Meaningful Names? I hope not!

So yesterday on my way home and enjoying the great curvy road that is 22 I took a little more notice to the different signs around me. I have always loved to look at different signs from different areas of travel and laugh at some of the names that people think of. But yesterday, I became concerned for my safety (not really, but the signs made me think of bad horror movies with bad acting). Two names that really stuck out to me were Skull Crossing Lane and Slaughter Mill Road. When I saw those two names I immediately thought of horror movies such as The Hills Have Eyes and Wrong Turn. I'm glad it was daytime because I might have genuinely been concerned if I had come across those at night...

I love driving!

This week has just been one road trip after another. Thank goodness I love to drive otherwise I would not be ok with this job!

August 24, 2010

Tuesday was my first training on my own. I was excited because it meant all the loud rock music I wanted! In all reality, I just listened to the same rock road tunes Jess and I did for all our adventures. The trip seemed to drag on because I didn't have anyone to talk to to keep me entertained...I'm gonna have to work on that (or maybe just rely on 5 Hour Energy for the duration of my term). The training went very well: there were only two trainees, which is not abnormal for SEO. They were very nice women who even offered to let me eat lunch with them because I didn't know the area. They asked some great questions and really put my knowledge to the test (which I loved because it made me a little more confident in myself that I knew more than I thought!). After the training was all said and done, unfortunately I could not give them login names because their site was not set up yet, but I told them by the end of next week they would have login names and I would let them know as soon as I could what they would be and help them log on for the first time.

August 25, 2010

Wednesday I was asked to drive to Portsmouth to handle a small situation with my HealthPath duties. An event had been set up for Wednesday, but we didn't know many of the specifics so I drove down to the First Methodist Church of Portsmouth just in case any of the invitees showed up. Thankfully no one did, but Bob from The Potter's House did show up to sit with me just in case anyone showed up as well. It was nice to have someone to sit and talk to for an hour. After a few moments of the usual pleasantries between strangers, we found out that we are from the same area west of Columbus and that his parents live right next door to my aunt and uncle and knew all about their property. He told me stories I had never heard before about the land and how it all started (my aunt and uncle own an old rock corry that Ed worked at as a young man). It was great to hear stories about a place I already knew...he graduated high school from the same school I attended elementary school. We talked for about an hour then decided that no one was showing up and it was ok for us to leave. I spoke with Pastor Nick to let him know that I would be getting in contact with him to reschedule our presentation and apologized again for the mix up. Ed then let me follow him back to The Potter's House to meet with Anita to give her my regards and reschedule our meeting for sometime in October. On my way home I followed Ed's directions to bypass downtown Portsmouth (great idea!) and it took me over a very large hill/small mountain that overlooked the city. It was a beautiful sight and I wish I could have gotten out of my car to take some pictures! That's my new goal: make a photo journal of my time as a VISTA because some of the areas I will be in are so beautiful in landscape & arcitecture!

P.S. Thank you small towns for not believing in road signs. I drove around for 15 minutes looking for the road I was supposed to be on because my google directions were not that great and my gps was going stupid. Portsmouth: get some signs better than this! Thanks!

August 26, 2010

Today I am in Cadiz, Ohio. I had never heard of this place before I started this position so I just knew it was going to be an interesting drive. First of all, keep in mind it's 2 hours and 43 minutes away from my home. Yeah. 70-E to 77-N to 22-E and here you are. Atleast that's what my directions said. They lied. So does my gps, it kept telling me to turn on roads that didn't exist or that took me to Harrison County Fairgrounds. Boo small towns and crazy roads. So after yelling for several minutes at my gps that is was a liar, I forced it to take me another route. Belmont Technical College-North Campus is literally in the middle of nowhere. It is located right next to a state park if that tells you anything. It's a nice facility once you find it & for people like me it's not easy. Training has gone extremely smoothly! The two women that I am training today are kickin' some serious butt and just busting through all this information I am throwing at them! It is easier to move through things when you're only training two people! The drive home hopefully will be better than the drive in...today of all days I really wish I had my camera. The hills and landscape on 22 is absolutely gorgeous and it has some twists that make me feel like a racecar driver! (no extreme speeds or anything, but just hugging curves is a lot of fun in the country!)

