First Day

Hi folks. I haven't been around my computer lately and I haven't wanted to post without being on my own computer.

I had a meeting with Jessa, Phil and John (owner of the earthbag project) on Friday (I think.) A lot was said to finalize plans on John's house. A lot of what is said was technical, design stuff and I didn't feel like I could contribute so much to that part of the conversation; I think I will be far more helpful when we actually start building.

John got a building permit.
This is an amazingly good thing. The entire time I have been involved with this internship, the others have been pushing for the codes office to give John a building permit. There are no earthbag residencies in this region, so codes officials were extremely hesitant about giving the permit. Now, as long as everything goes well in the building process, people who want to build with earthbag should have a much easier time getting their permits. Groundbreaking stuff, kids.

Carol's cob house has been moved outside my internship. She doesn't feel that she will be ready to build until late August/early September, which is past the internship end. I was looking forward to the round cob house, but I will have an opportunity to build with cob when I work on Michelle and Rob's studio.

My internship officially starts today, although I don't think that there's anything for me to be doing today. I'm a little in the dark right now about what I'm supposed to be doing- I'm just waiting for Phil or Jessa to tell me to do something.

In other news, Adam (boyfriend) is visiting for a few days, so I've been playing with him lately. He likes the SENS house and, hopefully, will help me get a bed into the room I'm wanting to move into. Then I can unload boxes.

I have a giant fear that I'm going to kill all my friends' plants that they left with me for the summer.

Planning the Summer

I had a meeting with Phil and Jessa yesterday. I was waking up from a nap that I took to get rid of a headache, so I was fairly low energy. The meeting went well though and I now feel more comfortable with what I'm going to be doing this summer.

There are three buildings that I am going to be working on.

1. John's earthbag dome. This is the structure that I'm most familiar with- I've been following the progress as John, Phil and Jessa have been designing and dealing with codes people. This structure is unique because it's actually a house. From what it sounded like, nobody has lived full-time in any of the structures that Phil or Jessa have made.
2. Carol's cob pottery studio. This will be a round structure with a shed roof.
3. Michelle and Rob's strawbale and cob art studio. Three walls will be strawbale and the fourth will be cob. Cob needs to be round, so the fourth wall, the southfacing wall, will be rounded, allowing for more thermal mass.

We set up a schedule for workshops for the summer. Jessa wanted to check with the project owners to make sure that the weeks we designated to work on their buildings was alright with them, so I'm going to wait until I hear confirmation from that before posting the complete schedule, but I will say (that this sentence is getting very long and) that there are nine straight weeks of workshops that I will be helping out with. The plan is to hold workshops Monday through Friday, 9 to 5 with long lunch breaks. We're hoping that each workshop has 5 to 15 people. The workshops will start June 16th, two weeks after my internship officially starts. Phil and I will be doing prep-work in those two weeks. I'm waiting to hear more about that.

June 10th I have a doctor's appointment. July 30th I go to the Warped Tour for free tabling for the Rainforest Action Network. I honestly know nothing about this- a friend of mine (Lilly) asked me if I wanted to join her. I will be recieving information in the mail to pass out, etc. I just found out that it was July, not June, so I will have to tell Jessa next time I see her.

I'm taking care of the animals now. They are sweet and wonderful. Even the shy cat (Sara) let me pet on her for a while. Good stuff.