. So, it really took barely any more time for the bag-builders to start a couple of feet earlier in the line and have someone plop that stuff in there… So, personally, I didn’t think the half seconds of extra efficiency were necessary.

But I’m not gonna argue with someone who seemed so happy to be implementing her idea to try to make things go smoother. Also, who in the world do I think I am to even worry about this, right? I’m an assembly line worker today. So I don’t need to be worrying big picture… Bu I’m still gonna talk about it a bit… So, it was sort of a potato/po-tah-to situation in my mind. It might be slightly better. It might not be. My feeling was it didn’t truly matter, since it was about the same… Or was it?

There were a couple of small issues that came up.

Since none of the other lines were doing this, the bag-building people would get confused. They’d come up to our line with an empty bag, but then she’d be trying to hand them one that had a few things in it. Then they’d either have to reach over her to get stuff in their bag (since she was keeping her pre-started bags right in front of the station with stamps and stuff). Or they’d have to go put their empty bags back… It was just confusing people. And it started to get in the way, since it became so hard for people to reach over to the stamp/toothbrush station.

Also, she’d start putting lotions (the next item in the line) in the bags sometimes. And then it became this whole thing of, “Do you have lotion in there already?” The additional confusion definitely outweighed the half-seconds that may have been saved.

Again, I admire this person’s desire to make something better, and her gumption to just start doing it. I love when people are really thinking about the task at hand. I’d rather work with people passionate about what we’re doing (who might make a mis-step (as any of us could)) than people who don’t care. You never fully know if something will work until you try, right?

Since that wasn’t working out so well, she stopped doing that. And people just started again with their empty bags. Basically, no harm, no foul there. And great teamwork. The day was still spectacular.

And then…. This is where I’ll pick up next time.

I saw a listing on Volunteer Match looking for some office help in the middle of the afternoon one day. By the time I saw the listing, the event had already started. But since it wasn’t too far from my house, I went over there any way to check if they could use me. Sure enough, they could!

I met this really fabulous, fun man who said, “nice to meet you.” This is why you always use Drew Carey’s “nice to see you.” He’d actually met me very briefly before when I tried to help with this organization (but they were more than fully staffed). I’m actually pretty glad he didn’t remember me. Why would I want him to remember the girl who had nothing to do?

I’m so glad that I tried again with APLA! I felt so welcomed and impressed from the moment I entered their building. Every person I met was extremely friendly. Also, by the looks of things, it seemed like this organization does a whole lot. So, I was more than happy to help them.

I was set up in a cubical to address and stuff envelopes (as I was the only one who came for the shift after all).

One thing that was so interesting to me was that I’d heard about high schoolers who’d come earlier in the week and didn’t know how to address an envelope! What? Is mail seriously that obsolete that teenagers really don’t even know how to address an envelope? I could see it happening. (It obviously did happen.) But it blows my mind nonetheless.

Fairly soon into my task, I made my own makeshift standing desk with a box (because I can go a little nuts if I sit for too long).

I thought about putting on a podcast and zoning out a bit. But I feel like lately I’ve always had something in my ear. I’m always semi-distracting myself from a commute or simple task. And this time I decided no, I just want to think.

I got to listen to some of the conversations around me, and hear about planning events. (It must be so fun and busy to work at a non-profit.)

I also got lost in my own thoughts a bit… I was being considered for a job in New York. Spoiler alert: I didn’t get it. But I was thinking about what I’d done with my time in California, and what I would do with my time in New York.

The task itself was very simple. I had all the supplies I needed, and a very easy list from which to read addresses. (APLA’s address was already beautifully pre-printed on their envelopes.) They had plenty of that special sticky envelope glue stuff so I didn’t have to lick any envelopes. They thought of everything and made it as easy for the volunteer as possible.

At the end of the day, Tarik thanked me so much for all my work. He made me feel so appreciated, and he even took the photos you see here in the post so I could document the day on my blog!

I had a great time, and I’d happily help them out anytime in the future!

Picking up from last time –

No matter what we did, we consistently all got water splashed on us all the time. I can only imagine what it’s like for any poor souls who ever have to do this in cold weather (ouch!).

It was a very hot day in Los Angeles (yes, on Thanksgiving – that’s LA). So, our stops were even more slammed than we were expecting.

And since everyone was so parched, no one seemed upset if any of the cups were a bit fuller than they probably should’ve been. *High five!*

(Also, can we just mention, maybe there should be a specific “race cup” that has a line marked to where it should be filled… Or, I don’t know. I think there are a lot of innovative things we could do with race cups (making them easier to hand off, and such). So, let’s think about working on that!)

Anyway, eventually everyone went past us, and it was time to clean up.

The captains of the stop told us to dump all the water. The other volunteers and I were a little stressed about dumping so much good water in the middle of the street (in the middle of a drought in California). So, we started pouring all unused water from cups back into the jugs so we could at least go pour the water in the surrounding plants, even if open/unsealed water jugs couldn’t be given anywhere for human consumption.