It's Official!!

This week has been full of busy days and trying evenings. But thank goodness it's Friday! But as I look back over my planner from this past week, I realize it was a good week (even if it had a few rough spots).

Food Stamp Challenge:
It's over and I feel grateful that I only had to endure one week of food insecurity. Although my parents gave up half way through the week, I have kept true to the rules(for the most part). I spent the night at a friends' house Wednesday and she had decided that we would go out to dinner with a mutual friend. I had to explain what I was doing and that although I would go to dinner with them, I would not actually be eating because I had brought my own spaghetti. She didn't completely understand why I was putting myself through a week of being hungry, but she was compliant with my choice not to eat. My parents on the other hand just absolutely gave up. They both went out last night to dinner seperately: my mom with her co-workers and my dad by himself at a local diner. Therefore that left me to fend for myself: looks like spaghetti for yet another meal. If I don't eat spaghetti again for months I will be ok...I just don't think I can stomach one more helping of it! But the challenge is over and I can go back to snacking on cheese, chips & salsa, and fresh veggies out my garden! I've had a sweet potato calling my name since Tuesday!

Observed Trainings:
I had my final observed training on Wednesday (please see previous post). It went great and I am now an Official Community Trainer for Southeast Ohio! I have a certificate and everything! It's a great feeling knowing I accomplished my two trainings and can now go out to my region on my own and get things done! Watch out Marietta, my first official training on my own is happening in your town!

HealthPath:
Charles and I travelled to Southwest Ohio yesterday to start getting the ball rolling with the HealthPath events I will be responsible for in the upcoming months. I realized that SW Ohio looks a lot like SE Ohio, so I will feel right at home. The two groups we met with yesterday were great and already had an idea what they were responsible for and had already started working on their end: which is fantastic for me because that is one less thing I have to worry about! I also realized that SW Ohio has a lot of tobacco farms. Charles and I were just amazed that tobacco was grown in Ohio...I had seen it before but just thought it was closer to Portsmouth area! There were fields upon fields of it in all stages of harvest: fields still growing, fields half trimmed, and even a working field being harvested as we drove by. I also may or may not have taken us a round about way to the freeway, but that's what I get for thinking I knew where I was going and not following the directions from Google Maps. Oops...hey we made it back and I knew where we were the whole time, just slightly off!

Training #2

Today is my second training in order to be officially certified as a Community Trainer. It's down in the DSO so not something I am used to...I think I am more nervous about this training because it's with a different RC, Zach, and I'm not completely sure about how to go about using the training office in the DSO...nerves why do you do this to me? I feel jittery and my stomach is in knots, which seems worse today because I'm really hungry due to the food stamp challenge...Just gotta get through today or even really just the next couple hours til lunch!

Trying Parents

Like many in the office, I am participating in the food stamp challenge (previous post). The difference: my parents. We just started the challenge yesterday and already they were trying to eat things that were not allocated for in our budget.

Last night I asked my mom what I could do to help with dinner because it was nearing 8pm and I was really hungry having shared my lunch with a fellow challenger who forgot hers. I had tried resorting to a spoon full of peanut butter to hold me over...which just wasn't cutting it. She told me to start the potatoes and just grab a can of green beans or a bag of corn (which neither was on our list for the week). I had to re-explain the logistics of this week and that we did not have any money left over to "buy" a can of corn or green beans from our cupboard. I still don't think she understands the concept of this challenge completely. My dad also tried to pull something like this by grabbing a bowl for ice cream after dinner. My dad doesn't exactly support my current position with OASHF and doesn't really know that we are doing this challenge so it did not surprise me that he would do that. In order to make up for that little bit of extra that he "just can't live without" I am going to try to make some extra sacrifices of my own to cover the few dollars we would have spent to buy that ice cream. I really wanted this challenge to work in my house so maybe they could see that the work I am doing is important and why. We had only been through one day and it made me come to several realizations of the things I'm grateful for and how I sometimes take those things for granted.

