Location: The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
Date: Thursday, October 3, 2013; 6:00-8:00 pm
I was tired. I really was.
When I had seen this project as full, I had emailed the EM Laura asking to
be put on the wait list. Earlier in the
afternoon she emailed saying that a spot was open and that I should come. Against my better judgment I agreed and if
there should have been a time for me to go home and relax, it should have been
today. But facing both, mental and
physical exhaustion, I walked over to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society
offices. Now, this building has the most
draconian security policy where the guard doesn't let someone in unless
accompanied by the host. So far so good
– a practice followed by many buildings in the city. However, where they differ is by asking you
to call the office upstairs. Not only do
they not call themselves, they refuse to give you the phone number of the
office. I mean, its not as if we are
here to ask the office out for a date are we!
As I walked up to the guard, I
knew this was going to get a bit irritable.
As expected, he asked me to call someone upstairs. I said that I did not have a number and if he
could let me know what it was. He said
that he did not have it, to which I responded that it was the most ridiculous
thing that I have ever heard. I said
that every building in Chicago has a number for each of the business’ in there
and he responded that it was not his job to have the numbers of those offices,
to which I replied that it absolutely should be. My fatigue was making me angrier and I was
ready to go all evening if I had to.
Fortunately for both of us a staff member had come down, and she took me
upstairs as I glared at the security guard and gave the staff member a earful
about the building policies.
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| We had lots of batteries |
This continued when I entered the
main room where we usually assemble and I vented in front of Laura and her EC
Eric and they both either appeared, or pretended, to be sympathetic. With that out of my system, I looked around
and saw that there were several AAA batteries on the table. I asked Laura about it and she said that this
month the LLS was having their ‘Light The
Night Walks’ in Chicago, the suburbs and Northwest Indiana. To prepare for the walks, we were going to
help LLS assemble 8,000 lanterns, which the walkers would be carrying. Our job was to open the pile of boxes that
were in the room, take out all of the 36 lanterns, remove from plastic bag,
insert 3 AAA batteries in it and then put the lanterns back inside while
throwing away the plastic. This was as
easy an assignment that I have ever done.
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| The box of lanterns |
Other volunteers showed up, including
some familiar faces like Irina, Dianna and Gary as well as 4 others. Despite this, many others on the list had not
shown up and just looking at the number of boxes around, I knew that we were going
to be short. I went to pick a box of red
lanterns and started working, too tired to converse with the others who were
discussing some TV shows. One volunteer
came over to work next to me and introduced herself as Sheila. It was her first One Brick event, having just
moved to the city from Oregon. She wanted
to know about volunteering, and so I told her about One Brick, Chicago Cares
and Make-A-Wish. Even though I was
feeling like I had hit the wall, there is no escaping socializing during these
events.
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| How it will look |
Eric and I chatted about the ‘Bears’ games One Brick projects, which
he EC’s and he told me about the Taylor Swift concert that One Brick had worked and
the fiasco that had kept them at ‘Soldier
Field’ well past midnight. Wilson
has been asking me to do these projects, but I love watching football on
Sunday’s and working a ‘Bears’ game
does not allow you to watch anything, even if you are just yards away from the
action. Laura told me that the next ‘Jumpstart’ project had been scheduled
for November 6th and having found it to be one of my favorite projects, I
had been looking forward to it. However,
I had my monthly ‘Wells Street Café’
project with Chicago Cares that day and requested Laura to move it back a week
to the 13th. She said that she would do it in exchange for something
and I said that post project that day, I would buy her a “Spiked Milkshake” at ’25
Degrees’. We shook on that and
before the end of this project; Laura had managed to move ‘Jumpstart’ by a week!
We continued working on our boxes
and picked others when done with one. Sheila found White and Gold lanterns besides
the Red ones and so I switched it up by working on different colors. I asked the staff member if I could keep one
and when she said yes, I took a white lantern for myself. Time was almost up and we had managed to
finish less than half. We apologized to
the staff of LLS for some of our volunteers not showing up, though they were
more than thankful for whatever we had accomplished. As we went down the elevator, I asked Laura
to keep me away from the security guard, since I was still fuming from my
earlier experience. The others persuaded
me to join them for a drink at ‘Haymarket’,
though all I wanted to do was go home. I
chatted with Eric for a bit on Fantasy Football, but left after a drink. It had been nice to work with everyone, but
tonight was a reminder that sometimes one has to take a break if they are not
up for it. However we had definitely
needed all the hands we could find and I was happy to contribute whatever I
could. Plus I like supporting this
organization. Now if they could only
figure out the security arrangement…
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