Our impatient crew leaders didn’t care about trying to save any water, and they told us to just dump the tables. All the tables got dumped, and there was tons of water in the street…

Then the van to come pick up the supplies didn’t come for at least another 45 minutes. So, as far as I could tell, we did have time to be a little more judicious with how we got rid of the water. However, there may have been a permit issue or something that made it so we needed to get out of the street… And none of the nearby trees looked like they were in any danger of dying anytime soon due to lack of water or anything. And who am I to question the people in charge? So, you know, it’s all good…

While we were waiting for the van, the guy in charge of the water station asked me if I was a vegetarian (as we were talking about Thanksgiving dinner). I said, “actually yeah, I have been for a few months. Why?”

He said I seemed like a vegetarian. I’m not totally sure what that means. I’m unsure if I even like it. (Who am I becoming?!) But I thought it was funny that someone who was so against going vegetarian is now getting told, “you seem like a vegetarian.” Ah, life.

Eventually the van came, we loaded it up, and took everything back to the big recycle bins.

Then I walked home in the burning, burning heat. But at least I’d gotten wet all morning!

Picking up from last time –

So, we laid out all the cups. (There are even cardboard dividers so you can stack rows of cups on top of each other. I never noticed those before. Smart.)

As a runner, I never fully understood why water cups so often seemed to be overfilled. Now that I’ve worked at a water stop, I can understand. It’s hard when pouring quickly (from a jug that’s constantly changing weight) to try to get the exact right amount in.

And there seemed to be some disagreement as to what the right amount was. So, if people who work water stops think different things and if jugs can be hard to handle, then water is most likely just going to come out at all sorts of various levels. But I think we can deal with it. Right, runners?

(I know I’ll be a little less judge-y and more patient, now having been a pourer myself.)

When it came to the Gatorade, I asked what the most efficient was to pour that was. Someone said to mix the solution with water in the big tub (with the little spicket on the the end). Then, use that little spicket to fill up an empty water jug and go from there.

I didn’t think of any more efficient ways, and that didn’t seem too slow. But if any of you have amazing tips for doing that part faster, I’d love to hear them.

Once we got to the actual handing out part, I was holding the cup from the bottom. The lead guy at the water stop told me it’s easier to hand them out if I hold them from the top. So, I switched to the top-hold.

Even after spending a whole morning at a water stop, I can’t tell you the best way to hold the cup. Holding it from the bottom gives you more control, but I think it becomes harder for the runner to grab it.

Holding it with one finger inside the cup seems like a mess to me. For one thing, many runners don’t love when you have a finger in their cup. But more importantly, I find it much easier to hand off that way, since you have such a flimsy hold.

Holding it with your fingers coming down around the top is, I’m assuming, the best way since that’s what I was told – and it seemed like probably the best among the different ways I tried. But no ways seemed perfect.

Again, if you have advice on the best way to hold the cup, hit me!

Picking up from last time –

I don’t know if I feel this way because we were 3 water stops in 1, but I am kind of of the mindset that you can almost never have too many water stop volunteers.

I mean, I’m sure there is some number somewhere where it’s just too crowded.

We were not at that number.

As the race was starting, we hadn’t been given any specific instructions. I asked if we were to each stand at different tables, or what. And the person in charge said two of us should stay behind tables to just refill, and the rest should go in front of tables wherever it seemed we were needed.

Okay. So we just kind of felt it out, instead of divvying things up. (Granted, there weren’t that many of us to divide. So, even if we had been assigned tables/spots/whatever, I don’t know that that would’ve done much… People very well have had to move around anyway.)

Before runners got there, we set everything up.

This whole 3-water-stops-in-one thing really confused us all at first. The leaders tried to point how the tables would go. We’d start to move them. It would be wrong. We’d look a little dumbfounded. They’d then jump in to help physically show us where to go.

I guess in the heads of the people doing it, they totally understood and didn’t think it would be hard to impart this idea on us. But the lesson I took from this is that maybe it’s always better to err on the side of having to over-explain. Perhaps if we’d had some sort of drawing, map, diagram, etc., we may have understood faster without being slightly annoying to the people running the stop.

We also poured a bunch of water and Gatorade in cups, preparing for people. I didn’t realize the Gatorade came as concentrate that you dilute. (I thought it just came as Gatorade, but at least here, it did not.)

When we were putting the cups on the table, it was interesting to me how many people started by having a sleeve of cups in one hand and then pulling out a cup at a time from the top, and putting it down with their other hand…

It doesn’t seem like that would take all that long, but when you put someone doing that next to someone who was just tapping the sleeve on the table, letting the bottom cup go each time, you can see tables getting filled at something like only 1/3 of the speed of the faster way.

Of course once people could see that, everyone switched to the more efficient way. Hooray for efficiency. (Though I still don’t know the most efficient way to do other things, which we’ll get into next time.)