The rest of this week I feel is going to be a constant struggle with them. Although I think a few more conversations with my mom and she will understand more. We were comparing our normal spending habits last night to this weeks limit and realized that we spend about the same, if not less, when we go to the store, the only real difference is that we have a freezer full of beef and a full garden in the summer to supplement our daily groceries.

Fun and Exciting Additions

So over the course of last week I was made aware that new assignments will be added to my VAD. Last week Jess had meetings about adding things because I was running low on projects to accomplish over my year. She was not expecting me to get through the ones that were on there so quickly. I am excited to start working on other projects to broaden the skill set that I will pick up from this position.

We are adding surveys for different sections of the Ohio Benefit Bank, facilitating poverty simulations through out the state, and coordinating HealthPath events. The HealthPath events were a last minute addition that should be very exciting. Right now I am just trying to wrap my head around these new projects and what is expected of me.

I have some understanding of the new projects because I have had exposure to each of them. I have never created my own surveys, but I have surely taken enough of them! I am going to keep in mind all the surveys I have taken in the past and try to use the best practices (as in not using a large number of questions or using questions that require a lot of thought & long answers) to implement them to different OBB sites around the state. As for the poverty simulations, I do not really have any experience with them. I have just heard the basics about what happens during the simulation and I have seen the giant boxes that holds all the materials needed. The simulations will not be something that occurs very often because all the materials needed and the number of volunteers needed. I have never experienced one in person, so I am nervous about doing this and possibly messing something up.

For the HealthPath events, I have been to four in my area (SouthEast Ohio) and have a general idea about the flow of them. This I think is going to be the biggest under taking of the new projects of my position with the exception of scheduling/implementing the trainings I still must do. The good things about the HealthPath projects is that they have to be completed by the end of October and I will get to meet many good contacts with counties outside my region. I have started making contact with the host sites to introduce myself and get word out again about the Ohio Benefit Bank and the HealthPath Foundation. These events are definitely making me nervous because I don't know a lot of the background of the foundation and I don't know the ins-and-outs of how HealthPath works.

So, overall I am excited about diving into these projects with just a few minor things that may cause a bump in my long road ahead!

Food Stamp Challenge

So today officially begins my journey with the food stamp challenge that everyone else in the office has already begun. With my busy schedule over the past weekend I knew that I would not have been able to participate in the challenge without cheating, so I decided that instead of cheating I would just switch weekends and start today. I am lucky enough to be able to have my parents participate as well (which I thought was going to be a very hard task to accomplish) so we as a family have three times the amount of money as everyone else it seems. My mom and I made a list of things that we would need through out the week to make lunch & dinner (we don't really do breakfast except coffee for them and yogurt for me) and made a list of things we needed to buy.

My thought process is why buy food that we already own and let it go to waste? I know we were supposed to buy the things we needed, I just couldn't justify it. Instead, we pulled what we already had in our house, looked up the prices of those things in the sale ads, and just deducted those prices from our $63. After all was said and done, we have about $4 left over, which hopefully will cover my dad's coffee in the evening after work.

Although my family is used to not spending a lot of money every week on food, it was hard to stay under $63. If we were to actually go to the store and buy the things we were having this week, most of the things would be store brand and sometime not even from Meijer (where we do most of our grocery shopping). I did have to go to the store for such perishable items as milk, bread, bananas, lettuce, and yogurt that added up to about $11.

