dilly-dallying

I have a list of things to do (on a sheet of paper in a little notebook), but decided to procrastinate. I find that writing things that I don't have sometimes inspires me to write the stuff I do have to. Actually, I am down to one official assignment left due for school, but have stuff to do for the battlefield, stuff for projects related to this class, and stuff to do for my sister's wedding in May. Oh, well.

Yesterday the battlefield hosted its annual volunteer appreciation picnic. It was ridiculously cold, especially considering we live in Tennessee and it is April. White air came out of our mouths while we were talking (no kidding). But I had a good time. We have some pretty spectacular folks working at the park, both paid and volunteer. I don't know if I have worked with such an outstanding group of people before.

Our superintendent talked with me briefly at lunch yesterday and said, "I bet you never expected to deal with this when you signed on." I replied, "I bet you didn't, either." He said in all of his career, he had been fortunate enough to escape the emergency situations. But there are some that deal with it all the time. Yesterday, a level-3 incident team was formed to work out of the battlefield. We will be at "emergency" status for another two weeks. The team established will help us coordinate plans and efforts to move forward in clean up, removal, and overall attempts to get this park back in order. Easily 1,000 trees have been knocked over or torn up (some of the trees literally look like someone just twisted them in half and then left them there). But the people who are a part of this team deal with emergencies all the time. They are expected to leave for days and weeks at a time at a drop of a hat in order to help parks get back on their feet (they helped the national parks in Kentucky last winter after the ice storms). I have a lot of respect for their job; I don't think I could do that. They have to go see destruction and devastation and help people make sense out of it... regularly. Either way, the basement has become their base of operations, at least for the next ten days to two weeks. The craziness will continue for a while, yet.

I work tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday, so I should probably go do some homework. The semester is almost over! Yay! and Eek! all at the same time.