What I Did On My Summer Vacation (Part One)

Ok, I lied…

Well, maybe lie is too harsh of a word but I definitely did not tell the entire truth. Let me explain…

See, when I wrote last time that I needed a sabbatical from the blog due to the fact that I had run out of material and could not find a way to write about Lindsay Lohan again and make it at all interesting is undoubtedly true. It was also true three months ago and probably five minutes after I first created the blog. So, while I needed a break that isn’t why I didn’t write last week. The real reason is that I knew that I was going to be spending the week sans laptop and I wanted to create an air of mystery as to what precisely I was doing.

(Why? Because while I have a lot of fun letting the entire interweb know the inner workings of my life I am a little paranoid about letting the universe know when I am out of town. Yes, I do greatly overestimate the number of people who actually read these posts.)

Still, this doesn’t explain the picture or the lack of posts. Here is the story.

A few months back I got an email from the young adult group at my church. A group that I am technically a member of in that I am a) arguably young, b) can questionably be considered an adult and c) too lazy to get off of their email list. In the email they mentioned that a group of people were organizing a trip to New Orleans to spend a week volunteering in the city and helping with the cleanup and restoration efforts.

I read it and I thought, “That is something I really should do.” Then the logical part of my brain went “Dude, it’s doing construction in New Orleans in July and you’ve been injured to the point of an emergency room visit while just walking down a street. This is not a good idea.” But later that night I ended up at the end of the bar in a pondering mood and thinking about how much I love Nola and how I never felt that I did enough post-Katrina. Sure I donated but it never felt like enough. And this was an opportunity that I just could not see myself passing up. So I signed up to work with a group of people I didn’t know and without a great sense of exactly what I would be doing.

Well, last week was my week back in the Big Easy and as you can see, it wasn’t my usual trip down there. But it was without a doubt one of the best things that I have done in years. It was incredibly good for my soul (moving the needle from my being “Pure evil” to now just being “Mostly evil”) and I got to feel like I’ve actually done something useful with my life for once. True, the usefulness involved my proficiency with using a crowbar, which I know that no one reading this is actually going to believe but I am surprisingly effective at taking down drywall. It was an unforgettable experience with some images of devastation that will linger with me along with moments of rebirth and humor and just that sense of the world finally making sense that always comes over me as I walk down Pirate’s Alley on a summer day.

I have a lot of stories to tell and pictures to share, so expect to see them throughout the week. I am back, though I am admittedly bruised and battered and tired as all get out. And while this might not be what most people would do on their summer vacation it certainly was the right thing for me to do.

(Even if it meant that I missed both “I Love the 70’s Part II” and “The World Series of Pop Culture” on VH-1 this week. I am so upset about that, especially when I saw how bad some of those pop culture teams were. I mean, they couldn’t name the dog on the Simpsons? I could win that competition by myself. Oh well, at least Flavor of Love 2 is coming up next month and that will be some quality television.)

The five random CDs for the week

1) Chris Mills “Kiss It Goodbye”
2) Loreena McKennitt “The Mask and the Mirror”
3) Howie Day “Australia”
4) C. J. Chenier “The Big Squeeze”
5) The Insiders “Fate in Action”