This week should get very interesting in terms of breaking old habits. I love cheese and salsa (random? yes.) and I have a tendency of just grabbing a couple pieces of cheese for a snack or breaking out some tortilla chips and salsa, but with our budget this week those things are not available to me. I just have to remember that and not go reaching in the refrigerator when I feel like a snack.

My First Training

So yesterday was my first of two trainings on the path to being certified. I'm glad that's over. I had been stressing about it for days before because I get uber nervous before things like that, then once they start I'm confident again. Tuesday and Wednesday I crammed about as much information my brain could hold (I felt like I was cramming for a college final again) and then crammed some more! I think now in retrospect, I was just making myself more worried than really helping because I couldn't stop stressing over the idea that I was going to forget something important or say the wrong thing or trip and fall on face. I had the worst of the worst running through my mind.

So, needless to say, Thursday morning was the worst for me. Getting up even earlier than normal & then sitting in a car for almost 3 hours made me a ball of nerves. The closer we got to Stuebenville, the more I felt as if I was going to throw up. To make matters worse, when we arrived at Jefferson County CAC there were people in the computer lab that were not exactly willing to move. We had to stand in the hallway for about 20 minutes while things were sorted out. Great...another 20 minutes for my nerves to get the best of me.

Once we finally got in the room and got things moving I started to relax. I tried as hard as possible to not pay attention to Jess sitting to my right taking notes because I knew I would just start getting nervous again. Once the ball started rolling and everyone was where they should be I really started to relax and really was able to focus on the task at hand and no longer the feeling of a queasy stomach.

4 O'Clock could not have come fast enough, but oddly it did. The rest of the training seemed to breeze by and before I knew it, it was 3:30 and Jess and I were heading out the door and into the storm. Jess and I discussed what had just happened in my life and it was a very reassuring discussion and I think that I am completely ready for my second observed training...well I would like to think that at least. I know come next week I am going to be just as nervous as I was yesterday...and it doesn't help that Zach (another RC) is going to be observing me.

All in all it was a good day and I survived and that's all that matters! Jess and I even had fun with my camera on the way home because I needed to just forget what I had just been through...our adventures are as follows:

The After &

Being excited I didn't

crash and burn!

Some cool clouds &

lots of construction!

Concentrating really hard & a Canadian truck (Quebec)

The Rock Essentials for every car!

Journey

As I have posted recently, I have been on the road with my regional coordinator, Jess, quite a bit over the past couple weeks. I have enjoyed and learned a lot through all the meetings and presentations, but what I have enjoyed the most has been the hours long car rides. I am so thankful I have a regional coordinator that I get along with great...sometimes it's almost like we are the same person! We have discussed so many topics that I can barely remember all of them, I just know that they have been hilarious, insightful, and a real learning experience for me. I am definitely going to have some "seperation anxiety" when it comes to me making all the road trips by myself. Maybe I should invest in some self-help books on cd to help me through that time. So, for now: Thanks Jessica for making otherwise horribly boring road trips a blast!

"I don't like this bus..."
"Snow White"
"Join AmeriCorps: You get to fight dragons & have a battle of wits with a griffin"
"Don't Stop The Sandman"

Desk Space

So for the past couple weeks there have been so many random people milling around my desk I feel awkward. There are men on ladders and putting wires above my head. I feel I should move, but no one has even addressed the fact that I'm here...so here I stay! At least until I can't take the pounding and the constant feeling that someone is looking over my shoulder. Who will win? Stay tuned to find out...

On a side note: I kind of feel like Milton, the guy from Office Space that gets moved around and then put in the basement always worried about getting his stapler back. Clearly it's not that bad, but I feel like my desk area has been taken over!


Day 2 of my Desk Space being invaded has caused my ears to hate me. I have resorted to plugging in my i-pod and "cranking it to eleven" (name that movie?!) and hoping my ears do not begin to bleed. I just hope my phone doesn't ring anytime soon and that these guys get their job done very quickly...i-pod battery don't fail me now!!!