FEMA Camp Victor is home to 3 cats (for keeping away mice) and 2 dogs (for keeping away miscreants). Here's a picture of the cat named FEMA. She had been found injured near the camp (she lost an eye), and the camp staff nursed her back to health. They told us they had named her FEMA because…
On Monday evening after spaghetti dinner in the mess hall, there was a mandatory orientation session for anyone whose first day it was (i.e. us). There they told us how Camp Victor came to be. Christus Victor Lutheran Church is a church on Rt 90 in Ocean Springs. When Katrina hit, the church staff was at…
On Monday after we ate lunch at Camp Victor, we all loaded into the coach bus for a tour of Gulfport and Biloxi. The purpose was to give us an idea of the scope of devastation and how things still are, since there isn't much destruction in evidence in the parts of Ocean Springs we…
Our journey begins… Sunday morning at church, we were Commissioned by Pastor Peggy, using a special service created by the Synod just for this purpose. Part of the text from 2 Corinthians was: “We have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power … does not…
Well, our bags are packed and we're ready to go… on a 20-hour (+ Super Bowl stop) bus ride to Ocean Springs, Mississippi, where we'll be spending a week helping people rebuild from Hurricane Katrina. From what we hear, there's still plenty of work to be done. The work assignments change weekly (yes, there have…
Quick Trip, as opposed to Whirlwind Trip, which was the December trip (down and back in one day, a whole 1/2 hour in the city). Cappuccino Every trip must begin with coffee… we opted for the home-brewed Italian coffee this time. That means freshly ground espresso beans, stovetop Italian coffee maker, steamed milk, and…
Neisha logo On Friday evening, we went to Neisha, a Thai restaurant in Tenleytown that Alex has always walked past but never visited (being on a college-student budget). I wish I had taken a photo of the outside, because it's very striking (I'd noticed it before, too, on our few visits to Tenleytown – it's…
Inn at Dupont Circle We stayed last night at the Inn at Dupont Circle, on 19th Street (near N) in Washington DC. We made a reservation here because Al's mom had been going to come along with us on this trip, and the Inn is very near the Dupont Circle stop on the Metro (easy…
… Or… Sandy's Utterly Subjective Accommodation Rating I've just now invented this system so I can rate places we stay – it's a completely subjective and relative scale based on what I happen to think are the best and worst places we've ever spent a night. My "gold" standard is The Mill House Inn in East…
Show us a mess. Oh dear, this is way too easy :- Mess at work…. Mess at home I'm not particularly proud of this, I would love to have neat tidy workspaces, it just seems there's too much paper and stuff. I read recently that the reason we feel that we don't have enough hours…
Where have the days gone? 