Location: Girls On The Run
Date: Monday, August 19, 2013; 6:00-8:00 pm
I have elaborated before why I
like going for this project and so had signed up to EC way in advance. To my disappointment, a few days prior to us
going there the organizers informed Wilson that they did not need us to come
this evening. But then a day later they changed their mind once again and the project was back on – not sure if Wilson had
something to do with it! Wilson picked
me up at my office and we arrived at the site way in advance. We chatted with the organizer regarding our
responsibilities for the day and then it was just waiting for the volunteers,
once again near the door with the broken bell.
We had the regulars this evening –
Amanda, Franklin, Matt and Gary. Plus we
had Carey, who is a leader with Chicago Cares for the 3rd grade Arts
& Crafts project at Henderson. With our
quorum achieved, we were ready to begin.
We moved to the basement, where we would be re-purposing unopened tote
bags that had been returned from the previous races. Inside were some coupons, which were to be
recycled, bumper stickers, which were to be saved and energy bars, which were to be disposed because they had expired.
Things like this make me quite upset since there are a lot of hungry
people in the world and all that was needed was to salvage these bars sooner, followed
by donation to a food pantry or a shelter.
We split into two groups, with Amanda, Matt, Gary and Wilson in a truly
depressing section of the basement; and Franklin, Carey and me in the other
room.
 |
| Count those medals! |
My job was to count various
things, starting with the medals that were inside a bag. There were several boxes containing many such
bags and on my less inspired days I would have spent hours counting. But, I just counted the medals in one bag,
multiplied by the number of bags per box and then totaled the number of boxes
to get a final number of the medals. This
done, I went over to the other group and teased them for being a bunch of
slackers! Wilson was pitching one of his
cooking projects to the group saying that he required someone to bake. I said that I was a trained chemist and thus could do it…though my synthetic chemistry left a lot to be desired and there
are plenty of past colleagues who can attest to that!
We finished up in that room soon
and everyone moved to the main basement area where Franklin and Carey were
counting bags. The bags were of two
different types – one which had ‘Drake’ written on it besides the ‘Girls On The Run’. As we
looked through the bags, we found some additional goodies such as sunglasses, cologne
spray and a headband. All of these items
needed to be separated for future events and the bags counted. We separated the two types of bags and
finished counting, thinking that we were done and thus much closer
to going out for some ‘Tater Tots’. However, we then realized that we also had to
count the bags in some of the boxes that were lined up against the wall. Fortunately these bags were empty, but there
were a lot of boxes. We bit our
collective lips, got down to it and after what seemed like an eternity, we
were done. We had to move a lot of boxes,
meaning that not only were we all covered with dust, but we were
exhausted. Who knew that a simple
counting of the bags could be so tiring!
 |
| The caption says it all |
Before leaving, Wilson asked me to
explain what the GOTR organization did. This was for the benefit of new comers like Carey and
once I had explained, he said that I had done a terrible job. Irrespective of my spiel, we felt that we had
truly done some real work today, though I did point out that all the bags that we
had separated would need to be assembled soon enough for their next
event. Wilson, Amanda, Frank and I then
went to our favorite haunt, ‘Silver Cloud’,
and besides our usual ‘Tots’, ordered
‘Freshly baked chocolate chip cookie with
ice cream’. The cookie lasted for
all of four minutes, though with all of the hard time that we had put in this
evening, we had certainly earned it.
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