Post # 12 - I did it!

April 27, 2009

70 hours completed...finally

To be continued....

Post # 11

April 22, 2009

62 hours complete

An average days work for an average days pay. We went through the good old gestures of 826 with precision and accuracy. We had become pros, it was our duty to know the ropes in and out in addition to adding that small little thing that made things go from good to great. Things like keeping things organized as our co-workers, making copies of the text as the other two guys simultaneously resize two artworks with precision cuts and clean lain tape. At a few points during that day we had to get creative and do some manual editing. What I mean by that is that some pages with border lines were printed on three hole paper and we had to remake those missing lines. Sounds easy but it was a lot more challenging than we had previously expected. At first we tried putting a blank piece of paper underneath it and drawing the lines in by hand but our marker was a little too fat. Then we tried putting a paper with lines already on it underneath and taping them together, but the problem was that the lined papers contents were visible through the holed paper. Finally we managed to find a blank slate paper with lines and managed to get them pretty much lined up. After that fiasco the rest ticked by like clock work. I got paired with some fiesty kids during the afternoon who proceeded to insult me as I tried to help them with their homework. All in a days work I said to myself and continued on with my work. Unfortunatly I finished off the day with a crying child getting her way despite my good intentions. Eduardo and I were working with a girl who was in first grade and she did not want to do her homework. Because of the recent mini heat wave 826 was bringing kids to the park in small groups. There were two groups and the girl wanted to go very badly. She wanted even less to do her homework and the antics pursued. We wanted her to do three pages of the six that were do Friday and she only wanted to do one. We bargained to two but she refused and we went on like this for what may have been half an hour. Jory, our mentor, proceeded to come over when the second group was about to leave for the park and grant our little pumpkin's wish! He whisked her away to the park without her having done a single drop of homework after she turned on the water works. I left that afternoon with a bad taste in my mouth and a vow to never compromise, not even in the face of armageddon.

Post #10

April 15th 2009

54 hours completed

The smell I forgot to mention last time has since disapated. I think it was the smell of a death, the calling card of a rat past its prime. I had smelled a similar scent in my own basement and had been relieved to be rid of it as I entered 826. We had a field trip today but this time there was a new leader. Instead of Walter, who was playing Mr. Blue today, a role I'm finding more and more intreaging, there was this other dude. I'll attempt to find his name out. Anyways, he was pretty good at being a leader, in fact, he was one of the best I'd ever heard perform. He was lively, energetic, and seemed to know the ropes pretty well. A good start to a great day.

The day was hectic. The book making process took a lot longer than was expected. The artwork was the main culprit. There were apparently a lot off errors and almost as many people back there trying to rectify the situation. Hmm...I wonder if anybody is reading this...if so offer me a double high five the next time you see me, and thanks for reading! Back to the main story line-The kids left and we were still working overdrive in the back. Apparently the kids were in the park next door and we had to put the cover on the books and then bind them in addition to printing out their pictures and putting the back covers on. We had some help from a longtime intern I just meet today and she really helped us out. She did the majority of the work, we were more like helper bees.

But during this entire time the rest of the crew was preparing a surprise lunch because one of the veteran drawers was celebrating his 100th field trip; I thought they were kidding when they said it was his 100th but boy was I wrong! We had a celebritory lunch at 826 after which we had our regular tutoring sessions which went pretty well. Once again I was told I was a bad tutor, this time by a student. But I think I've gotten better, two more days, rock.

Post #9

April 9th 2009

46 hours completed

We came in not knowing what to expect and what we got shocked and surprised us. What we found was chairs! Actually the chairs werent fully assembled, they were in pieces in boxes, and we were expected to build them. "Sweetness, something to do" I thought to myself in blissful ignorance...boy was I wrong! It started out simple enough, follow the instructions, it was pretty self explanitory and I started out strong. None of it needed any tools outside of what came in the box, not until the end that is. In the end the chairs needed four screws in the bottom to complete it and we only had one screw driver. We had a power drill, but that wasnt of much us to us. So we spent most of the day doing that, it wasnt actually that bad except for the bit of skin I lost on my thumb but it was for the good of the team. I'm just being dramatic. So what we did for the rest of the day was work on our project. We brain stormed for a bit and decided to create three seperate projects and present them simultaniously. We worked on that for the rest of the day, then clocked out a bit early; all in all it was a good day.

Post #8

April 8^th 2009

39 hours completed

This was a day out of our spring break, and one well spent.  It was a dull day. There were no field trips because most of the kids were on spring break as well. We spent most of the day taking stalk for the shop; specifically counting magazines. There were boxes upon boxes of magazines and we were to count most if not all of them and then reorganize them. This wasn’t as easy as it would seem. The boxes were dusty and often had numbers that were misleading on the top. Everything from wrong amounts the wrong edition of the magazine, there were 16 in total. We didn’t take stalk at 826, instead we went over to a building across the street to a publishing place that was once housed in the same space as 826. The guy who had founded 826 had also founded the publishing place and 826 used there underground space to store some of their stuffs. After some brakes, a lunch one included, and long hours of counting, we finally finished  counting all 8,900 issues. I feel like we acomplished something.